Xtreme Download Manager Extension For Firefox

[Kiliano Ratha]

Inthe past I used to use a Firefox extension download manager and the Zorin Team received a number of complaints. All the complaints had one thing in common, they had all used Download Managers. This is why Zorin state on one of their pages not to use a Download Manager

I believe there already some download manager extensions for Firefox or Chromium base browser and no need to installing it in your system. May be you want to search on your browser extensions market place to find one that suitable for your need.

Thanks. I installed Video Donload Helper in Firefox. Works great. I have one not related extra question also. Firefox drag and drop option is no longer working with the last update. Do you know why? It is working with X11 but not with Wayland.

Did you means dragging file from Nautilus (file explorer) to browser? Mine with Firefox 96.0 in Wayland working fine. I can drag and drop video file from Nautilus to Firefox. Maybe you want to check if there any new update with Firefox.

Recently, I wrote a post about another download accelerator for Linux users, Xtreme Download Manager. In that post, I was unable to integrate the download manager into my web browser (Mozilla Firefox). Today, I'd like to share my experience integrating it with Mozilla Firefox with you all guys. OK, let's get started!

Now, please open both Xtremen Download Manager and Mozilla Firefox. In the Xtreme Download Manager menu, select "Tools > Browser Integration". A new dialog window will appear:

Xtreme Download Manager will ask you to install its extension for Firefox, simply drag and drop the icon into your Firefox window to install it. Once installed, please quit both Xtreme Download Manager and Mozilla Firefox application. Then, start the Xtreme Download Manager first then start the browser, please ALWAYS start XDM before starting the browser. Now, Xtreme Download Manager will be able to capture download as long as it is running.

Configuring Other Browsers

To enable integration of Xtreme Download Manager with other browsers, you need to configure proxy configuration for your system or your browser. If you are using Google Chrome, you need to configure system proxy settings so it uses "auto proxy configuration(PAC)" and point to " :9614/proxy.pac". If you are using Opera, you configure it by accessing "Menu > Settings > Preferences ..." and go to "Advanced" tab, select "Network" section and press the "Proxy Servers" button. Configure it so it becomes like the picture below:

Good luck!

The built-in download manager works but it lacks features that full-blown download managers offer. Let's say you download a large file; if the download completes without errors, great, but if you run into any errors (server-side issue, or your internet connection), your browser will simply stop the download with a failed tag next to the filename. There may be no way to resume the download and you've to start it from scratch.

The official page for the program says it can accelerate the download speed by up to 500%. I'm just going to say this here, the only way to increase your internet speed is by getting a better (more expensive) connection and use a wired connection instead of Wi-Fi. That being said, when I tried XDM, the speeds were indeed a bit faster than Firefox's (or any other browser's) download manager. For the price of free, it is quite impressive.

For testing purposes I downloaded several files and videos in Firefox and XDM. My laptop's wireless adapter is shoddy, so the downloads were averaging at about 3MB/sec and the peak speed was just over 4 MB/sec in the browser.

When I tried it on XDM the result was slightly better; the average speed was around 4MB/sec while the peak speed was around 5.5MB/sec. The difference in the speed was about 22% but mileage varies as multiple factors such as the server load and speed, and the speed of the Internet connection.

Wired LAN is usually faster, so here are the XDM test results from the wired connection. Peak Speed - About 36 MB/sec averaging in the 18-20 range. Internet Download Manager delivered slightly higher average speeds at 22MB/s, while Firefox disappointingly averaged at 12MB/s.

Forget the peak speeds, the average speed is what's important. So, does using XDM make a difference? Yes, it is better than the speed that you get from your browser, and if you don't have a download manager I'd definitely recommend XDM. Again, mileage varies and you don't know how beneficial (or not) a download manager is until you gave it a try.

When you install Xtreme Download Manager and run it, you will see some options to install the browser add-on which is called XDM Browser Monitor. The extension is available on Mozilla's repository and the Chrome Web Store which means you can install it on any Firefox based or Chromium based browser. XDM uses the Browser Monitor to capture the URLs to download the file.

The easiest way to download files using Xtreme Download Manager is obviously to use the web browser and selecting the download option. But, the File menu has a few other options. You can manually add a URL to download a file or add one from the clipboard. There is even a batch download option which you can use for downloading multiple files at once.

The Downloads menu in XDM can be used to pause, resume or restart a download. It also has a task scheduler, which allows you to set the URLs in a queue and start/stop it at a time and date of your choice.

You can configure the Xtreme Download Manager settings from the Tools menu. This includes selecting the download folder, maximum number of simultaneous downloads, overwrite existing files option and a few other Network, Scheduler, Password Manager options. You can also set XDM to make your antivirus scan each downloaded file and define exceptions from the Advanced Settings.

XDM places the downloaded files in different folders (Documents, Compressed, Music, Video and Programs) based on the file's extension. For e.g TXT or DOCX are saved to documents, MP3 or FLAC to the music folder, and so on. This is exactly how IDM handles downloads too. You can change the folders for each category from the Tools> Options menu.

Xtreme Download Manager can refresh the link for a download, just like IDM. This is useful for resuming time-limited downloads and otherwise downloads that don't support resume. You can set a speed limit for the downloads if you don't want the program to use all your bandwidth.

Downloading a video using XDM is simple. Go to the web page which contains the video and you will see an option to download the video provided that you have installed the extension. Click it and pick a resolution from the list and XDM does the rest. You can also manually start the built-in video downloader in XDM and paste a video's URL.

If you have an account/subscription with the service you are downloading the video from, you can enter your credentials in the program. This step is only necessary in case the streaming service prevents unregistered users from accessing the videos.

The video converter didn't work for me when I clicked it. Perhaps it is designed to only work when downloading videos through the program. Go to a video's page and click download, a pop-up should appear prompting you to select where to save the file. It also has an option to "Convert" the video. The formats which XDM can covert to are: 3GP, 3G2, MP4, MP4 HQ and MP3. When I tested this, the resultant videos were fine.

I was slightly surprised that Xtreme Download Manager does everything that IDM can do. Sure there are a few bugs here and there, but for the price of free, I have no complaints. A portable version of XDM is available on SourceForge.

As a long time user of Internet Download Manager (I paid for two licenses about 5 years ago), I have no regrets about my decision. It still is the best, in my opinion. I might still keep XDM on the laptop.

i never use download manager and i am surprised why people think that downloading files with builtin download manager of browsers are impossible!

internet explorer support resume download since version 9, firefox since version 39 and chrome i dont remember the version number.

Lately I started using Multithreaded Download Manager (Firefox add-on, open source) for medium-large files and it feels really nice being able to do advanced stuff like pause and change the download link or increase the number of connections within my browser.

The author is working on a 2.0 version which will be coming out soon.

As no supported versions of Firefox will be compatible with legacy add-ons after this date, we will start the process of disabling legacy add-on versions on addons.mozilla.org (AMO) in September. On September 6, 2018, submissions for new legacy add-on versions will be disabled. All legacy add-on versions will be disabled in early October, 2018. Once this happens, users will no longer be able to find your extension on AMO.

For more information about porting legacy extensions to the WebExtensions API is available on MDN. We encourage legacy add-on developers to visit our wiki for more information about upcoming development work and ways to get in touch with our team for help.

The thing is

1. Photon is terrible in terms of both usability and looks

2. I meant systemwide consistency across all browsers (since WE is pretty much Chromium Extensions API and there is polyfill allowing WE to run in Chromium)

Could you at least archive the last version of legacy add-ons the way you archive older versions of Firefox so that people have a safe, official repository for these add-ons should we need them for an older machine we are trying to get running on a network? You do realize Firefox is the last and most recent web browser to support both Windows XP and Vista.

Can you at least delay disabling legacy addons?

=> Session Management API was planned to ready in Q3 2018, now this date is moved to 2019; they are few other important APIs like Toolbar API. Can you wait with old addon disabling at least until these addons will be ready (plus time needed to correct errors/bugs in new API + few months for webextension developers to introduce new API to their WEs),

=> Windows XP machines will be not forever. Few additional years will be more than enough for most users.

3a8082e126