Firestorm Adds BitTorrent Support to Firefox

Written by Ernesto on April 20, 2007 

Firestorm is a new Firefox extension that enables Firefox users to download and monitor .torrent files in their browser. Firestorm is being developed as part of a Senior Software Engineering project at Penn State University. The first Alpha release is expected to be released later today.

The goal of Firestorm is to make downloading torrents as easy as downloading any other file inside your browser. This can be especially useful for people who are new to BitTorrent, or people that don’t need the advanced features most standalone clients offer.

In this early stage of development the configuration options of Firestorm are quite basic, but the most essential features like adjusting the up- and download speed are already in there.

Firestorm is based on the source code from the Official BitTorrent Client, which is modified to be integrated with Firefox. The developers plan to continue the development of the extension after the school project is finished, so they can add more features and keep the extension up-to date.

Frequent TorrentFreak readers probably know that Firestorm is not the first BitTorrent extension for Firefox, FoxTorrent and BitFox are similar projects that work on adding a BitTorrent download manager to Firefox. This is a good thing of course, a little competition will only benefit the users.

More screenshots over here.

firestorm bittorrent extension firefox

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11 Responses

1 Apr 20, 2007 at 01:21 by Jenny G.

Is there any advantage using this instead of Azureus (besides not needing a PhD? :)

2 Apr 20, 2007 at 01:40 by SpookyET

The first iteration of this extension sucks for a few reasons.
a) It’s ugly.
b) It does not use the Firefox download manager,
c) It is not hidden. (It should not be different downloading a torrent from a normal file.)

3 Apr 20, 2007 at 03:06 by Nathan

Sounds to me like somebody loves FireFox a little too much.

4 Apr 20, 2007 at 18:25 by Christopher

Hey, great idea. Ignore the critics. I hope you pick up a few contributors to help with cleaner integration. This almost seems like one of those things that could eventually make it into the main FF codebase…

5 Apr 20, 2007 at 18:29 by Martin

you are not going to be able to top torrent only applications like uTorrent.

6 Apr 20, 2007 at 18:40 by Robert S.

Does the torrent download quit/die when the browser is closed?

7 Apr 20, 2007 at 18:42 by SpookyET

The first iteration of this extension is l33t for a few reasons.
a) It’s beautiful.
b) It uses the Firefox download manager.
c) It is hidden.

8 Apr 20, 2007 at 20:12 by Lethkial

Pay no heed to the doubters and naysayers. You are on to an extension that is currently unavailable, and will certainly prove to be an integral and lasting improvement for managing and monitoring torrents via Firefox. See it through to completion. Kudos.

9 Apr 25, 2007 at 03:24 by meatwad

I go to PSU and i had no idea this was some senior project. This is a great idea.

10 Apr 26, 2007 at 15:49 by steven

where can i download it

11 Jan 11, 2008 at 19:48 by Google

I Think,Ä°t is very nice information…

Hitchhiker Nation

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