FireTorrent Brings BitTorrent to Firefox
Firefox 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.
