Early in 2008, the project was revived by Radical Software and one year later, Wyzo 3 is alive and kicking. The most recent Wyzo release is based on the latest Firefox 3 core, but with it comes with a brand new “chrome like” theme and a wide range of proprietary extensions.

The new version of FireTorrent has been completely rewritten and provides integrated support for torrent downloads. Downloading torrents with Wyzo is as simple as grabbing any other file and the speeds are comparable to most standalone BitTorrent clients. FireTorrent is also available as a Firefox extension and currently has 25,000 active daily users.

Another new extension that comes with the browser, FireDownload, provides multi-threaded acceleration to all regular http downloads. FireTray, a minimize to tray feature, allows all downloads to continue while the browser sits in the tray.

Wyzo also includes some other popular extensions such as Cooliris to enhance the users’ browsing experience. A full list of features can be found at the Wyzo site.

The latest version of the ‘BitTorrent browser’ is a great improvement and shows Radical Software mean business with Wyzo. TorrentFreak was told that here are other proprietary extensions in the development pipeline and Wyzo hopes to gain users by offering a rich media browsing experience.

Disclaimer: Wyzo is one of our sponsors. It’s always good to declare such things or you end up accused of being biased ;-)

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, unlike the others, Wyzo does not limit itself to existing Firefox users. They try to target a large audience, mostly of people who are new to BitTorrent, or people that don’t need the advanced features most standalone clients offer.

Jon from Wyzo explained to TorrentFreak:

“Our primary target audience is not people who already use BitTorrent, it’s people that don’t. Despite the fact that our FireTorrent extension still contains most of the advanced features that die-hard torrent users would expect to see, but we don’t anticipate they will be swayed from using near perfect applications such as Azureus and uTorrent; instead, our focus to reach out to those users that don’t even know what a BitTorrent is, or a Firefox extension for that matter.”

Personally I think this is a great approach, since it will be nearly impossible to compete with a client like uTorrent. It is also wise to release the Firefox standalone extension, because existing Firefox users are not likely to switch to Wyzo, even though it basically has the same look and feel.

I’ve tried Wyzo and the FireTorrent extension for Firefox with a couple of torrents and it seems to be working quite well. BitTorrent support is seamlessly integrated with the regular download manager of the browser, and doesn’t require any configuration. Wyzo comes with a decent set of configuration options such as bandwidth control, protocol encryption, proxy support, and port randomization.

The engine core is built upon technology provided by P2P Innovative and contains essential features such as uTorrent compatible fast peer exchange, STUNT and uPnP connection integration.

In sum I would say the Wyzo’s BitTorrent extension (FireForrent) is one of the best BitTorrent browser extensions I’ve seen so far, and it could be very useful for people who are new to BitTorrent. Let’s hope they release their Firefox extension soon.

Wyzo can be downloaded here, and the FireTorrent extension over here. The browser is currently only available for Windows and OS X but a Linux version is expected to be released this summer.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.