FireTorrent Brings BitTorrent to Firefox
Written by Ernesto on December 18, 2008Firefox is the web browser of choice for many people, but unlike Opera, it can’t download .torrent files natively. With FireTorrent you can now add BitTorrent support to Firefox. The add-on makes it possible to download .torrent files in the browser, and integrates BitTorrent downloads into the existing download manager.
With FireTorrent, downloading torrents becomes as easy as downloading any other file inside your browser, no BitTorrent client needed. The add-on is currently in Alpha testing, but already fully functional.
FireTorrent can be especially useful for people who only use BitTorrent sporadically, those new to BitTorrent, or users who don’t need the advanced features most standalone clients offer. The add-on uses the popular libtorrent library and fully integrates into the native download manager of Firefox.
Since it’s an alpha release, there are no options or preferences to configure yet. The official release, however, will include adjustable download and upload limits and several other basic configurable settings. Completed downloads will currently be stored in the desktop folder, this can be changed in the beta release that will come out in a few weeks.
Firefox 3.0 or greater is required to get the add-on to work properly. At the moment, the upload speed is capped at 15kB/s. This is for the alpha release only, but since BitTorrent is based on ‘tit-for-tat’ sharing, it doesn’t really help to get the downloads up to full speed. That aside, the add-on works just fine, and download speeds on most connections are comparable to clients such as uTorrent and Vuze.
FireTorrent is also included with Wyzo, the BitTorrent browser (one of our sponsors) which is based on Firefox. A new alpha of Wyzo is also being tested at the moment, and will be released in the first week of January. FireTorrent is invite only at the moment, but there is an easy way to get around that, for those who want to give it a try.
FireTorrent downloads in Firefox.
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47 Responses
Great stuff, the more choices of clients the better…
This is pretty sweet.
WTF? OK, either Ernesto doesn’t have a clue what he is on about or my Frefox browser has gremlins in it.
I don’t have FireTorrent and yet Firefox 3 downloads .torrent files without a problem. It’s done so for some time now. Am I misreading this article or something?
Yes your confused… it downloads the actual torrent IN your browser, no utorrent required
@ #4 – Thanks, that makes much more sense. One sentence. Clean, simple and effective. Thanks again!
Thanks, def worth checking out and should get total newb who dont like “messing” with a lot of software up and running as well.
Pity about the present 15kbps cap…
The only “problem” (note the quotes) i can think of is that only mostly ‘advanced’ users use FF, they either stick with IE or use somethign like Opera.
Might be a bit of preaching to the choir..
Anybody else not having this work?
Maybe I am missing something completely obvious, but I try and open the torrent in firefox and it crashes.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4844
theres foxtorrent already, much older, and established
@7, Working for me, did you restart?
Also, try this: download the torrent using “save as..” then right click on it and go to properties and see with what its associated with.. see if you can get it to associate it with FF.
If you can give us a few more details it would be easier to help you like FF version, any errors etc right now its a bit vague..
Eh, this might be nice for those ‘now and then’ torrents. I usually download .torrents and forget them to start them up in uTorrent,this might be a good alt.
@7
Remember, its in alpha testing; not even beta!
http://Torrentino.2500mhz.info
definitely a great idea, i hope it will be able to display some more details when you click on properties on one of the downloads. hopefully some settings would also be useful.
i also love bitlet for sending people who don’t know how to use torrents, torrent!
Who cares. This shit is useless except for public trackers and even then who would prefer this over a standalone client anyway..It’ll be as successful as the opera bt client :lol:
The first file I tried downloading started off going at 2 MB/s, getting me to 135 MB of the 700 MB file, but from there it dropped, until the estimated time remaining literally looked something like “23253257239025320572e+27 days remaining”
Canceled the download and restarted, and it seemed to be doing alright, averaging about 70 – 100 KB/s which is normal for me. But after a while, it once again it dropped to basically 0, giving me more ridiculously large numbers.
Anyone else here that’s installed it having this problem?
LOL… How long after Opera did it?
Firefox ain’t that bad, but lets face it, opera is far better…
#12, on what basis
@ 12 +1 cred from me =)
FireTorrent should be quite impressive to make me move from uTorrent.
This is pointless. Utorrent is small enough, also why would I want to keep my browser open just so I can download a torrent, its better to have utorrent minimised and do my work on computer.
+1 to #17. FF has a known memory problem (wait, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature), why would anyone leave it open to download torrents? It boggles the mind. I assume someone will say it’s only for casual person who downloads small files. But most casual users download TV episodes and movies. Go teach them to use uTorrent instead.
FF likes to brag about their huge third-party extension support, but most are junk like this. There are only a dozen or so good ones, and they’re mostly “ispired” by functionality found in Safari, Opera, or IE-based browsers like Maxthon. FF isn’t for advanced users, it’s for sheep.
@18: Stop being a fanboy. Firefox is great, aside from its huge memory usage.
Wow, just one more reason FireFox is the best and kicks the competition to the curb!
Jess
Privacy-Center.net
Look, i don’t like Firefox, i don’t like that it takes a ton of mem compared to the current line of browsers, i don’t like that tries to add extensions to do basic things other browsers natively do. i don’t like its layout, i don’t like adding crap to a browser, as is with the current google chrome design. FF forgets its a browser, it should give you the internets and nothing more.
Opera or Chrome for me anyday thank. you.
oh and firetorrent sucks (yes i’m speaking from experience) it doesn’t have any type of sensible coding in it. but atleast its alpha.
It’s easy, when i install FF3 i first try to move the tab bar to the bottom… and then, I CAN’T!
It’s just no possible! I google for it, and all i could find was some hardcoding edition that would solve.
I mean, wtf browser that dissapoint me in the first simple feature?
Firefox is a so good browser, for those used to IE. For those who arrive on internet after IE, and didn’t had expirence with netscape. those who never used Opera nor Konqueror…
I use Opera, but torrent i still use utorrent.
And i think utorrent could be better too, i always hungry for some more statistics about my downs/ups, online time etc.
I’m sure Firetorrent will boost torrent download to a lot of fanboys who just can’t accept ff isn’t all one need. And i hope it does!
Torrents must grow stronger
@8
Foxtorrent isn’t compatible with the current version of Firefox.
@20 its been rewritten and yes it does have sensible coding. I got 400kb/s yesterday.
@24 Exactly, we’ve rewritten the extension from scratch and it’s built upon the robust LibTorrent library.
@all We will reviewing all the bugs posted here in the comments and fix them for the beta release.
You can post and track bugs/problems at http://getsatisfaction.com/radicalsoft/products/radicalsoft_firetorrent/
I`m guessing this will give us less seeds..
i don’t think i can ever leave utorrent with all my RSS downloads setup. i don’t think i’m part of the audience for this :(
While I do love Firefox, and torrenting in equal measure, I don’t think I’ll be making the switch from uTorrent any time soon. As has already been mentioned, Firefox has memory usage issues, which tend to grow quite problematic after a while.
I will say, however, that I’m happy someone has made a torrent add-on for those who don’t wish to mess with a stand-alone app.
FF likes to brag about their huge third-party extension support, but most are junk like this. There are only a dozen or so good ones, and they’re mostly “ispired” by functionality found in Safari, Opera, or IE-based browsers like Maxthon. FF isn’t for advanced users, it’s for sheep.
http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
Are you guys planning on making this available through the addons.mozilla.org? If not, I don’t want it. I only install add-ons that have been through the Mozilla review process.
@29 – yes, we will soon.
@Those who mentioned FoxTorrent – It is windows-only and installs extra programs on your computer. All FoxTorrent does is create something like this: http://www.utorrent.com/webui-guide.php
So if FireTorrent truly is browser-only, it is a first for Firefox.
@22 If you need the tab bar left, right, bottom, there’s an extension for that.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890
It’s not something everybody needs anyway.
I have a lot of “small issues” I could throw at your browser too, but let’s not get there.
Dude, saying “no BitTorrent client needed” is just insulting. FireTorrent IS a BitTorrent client, cmon, don’t become main steam media dumbed down on us.
Yep
I use uTorrent, but come on, let’s be realistic. It’s not perfect.
Don’t know about you, but anytime I add a torrent over about 3GB in size, I get the “Disk Overloaded 100%” bug, and all my transfers run into the ground. Then I have to go through some stupid dance of stopping/starting torrents hoping it goes away. Often all I can do is restart it.
Further, the recheck of files that are partially downloaded in uTorrent is painfully slow, and often this also slows all running torrents to a crawl until it’s done.
There’s room for improvement.
@36, go into your options and changed disk cache to 1000mb, that will stop your disk overload problem
This is somewhat useful. Basic and simple, so mom can download the files without ever knowing anything about torrents. Opera’s client works great like that, with no settings at all, and thats the point. Advanced users will prefer a dedicated client anyways. FireTorrent’s problem however is that mom need to install the addon in the first place. A uTorrent install will most likely be simpler to perform, or just get Opera. You must really love stuffing ff with addons to use this imho.
@37 Hey thanks for the tip, works great!
So, someone ever heard of standart built-in “Open file with…” FF function? All non-retarded BT clients will add the torrent to the list. Heck, you can even modify the setting to make it totally automatic.
Ah, but it’s built-in! Sooooo bland, must I say. Surely, how can we move further without all that flashy plugins doing exactly the same things as the base browser?
@38: Users’ endless stupidity is the thing to fight with, not approve.
this is utter shit.
firetorrent installs a load of shit in the background that’s set to run at startup and well slows your computer down.
fuck off with your shitty adverts TF
@41 – no it doesn’t
Thanks you, I’ve signed up to the Alpha releasing. ;)
Please pay attention before posting.
firetorrent is not the same as FoxTorrent!
The old FoxTorrent is a crappy extension that install Red Swoosh spyware client and it only support older versions of FF.
firetorrent is the new extension. It uses libtorrent, which is an open source implementation of the BitTorrent protocol, also used by several torrent clients like Deluge and Halite. This alone is a big improvement over older FF torrent implementations.
For those who can’t get rid of Windows and uTorrent, keep in mind that any torrent implementation that facilitate download is good for the p2p community, because helps make the protocol more popular and thus more difficult to be stopped by the corporate mafia.
FF rocks, so does utorrent. and fuck all those useless addons, the more addons u install the bigger chance to slow and fuck up your FF.
All those who blame FF are naive,-have no idea what they r talking about. Nobody forces u to install dozens of addons…
Any way thx guys for informing us about Firetorrent so I won’t have to try it, utorrent is still the king ;-))
I prefer to keep my browser naive to what my BitTorrent is up to…
ummmm… all of you naysayers, learn to use FireFox right and its absolutely the most advanced browser you can get… why dont we reduce the memory usage a bit (cuz that seems to be your main problem), just
1) go to about:config (via your address bar)
2) find browser.cache.disk.capacity and change it from 50000 to… say, 10000… now it can only use 10MB
wanna cut it down even more when your minimise??? just
1) go to about:config again
2) make a new boolean value called config.trim_on_minimize
3) set the value to true and restart FF.. done
what's that you say?? you wanna make FF load pages "faster"???? well how could you possibly do that with such a shit browser????? oh… thats right! PIPELINING! go to about:config and
1) find network.http.pipelining and set it to true
2) then find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests and set it to something like 30 or 40… now FF will 30 or 40 requests at any given time
you want even more browsing speed?!? well, you're a greedy one aren't you? but FF can do it! go into about:config again and
1) create a new integer value called nglayout.initialpaint.delay
2) set said value to zero, now FF will act on all received data instantly!
hate the way TF or Google (or any other site, for that matter) look? why not grab Stylish and make it your own?! you might even learn something while you're at it!
and there's so much more you can do too… so learn a little bit about how to harness its full power before you decide its the worst thing out
NOTE: also, to solve your memory issues, consider the possibility of learning about something else (its called HARDWARE!!)… then you might wanna ditch your old Dell that has a 450MHz Katmai and 64MB of RAM (that lack of RAM's probably your problem)
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