One of the things that has always bugged me about Firefox is that when you go to download a file it will only let you save it to your computer. Some other browsers, such as Internet Explorer, also give you an option to “run” the file. The difference is that a file you run is downloaded and stored in a temporary folder that is periodically emptied by the operating system as opposed to being placed in a directory of your choosing.
It’s nice being able to run a file immediately because as soon as it is done downloading I know that it will be opened in the default application. Often times I only want to use a file just once, and so I don’t really need it cluttering up one of my other folders.
If you feel the same way as me you’ll want to checkout the OpenDownload extension for Firefox. All it does is add a Run option to the dialog that appears when you go to download a file (as seen in the screenshot above). Who would have thought that something so simple could make me so darn happy!
Note: This does work fine in Firefox 3 even though it is not shown to be compatible.
There used to one similar to this back in FF 1.x but it was never updated so I kinda forgot about it, thanks for the link unfortunately it doesn’t work with FF 3 Beta 4 yet.
but what will this do with download managers plugins.. like Flashgot?
When I got 25Mbps FIOS I got frustrated with any browser’s download speed – the ‘long fat pipe’ problem meant I was usually downloading well below my connection speed.
Thats when I tried ‘Internet Download Manager’ – it takes over downloads for Firefox and parallelizes all downloads (when it can, which is about 90% of the time).
Now most of my downloads happen at about 2.7 MEGABYTES per second.
Oh and it will sort your downloads any way you like, prevent you from re-downloading stuff you already have, handles resumes perfectly, and lets you run the download, or open its folder when its done.
I think there are other programs that do this to, but I don’t remember which ones I have tried.
I heartily suggest you review it, its very much in the Cybernet niche.
Yes, great plugin, been using it for months. It actually does work fine in the Firefox 3 betas. You just need to modify the xpi or install an addon that will let you ignore the supported version check.
Thank you! I was missing this option a lot as well.
StationStops: does Internet Download Manager download files to a temp location first too, so that when you “run” a file, it gets cleared from the temp location after? (that’s the advantage of this extension)
It works, but only if you’ve have Firefox set to ignore the version requirements.
Not actually sure, but I can’t imagine it would affect them.
For some reason I’ve never really been big on using download managers. I know that you can really get some big speed increases as you’ve observed, but I don’t like having an extra application running in the background for that. It’s generally easier on the servers that I’m downloading from as well helping to keep them from getting overloaded.
Groovy, nice to have this feature again. Though not sure how often I’ll use it as so use to saving then opening.
Ryan, I am like you I avoided these things forever, now I consider anyone with a broadband connection selling themselves short.
From the server’s perspective, there is no substantial difference between someone using a download manager and you just being conveniently located near the server with the same connection.
Yes it will create 10x the connections, but those connections will be closed 10x quicker.
The HTTP spec allows for 3 concurrent connections, so you can still get massive speed increases even while being a good client.
Of course its all YMMV.
It may well work with Firefox 3 but Mozilla seem determined that users of the Beta shouldn’t be allowed to use extensions with it. Anyone who uses version 2 able to post a link to the .xpi file on here – its hidden if you use Beta 5.
Edit: cool, just noticed my Gravatar show up for the first time.
Expand the ‘advanced details’ section at the bottom to get to the Complete Version History link: [blog.ffextensionguru.com]
This is going to be ‘fixed’ in the new AMO 3.2.1 launch this coming week: [blog.ffextensionguru.com]
“The difference is that a file you run is downloaded and stored in a temporary folder that is periodically emptied by the operating system…”
With Download Statusbar [addons.mozilla.org] you can delete the files when you are done installing, instead of waiting for Windows to do it on its own.