Official Mega Firefox extension released

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 9, 2013
Updated • Feb 9, 2013
Firefox, Firefox add-ons
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When Mega opened its gates to the public for the very first time it became clear immediately that the site operators had no love for any browser but Google Chrome. The first public blog post on the site highlighted this by calling Google Chrome "the leading browser, by far" and concluding that "there is currently no alternative to using the most advanced browser currently in existence - Google Chrome".

As far as technical explanations go, the site operators mentioned lack of writing files from JavaScript in all browsers but Chrome, and that some browsers require that file downloads or uploads are to be stored fully in memory.

If you open Mega using the Firefox web browser right now you are presented with a notification that pops up after a couple of seconds that informs you that Mega has released an extension for the web browser that remedies the situation.

mega firefox extension screenshot

It states:

Mega Firefox extension

Install the Mega Firefox extension for vastly improved download performance. It will allow you to batch-download an unlimited number of files without any size restrictions.

The Mega Firefox extension is secure and invisible. If you prefer to use Mega without extension, we strongly recommend you use Chrome.

The add-on adds the option to Firefox to download files without any size restrictions, bypassing the browser's requirement to store the entire file in memory.

The Mega website does not offer any explanation on what the extension does besides what is displayed on the notification prompt. The add-on itself works silently in the background and becomes only active when you download files hosted on Mega using the Firefox web browser. Note that it does not offer any options or an interface, and that there is no indication that it is actually working other than improved download performance.

Mega plans to release a first version of an open source sync application for MEGA in the next week.

Update: Do not confuse the Mega extension that is offered on the Mega website with the Mega add-on offered on Mozilla's add-ons repository as they are not not the same. The add-on on the Mozilla website is a third party add-on.

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Comments

  1. Peter said on February 7, 2015 at 1:39 am
    Reply

    Sorry, but I decline!!!! not in this world I will install something that could be malware!
    If Mr. Kim Dotcom wants me to install his add-on on my Firefox browser, he must first release the code to know what it really does!

    1. John said on March 28, 2015 at 1:50 pm
      Reply

      This isn’t a smart comment.

      1. Almost anything could be malware.
      2. If something was malware, chances are the code they showed you wouldn’t be the code that had been compiled.
      3. You can read all of the code of this extension because it’s in plain text – like nearly all Firefox extensions.

  2. Ken Saunders said on February 12, 2013 at 2:54 am
    Reply

    “To unleash MEGA’s full potential, we strongly urge you to use Google Chrome only.”

    I’ll say it again, developing a site with one browser in mind and that doesn’t work equally in others is dirt old and amateurish web development and poor business practice.

    I would be extremely surprised if MEGA wasn’t receiving funds or hasn’t to promote Chrome so strongly. It’s too obvious. Someone took advantage of all of the media attention on MEGA and is getting paid. If it weren’t for the media coverage and free exposure for MEGA, they would never survive by officially supporting one browser only. It excludes hundreds of millions of Internet users.

    I don’t use the service, but I care about following web standards and that dictates that sites should run equally or very close to it regardless of the web browser being used to access them.

    A lot of people reading this don’t remember when the majority of sites online were IE only. I do. Mozilla is a big part of why that isn’t so anymore. Mozilla is the reason why IE has improved, and why there is a Chrome browser at all.

    Please stop trashing Firefox.
    It’s a great, solid browser and runs perfectly fine for me and hundreds of millions of other people.
    About RAM, add up all of the processes that Chrome uses and compare them to Firefox’s total. In my own testing, Firefox used less RAM with triple the amount of tabs open and a whole lot of add-ons compared to 0 add-ons in Chrome.

    I won’t say that Chrome sucks, it doesn’t, but it isn’t for me and can’t come close to what Firefox does for me.

    1. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Phd said on February 12, 2013 at 5:25 pm
      Reply

      Ken, I remember your post on another Firefox thread where you mentioned you have 64 add-ons with a single core processor. I have less than a quarter of those add-ons with a quad core AMD processor and don’t seem to have the performance with FF that you experience.

      I’m going to research if there’s a definitive profile set up to increase Firefox performance,but I’ve always found the Mozilla forums hard to search and navigate. Just look at the Mozilla Forums page:

      http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/

      You have to scroll and scroll through what really is just a listing of usenet groups until you find a small url that recommends:

      http://forums.mozillazine.org/

      I think most of those usenet groups can only be found on the usenet servers provided by subscription hosts like Giganews. My ISP shows one of those usenet groups, mozilla.support.firefox and it’s not that active. Maybe there are some free text usenet servers that have them.

      The official Mozillazine forums aren’t easy to search, as a query for a topic usually brings up hundreds or thousands of unrelated topics. There’s really no “stickies” either. It’s sometimes
      better to ask for advice in the general forum of sites like Wilders or Anandtech.

      Anyone else have a favorite “go to” forum for software advice?

    2. Compuitguy said on February 12, 2013 at 12:37 pm
      Reply

      agreed

  3. KRS said on February 11, 2013 at 3:43 pm
    Reply

    So how does this extension compare with the one on the third-party add-in from the Mozilla site?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on February 11, 2013 at 3:49 pm
      Reply

      Good question. I can’t really say what the third party add-on does as it has a Spanish description only.

      1. Compuitguy said on February 11, 2013 at 6:05 pm
        Reply
  4. Miranda said on February 11, 2013 at 3:13 am
    Reply

    I installed it after having used Mega since they day they came back. It ,makes absolutely no difference in anything I do with my Mega account. Nothing changed, nothing is improved, nothing is faster. Seems to be a pointless download. After removing it from my browser nothing changed in Mega or my browser. I call bulls*I$! on it doing anything at all.

  5. Pierre said on February 10, 2013 at 3:45 pm
    Reply

    I don’t understand. What does this site do ?

    1. Compuitguy said on February 10, 2013 at 8:38 pm
      Reply
  6. EuroScept1C said on February 10, 2013 at 3:08 pm
    Reply

    Forgot to say… The same applies to Mega… Firefox is a bit laggy on that site. Don’t even think to tell me, “it’s your PC bla bla”.

    Go on Tomshardware.com homepage and just stand still on the top. Check how much CPU/GPU resources Firefox is using, and then check all other browser… You’ll understand what I’m talking about… Efficiency!

    1. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Phd said on February 12, 2013 at 4:59 pm
      Reply

      As per Euroscept 1C’s instructions, I opened up Tomshardware.com on both the Firefox and Opera Browsers (both latest official versions) and for the first minute FF used about 7% of CPU power and Opera used practically none. FF also used about 632 MB ram while Opera was using 231 MB ram. That could be due to the FF extensions, though.

      Though I really don’t like the menu layout of Chrome, I may install it again to have another look.

    2. Cody said on February 11, 2013 at 12:30 am
      Reply

      Precisely. Comparing the latest Nightly build of FF with the latest copy of Chrome Canary, Nightly used something like 30MB of RAM more, and that was after Flash crashed.

      And if that wasn’t enough proof that it needs to improve, just look at its scores on html5test (Canary: 468, Nightly: 399) and Peacekeeper (Canary: 1949, Nightly: 1219).

      I’m all for Firefox competing against Chrome, but there’s hardly any competition here. Mozilla needs to get to work.

  7. EuroScept1C said on February 10, 2013 at 3:05 pm
    Reply

    C’mon guys, I’m Firefox user, likewise… But it’s true Firefox still needs A LOT of work. Thanks to Chrome, Mozilla had to wake up. Before Chrome-era, the fact Firefox was better than IE was enough… Now that Chrome came for good, we see what’s going on. I’d truly say, Firefox is not a quality browser. Currently it might be using a little less memory than all others, but hardly means something.

    In my opinion what determines the quality is the overall efficiency. And here Firefox lacks… Still needs more CPU+GPU utilization to do the exact things other browsers do with less. Firefox is the only browser that is churning the HDD… You just can hear your HDD complaining… Smooth scrolling? Only IE got it rightly and efficiently. Many such small paradigms…

    All I’m trying to say, Fx really needs work.

  8. AC said on February 10, 2013 at 9:17 am
    Reply

    The cynic in me wants to enquire as to how much Kim has been paid to be pro Chrome.

    I’ve been using Firefox beta for the last 18 months with no extensions, and the performance has got better and better and now with 19 beta 5, it’s nothing short of flawless.

    If someone is finding that Firefox is performing poorly, it’s because of a plugin, an extension, their profile or the awful state of their computer in general. Firefox itself is now very smooth.

    A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

    1. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Phd said on February 10, 2013 at 10:20 pm
      Reply

      “If someone is finding that Firefox is performing poorly, it’s because of a plugin, an extension, their profile…”

      That’s precisely why Mozilla should have a forum reviewing their most popular extensions, with someone testing the effect on the Firefox engine. In regard to the profile, would you be so kind as to enlighten me as to what to look for that might slow down the Firefox experience. I’m going to search the web, but other than a constant CCleaner clean of Firefox, what else should I look for in the profile folder?

      1. ethan said on December 10, 2014 at 8:34 pm
        Reply

        don’t use Windows. that will speed up firefox considerably (as well as every other cross-platform browser). (snarky, but true in my experience)

      2. Compuitguy said on February 11, 2013 at 6:07 am
        Reply
    2. Ahmad said on February 10, 2013 at 10:08 am
      Reply

      Perfectly said.. Using bleeding edge Nightly and it can kick Chrome in performance area easily.

    3. happysurf said on February 10, 2013 at 9:50 am
      Reply

      Absolutely right. :-)

  9. Midnight said on February 10, 2013 at 3:16 am
    Reply

    They sure do love Chrome over at Mega, although their reasoning doesn’t make much sense!

    Well, let’s see what this add-on does and if Kim Dotcom can be turned around to Firefox!

  10. chris said on February 10, 2013 at 2:04 am
    Reply

    Thanks, but no thanks, stick to your chrome love fest and let us Firefox users be free from your preach.

  11. Transcontinental said on February 9, 2013 at 11:35 pm
    Reply

    Kim Dotcom is really a nice guy. Nothing is worth Chrome but, still, he made the effort of releasing an add-on for crappy Firefox. A most valuable jerk.

  12. Compuitguy said on February 9, 2013 at 9:26 pm
    Reply

    nice

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