Invoke download without dispatching event

It looks like browsers are moving away from allowing JS-dispatched events from performing their default actions. (e.g.: crbug.com/520519)

AFAIK the only way to invoke a download from JS is the following steps:

1. Create a temporary <a> and attach it to the document
2. Set the “href” and “download” attributes
3. Dispatch a synthetic “click” event at it
4. Remove the temporary <a>

Perhaps there should be a navigator.download(url, filename) method or similar to do the same thing but without having to rely on synthetic events? It would also be a much nicer API than muddling with temporary elements!

Actually I was just informed that element.click() can work instead of dispatching an event. But maybe there should be a nicer API for this anyway?