FireTorrent: The Best BitTorrent Extension for Firefox Yet
This was surely a long time coming, but it looks like there is a real add-on available for users who want to download BitTorrent files in Firefox. Previously we had reviewed FoxTorrent that worked as expected, but it had to install an additional application that was used to do the dirty work. It basically just used Firefox as a Web interface for the application.
The new add-on, called FireTorrent, doesn’t install any additional applications on your computer. On my Vista machine I had some troubles getting it installed because the add-on does modify Firefox’s chrome located in the directory where you installed Firefox. For that reason I’m not sure if this should really be classified as an extension. This also means that it isn’t stored in your Firefox profile folder like other extensions, so you will need to reinstall this each time you wipe Firefox from you computer (even if you have your profile backed up).
With that being said the FireTorrent add-on works extremely well after you install it. I clicked on a link to a Torrent and I saw the exact same popup that I would see if I was downloading a normal file. It asked if I wanted to open or save the file, and after picking an option I was taken to the normal Firefox download manager except it had a new "Torrent" tab on it:
I like that it is so well integrated into Firefox because it now seems like a natural process to download Torrents, just like with the Opera browser.
Clicking on the "More Info" link next to a download will reveal things like how many sources you’re downloading from as well as how fast you’re uploading. I had almost though they forgot to include this essential information, but instead they just did a good job of keeping the interface free of clutter.
It also has several options available that lets you customize things like the upload/download speed limitations in addition to the port number that’s used. Here are two screenshots that show all of the settings it has to pick from:
Click to Enlarge
Graphically FireTorrent seems to be lacking a little bit as seen in the screenshots. The background color seems to be a little off, but that might be attributed to me using this on a Firefox 3 nightly build.
As far as download speeds go I would say that they are pretty good. Not quite what I get from a dedicated BitTorrent application, but I didn’t expect to get outstanding results. The entire point of having BitTorrent capabilities built-in to the browser is for the added convenience. If I had a huge file to download (several gigabytes) I would using a BitTorrent program to download it since I’ll get the best performance.
If you’re looking to add some BitTorrent goodness to your Firefox I would recommend checking FireTorrent out. Alternatively they also create a browser called Wyzo that is based on Firefox and has the BitTorrent integration already installed (and actually has a pretty cool skin).
Source: Mozilla Links
Thanks to netster007x for the tip!
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Tags: Firefox, Freeware, Software, BitTorrent, Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions
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When I used FoxTorrent, it really was never reliable. It often would just not work at all, keeping the torrent at 0% forever. There was also a problem of it continuing to download torrents after they were cancelled. I did kind of like being able to exit firefox and have the torrents continue, but I think it’s best to not need that process running in the background. FoxTorrent really just didn’t work out.
FireTorrent is far more reliable. So far, though, FireTorrent’s speed seems slower than FoxTorrent’s was when it did well. The interface is nice and simple. Should there be an option to disable sharing all together? The most basic thing FireTorrent lacks is a way to only download selected files of a multi-file torrent. FoxTorrent has this. I also thought the theme of it looked pretty chincy, though myfirefox (IE7 skin) could be adding a little to that.
On more thing: Is it possible to continue torrent downloads after restarting Firefox (and PC)? Firefox downloads don’t do this, right?
That’s such a wonderful extension. I haven’t a clue why all of the Torrent clients to date have been such bogged down applications, it’s nice to have something that simply extends the functionality of Firefox’s “bare-minimums” download manager to include the ability to download torrents. I really don’t need all these fancy graphs and options, I just want to be able to click on a Torrent file and have it download.
Comparing FoxTorrent to FireTorrent, FoxTorrent supports individual file download selection, continued downloads after firefox is closed, and the ability to stream videos as they download.
Oh, and the bug causing FoxTorrent downloads to get stuck has been fixed. Also the bug causing FoxTorrent to continue downloading has been fixed.
I’m not biased at all!
Tom.
Installing this extension caused my tabs to take on a new, undesirable effect. TMP and Configuration Mania could not override… Once this extension was disabled, my tabs went back to normal…
Firefox downloads are supposed to do this, but sometimes the “Resume” doesn’t work so well. I haven’t tested the extension for the ability to start a download, restart Firefox, and continue the download but I believe it should work. It lets you pause a download, so restarting Firefox really isn’t any different than pausing the download and picking up later.
That’s my thought exactly. I use uTorrent which is among the more basic BitTorrent downloaders but that still has a ton of graphs and visualizations that I never use.
I’m sure some people will like FoxTorrent for all of those reasons, but having another application running is something I would rather do without. If I wanted that I would really just use uTorrent with the web interface…it’s essentially the same thing, right?
That’s odd, nothing happened here.
Hey Ryan, Fx2 downloads do not continue after restarting. I started a download and attempted to exit Firefox and a pop-up said if I exited the download would be cancelled. I continued the exit and the pop-up was telling the truth. When I started Fx my only option for the download was to restart it from the beginning. This should really be added to Fx.
Really? I would have bet anything that they did resume, but then again I can’t remember the last time that I tried closing Firefox while a download was in progress.
Sorry Tom, but I’ve been hooked. I uninstalled Foxtorrent since Firetorrent is where it’s at. If I ever need to keep a download going in the background, I’ll hide an Fx window using DM2. One thing that was horribly annoying in Foxtorrent was when you loaded the UI it took several seconds for your downloads to load up. The best thing Foxtorrent did was introduce me to diggnation.com
Firetorrent still needs the ability to download only certain files of a multi-file torrent, but it’s just an alpha so I’m sure they’ll add it. I’m wondering where they’d put it in the GUI, though. If it was a big torrent it could be too much for the download manager. Maybe a seperate pop-up that’s linked to from the torrents tab of the download manager?
FireTorrent has been great until recently. I’m downloading a couple of South Park episodes, and every couple minutes the browser crashes. It just disappears. I tried pausing the downloads and Fx stopped crashing. The ext has been rendered useless. Any suggestions?
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/34......XviD-LOKi
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/35......XviD-NoTV
Same here for that download, but I haven’t had that happen before. I’m guessing it is just something with that specific file or format.
I re-installed FireTorrent and now it’s downloading OK. The bottom one downloaded quickly, but the top one is downloading pretty slowly, 12.5MB/S right now, fluctuating often. I guess this has a lot to do with the particular torrent, rather than the client. I’m pretty new to torrents, I actually started with FoxTorrent, and now use FireTorrent. Also, what setting did you put for maximum upload speed. I tried putting it down to 1KB/S (minimum) and my download sped up. I guess this makes sense because I was using less of my bandwidth on uploads and thus more on downloads. I thought maybe my downloads would slow because of hosts giving less to people who give little, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I have it on 16KB/s now (and download unlimited). What do you do?
I took a look at some of the hate mail on The Pirate Bay. Those guys really seem like jerks but they’re hilarious! In responding to Apple, they referenced Team America World Police (great movie). (It’s the “or else what…” part).
http://static.thepiratebay.org.....sponse.txt
I typically set my upload speed to half what my host provides, because I’m a believer in the “sharing” philosophy that makes BitTorrent strong. So that is typically 20KB/s for me, but I often play with that setting depending if I’m using the Internet for other things as well. If I’m not doing anything else (a.k.a. sleeping) I’ll normally put it all the way up. Normally I don’t see a poor reflection in my download speed by increasing it.