Auto Shutdown is an add-on for the Firefox 3 web browser that adds the option to automatically shutdown the computer after downloads finish. It is generally not advised to use the Firefox download manager to download large files as it does not play well with download problems like interrupted downloads. Third party download managers like [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

With the popularity of video portals like Youtube came the desire to download the videos to the local computer system to be able to watch them (again) offline or to convert them to burn them to DVD and watch them on TV. Hundreds of applications and software programs have been designed to fill that gap [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Sorting downloads can be a very good way to control where files will be stored on a computer system. The default option in Firefox is to save them in the standard folder which will contain all downloads no matter the size or file extension. The Save As right-click option provides an option to save the [...]

Categories: Browsing, Firefox

Free Download Manager is one of the top download managers for Windows. That’s my verdict after using it for a while on my new computer. I came across that download manager before on various websites who always praised the software but I never tested it over a longer period of time; Until now. It comes [...]

Categories: Software, Windows

A visitor was asking me a while ago if there were really download managers for websites like Rapidshare and I simply told him at that time that they would exist. JDownloader is a Rapidshare Download Manager that comes with a lot of functions to make downloading files from Rapidshare and dozens other file hosting websites a breeze.

Categories: Operating Systems, Software, Tools, Windows

Ever wanted to download multiple podcasts / videocasts or similar files that are for example attached to RSS feeds without having to download each of them manually from the website? Having bought a new mp3 player, I needed to download multiple episodes of my favorite podcast English as a Second Language links to which I have been collecting for some time but didn’t have much free time to listen to them. It would be insane to have to follow each link to the website and then manually download the podcasts one after one, repeating this procedure several hundred times…

Categories: Operating Systems, Security, The Web, Windows

Grab++ is a freeware addition from the developers of the Orbit Download Manager which runs in the background scanning all elements of a website for multimedia content. All content (music, video, flash) that is found is added to the list with information about its name, size and domain.

Categories: Browsing, Music and Video, The Web, Tools

I never suggested a download manager before at ghacks, so here it comes, a free fast download manager that is working with all major browsers and supporting major protocols such as http, https, ftp, mms and rtsp. I have been testing Orbit Downloader in Firefox and Internet Explorer and decided to use it as my main download manager. It monitors downloads automatically and starts the download immediately. If you like you can configure Orbit Downloader to monitor the clipboard as well and catch flash and streaming media files.

It adds a small icon to most video download portals in Firefox that lets you download the video that is currently played. Internet Explorer users have to hover over the video to see a menu that lets them download the video. This feature is site independent which means that it should work on new sites that offer flash and streaming media files. That is not the main purpose of the download manager of course.

Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows

The question that always comes up when I´am talking about the benefits of download managers is why would someone need to use them at all. This can´t be answered in a hurry but my initial response is always the same. First, download managers are great time safers if you download many files from a server that allows only a few connections from the same IP. It´s tiresome to wait until one download is finished to start the next.

Categories: Tools