Firefox has proven to be one of the best web browsers undoubtedly staying in par in terms of features and performance and also appreciating in market share continually. However, the default download manager of Firefox, while introducing the pause feature in version 3.0 isn’t really something worth a mention. By default the download manager is a basic window listing all downloads, while it’s nothing really to fuss about as it contains all the needed information of a basic download manager (which pretty much consists of the file name, transfer rate and time left) you’d think there should be more functionality and presentation to match the overall features of the browser.
Thankfully, the Firefox community has cooked up some great add-ons to enhance the functionality of your Firefox downloads.
This is one of the most popular and recommended applets in the Firefox add-ons inventory, and in my opinion this is what the default Firefox download manager should have been. The Download Statusbar consists of a more compact well placed download manager which lets you manage your downloads more efficiently.
It sits on your status bar and lets you view most of the information at a glance thanks to the compact interface, hovering over the download entries a more detailed window appears providing more info. The add-on contains a wealth of preferences to customize the add-on to suit your needs including file types to ignore, history and a complete color palette to assign custom colors to the various aspects of the interface.
This add-on is a fully featured download accelerator for Firefox, DownThemAll provides a usual ‘download manager like’ interface, and speeds up your downoads by using multiple streams to download the file (just like any other download manager), you can use DownThemAll and immediately notice the very visible increase in speed. The developer claims it accelerates downloads by up to 400% and I found this to be a very valid claim.
This add-on is one of the most efficient ‘youtube downloaders’, it lets you download streaming videos off any website. By default, it adds a button next to the address bar which animates whenever a video is available for download in your active website tab, the add-on functions seamlessly, I’ve covered DownloadHelper before and you can read more about it by clicking the link above.
FlashGot is another popular add-on that helps you manage your Firefox downloads better, its main attribute is download manager integration with virtually *any* third party download manager. Upon opening a downloadable file via Flashgot it requests which download manager to download the file with or even can be automatically assigned to integrate downloads directly in to a download manager of your choice.
It also has a ‘video downloader’ built in which is quite efficient at letting you downloading streaming videos as well. Upon detecting a streaming video, an icon appears on the status bar, once clicked it lets you download the file via Firefox or your favorite download manager.
There are several other add-ons to manage your downloads more effectively, I found the above add-ons to make things a lot more efficient with managing your downloads with Firefox, feel free to mention your favorite tool and also your feedback on the above add-ons in the comments below.
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I like the sound of flashGot. Think I will try that one a try first. Thanks for sharing I have been wanting to improve my FireFox’s downloads.
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Firefox has shown great advancement in recent years. Thanks for the helpful information.
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