One of the first extensions to offer custom download locations for file types was Download Sort. The extension is actually still available at the Mozilla Add-on repository despite the fact that it has not been updated since 2008.

Automatic Save Folder is the big brother of Download Sort. It offers everything the add-on offeres plus additional features not offered by the original extension.

One of the core improvements is that it is not only possible to filter downloads by file types, but also by domain name. There is even an option to combine the two. If you are downloading images or videos regularly from multiple hosts, you could configure the extension to save some in their own folder on the system, and others together in a single folder.

A fallback option for files not matching any filters can be configured as well. The extension ships with a filter for jpg images. New download filters can be configured in the extension’s options. Filters can be configured using full file names, wildcards or regular expressions. The order of filters can be configured here as well.

Another interesting option is the ability to enable dynamic folders. These are created on the fly with the help of tags that can add date or other information to the folder dynamically. Dynamic folders need to be enabled first before they can be used in download paths.

Automatic Save Folder is a useful extension for users who want to order their Firefox downloads right away. Especially the ability to combine domain and file filters with dynamic download folders is a strong selling point of the extension.

Firefox users can download and install the add-on from the official Firefox add-on repository.

Here is my offer for software developers and users alike. If you have a software that you would like to be hosted on the Internet, you can do so here on Ghacks. Just send me the program and I will host it on my server. You can link to the download directly from your website if you like, or to a post here on Ghacks that reviews the application. A link back would in both cases be appreciated.

You can also contact me if you are not a developer but have software on your hard drive that is hard to find and without developer homepage. I upload the program to the repository here so that everyone can download it more easily.

All programs are tripple-checked with online and offline antivirus applications to make sure that they are clean and do not contain malicious code. I have created a temporary download page here on Ghacks. Plan is to beautify it a little bit, as it looks pretty awful at the moment.

You can access that page by following the software downloads link.

Please note that Ghacks is not offering hosting for web pages, only for software downloads at this point in time. This might change as well if enough software developers show interest in this opportunity. For now, if you have coded a program but do not know where to upload it to, let me know about it.

I’d also like to point out that we cannot host certain type of files, including cracking or hacking related applications.

Use the contact form at the top of the page, or leave a comment in this thread to discuss this further.

The file size in those cases is only displayed after the download has been started. That may not be a huge problem for users with 10 or more MBit and a Internet traffic flatrate, but users who have to pay per Megabyte downloaded may prefer to know how much they are downloading before they start.

The same may be true for users with slow Internet connections. Instead of downloading a file at the limit for some time, they might prefer to postpone the download to times where it can be downloaded without interrupting work.

Show File Size is a basic, but very helpful Firefox extension. The add-on integrates new information into the Save download windows of the browser. Here it displays the file size and type in a new row. This works well for many different file downloads. There may be situations where it cannot display the file size, but we have not encountered any during our tests.

show file size

With the additional information provided, the user can make the decision to download the file, or cancel it completely or for the time being.

Show File size is compatible with Firefox 3.6 to Firefox 4 versions. It is available for download at the official Mozilla Firefox Add-on repository.

Update: Show File Size has been discontinued. It is not available anymore. An alternative is the add-on Get File Size which can return the size of a remote file in the Firefox web browser.

Files are usually dropped in a download directory that grows over time, some files get added, some deleted but the file count usually is high enough to make it more difficulty that it should be to locate the latest downloaded files.

But it is not only downloaded files that can be a problem. Basically any type of file that gets updated, think of log files, documents, music for instance.

While it is possible to sort by modification date it is not the best solution as it means to switch between different sorting options regularly as sorting by date makes it that much harder to locate files by name

Piles is a program for Windows 7 that solves the problem. It is basically a directory monitor that displays the most recent files of a directory in its interface.

The program integrates nicely with the Windows 7 Taskbar displaying all recent items in a jumplist. It has to be noted that Piles will only monitor one directory per instance that is opened and that it does not monitor files in subdirectories.

That’s a severe limitation, it would be great if Piles would include subdirectories and the possibility to add multiple unrelated directories to the same stack.

piles

A right-click on the Pile program icon in the Windows 7 Taskbar opens a context menu with options to create a new pile. A new Pile is created by specifying a folder to be monitored and a name.

The creation generates a second program icon for that folder. All icons look the same, it would be nice if the developer’s would add customization to distinguish between different Pile folders.

Piles for Windows is a clever program that can aid the user in finding downloads, documents and other files faster, providing that they have been added or modified in a folder that is monitored by the software program.

Piles is only compatible with Windows 7 according to the developers. We have not tried running it in other Windows versions but figure that it won’t work because of the taskbar integration.

The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5.

For both of these needs there is another tool that works as a pretty impressive front-end for the wget command. That tool – Multiget. Now, before you assume Multiget is a Linux-only tool, it’s not. Multiget can be used in Linux, Windows, OS X, and the BSDs. This article, however, is about using Multiget in Linux (in particular – Ubuntu).

Features

Multiget offers the following features:

• Multi-task/multi-thread/multi-server usage.
• User-friendly interface (resembling Flashget).
• Multiple language support.
• Proxy support.
• Extension ignoring/capture.
• FTP anonymous pass.
• Panel icon.

Installation

Fortunately, for Ubuntu users, Multiget can be found in the Universe repository. All you have to do for installation is:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “multiget” (no quotes).
3. Select the results.
4. Apply to install.

That’s it.

Usage

Figure 1

To start up Multiget go to the Internet sub-menu of the Applications menu and you will find the Multiget entry. Open that and the main window will start up (see Figure 1). The first step in downloading a file should be fairly obvious – you hit the the New Task button (denoted by the “+” symbol). Simple.

When you hit the New Task button  a new window will appear that asks for certain information. At least in the Linux release of Multiget, you might find a portion of this window that might stump you. As you can see (in Figure 2) in the Basic Info section you have four bits of information to add. The MAIN URL section is obvious – you copy and paste a URl into the this section. But wait a minute – you will find, if copying your URL from your default web browser, that as soon as you right-click a URL, and select Copy Link Location that URL will appear in the MAIN URL section and then automatically moved down to the Mirrors section. This is actually the only means of getting an address into the Mirrors section.

Figure 2

With that in mind, let’s use a few mirrors to quickly download the ISO image of the latest release of Ubuntu. To do this go to the Ubuntu Karmic page page. The first thing you will do is go to the main download page, right click the download link, and click Copy Link Location. Now go back to the main download page and select a mirror and do the same thing. You can add as many mirrors as you like – understanding the more mirrors you add, the faster the download will happen.

Once you have all of your URLs added (make sure you still have a URL in the MAIN URL section) configure the rest of the window (you should configure the SaveTo section at least) and then click OK.

As your file is downloading click on the Progress section in the bottom and you will see how the pieces of the download are coming together. As you can see (in Figure 3) I have five threads running to download the Ubuntu 9.10 ISO image. You can also see the overall progress bar as the green bar starting right under the icon toolbar.

Figure 3

During an active session you can increase or decrease the amount of threads given to a download. This, of course, can speed up your download. Naturally if you give too many threads to a download you might see your overall performance of either your machine or your general network connection degrade. At this point you can decrease the number of threads given to a download. To increase or decrease the number of threads go to the Task menu and select the appropriate entry.

During the download you can click on the Running section to see the information of your download. You can also pause your download by clicking the Pause button.

Final thoughts

Multiget is an outstanding tool to download large files using muliple mirrors and threads. As well it is just an overall outstanding front end for the wget command.

Today, downloading has changed radically. There are innumerable peer-to-peer applications to transfer files. In addition, you can now download not only music but movies, TV shows, games, software, etc. On the downside, downloading has pretty much divided the online world into two camps: those who think it’s stealing and those who think it’s alright to download files.

I’m kind of on the fence with this subject. When you download something, you are not paying for it so technically, it is stealing. On the other hand, there are some situations where I don’t fault people for downloading. Let me list two of them. If I live in a country where the latest season of my favorite show is aired a year after it is aired in its home country. A second one is if a movie, music album or TV show I really want to watch is not being released where I live and will not be available even to purchase.

So my question is this. How do you feel about the downloading scenario? Do you think it is okay to download files under some conditions? What alternatives do you have to downloads?