7 thoughts on “BitTorrent in Firefox

  1. I have mixed feelings about this. On the other hand, BT is shaping up to be a very efficient way of transferring large files over the internet, and it seems reasonable for a browser to begin work on supporting BT. OTOH, we have a very capable Java-based program called Azureus. Perhaps Azureus will turn out to be what download managers are — advanced tools for advanced users.

  2. Tsee: indeed. The Firefox implementation is designed to allow people to download torrents as easily as they download via FTP. People who want more control, or to do hosting, or stuff like that will probably still use an external client.

  3. I find it great that firefox is implementing some simple bitorrent support. It will do a lot to help furthur the use of the protocol because people wont have to download a separate app. But I would also really like to see support for resuming downloads and such. Sometimes I’m downloading big files (especially) over bittorent, and I lose my interent connection, which means I have to restart the whole download ( I know firefox has the ‘pause’ download option, but it never works )

  4. Alan, if that’s what is happening, you’re doing something wrong, as BitTorrent *absolutely* supports resumption of downloads. Make sure you’re saving to the same file or folder every time your client disconnects, otherwise your BT client will look for the file/folder, not see it, and assume you’re doing a brand-new download.

    For example, if you’re downloading to a file called C:\foo.zip and the download is interrupted, be sure to save to the same file when you restart your download.

  5. Allan: Alan didn’t actually say whether he was using the Firefox Bittorrent alpha, but if he was, he’s right – as I understand it, resuming support isn’t quite implemented yet.