It has been more than a year since Opera added BitTorrent functionality to their browser. We expected that more browsers would follow the example of our Nordic browser developers.
Nowadays, there are quite some projects and extensions to add BitTorrent capabilities to browsers, so I figured it’s time for a round-up:
Opera
Opera was the first browser to support the BitTorrent protocol. Their BT support is quite solid, but not very advanced and doesn’t support some well-known BT extensions. In short: nice for new users, but not for regular downloaders.
Pros: Nicely integrated, multi-platform.
Cons: No advanced features (missing DHT, peer exchange, encrypted transfers), not open source.
BitFox
BitFox is a quite new extension for Firefox, made by the student Joshua Hendo. The backend of the extension is based on Rasterbar’s libtorrent, so it supports quite some advanced BT features. The project is in a VERY early stage of development, and can only be obtained from SVN, so I haven’t tested it yet.
Pros: Open source, using libtorrent, so a quite solid backend (including DHT).
Cons: Not usable yet, early stage of development, seems to run only on Windows & Linux.
FireStorm
FireStorm is quite similar to BitFox, it’s an extension for Firefox and still in pre-alpha development stage. They use the Mainline client as a basis, so they will probably support most BT extensions/features.
Pros: Open source, using the Mainline reference client as a backend.
Cons: In pre-alpha development stage, not usable yet, interface is quite ugly.
FoxTorrent
FoxTorrent is a project of the company Red Swoosh/Akamai, these guys have the funding and expertise to build a nice Firefox extension. This extension isn’t that well integrated in Firefox, clicking a torrent basically opens a webpage to the webinterface of an external application. The advantage is that closing your browser doesn’t stop the torrents from downloading.
Pros: Open source, torrent streaming/progressive downloading support, continue downloading even when browser is closed.
Cons: Not very well integrated in Firefox, no advanced features (missing port mapping, DHT, peer exchange, encrypted transfers).
AllPeers
AllPeers is also funded by a company, so you would expect a nice client. The whole interface looks very nice and clean, but they’re more focussed towards sharing URL’s/images/etc than downloading torrents. In the current stable version (0.60), there is not an option to download a regular torrent. They do have a My Torrents tab in the beta version though.
Pros: Clean and professional interface, also available as a bundle with FireFox
Cons: Not open source, no regular torrent support (yet), no advanced features (missing port mapping, DHT, peer exchance, encrypted transfers)
Wyzo/FireTorrent
Wyzo/FireTorrent is very new, they released their first public version a week ago. The difference between the two is that FireTorrent is a BitTorrent extension for Firefox, while Wyzo is a full-featured customized Firefox browser including the FireTorrent extension. These guys managed to integrate BitTorrent support seamlessly in the Firefox download manager. FireTorrent also has the most advanced BT features of all the projects mentioned here. The Wyzo browser has some cool advantages over Firefox, like direct searching on social sharing networks (including Mininova) and Alexa/Pagerank integration.
Pros: Seamless Firefox integration, available as a bundle with Firefox (Wyzo), has all advanced features (including port mapping, DHT, encryption, peer exchange, STUNT).
Cons: Not open source, Mac/Linux version not out yet - will be released in a few weeks
Conclusion
Of all the projects reviewed above, I think Wyzo has the most potential. This browser supports all the nice BT features/extensions and makes downloading via BitTorrent as easy as a regular HTTP download. Does Wyzo beat the “good old” µTorrent and Azureus? Probably not, but I will definitely recommend new BitTorrent users to install this browser.
References
Our friends at TorrentFreak have more background information on some of these projects: BitFox, FireStorm, FoxTorrent, AllPeers, Wyzo/FireTorrent.
Great overview
Why would someone want an intergrated BT client in their browser?
I also can’t understand why anyone would want a intergrated BT client in their browser, having a seprate program in the tray for downloading makes more sense to me and seems easier to manage.
I think there is a section of people who would like a BT client addon in Firefox and there’s definitely potential in the idea if it functions well.
me parece muy bueno que ex9ista este tipo de forma para poder bajar estos documentos formatos y ortos okokok esto es realmenete bueno para nosotros ya que la interned lo permite y etc …
What’s sizzlin’?
http://www.btjunkie.org
They have the BEST database of torrents around. They also have an add-on for Firefox which makes searching for torrents a shitload easier.
Stay fly. Be ill.
Water.
P.S. PEEP THE MUSIC AND LEAVE ME SOME FEEDBACK!
The idea of integrating a bit-torrent client in the first place is kinda silly. especially since windows has a memory leak that when you keep things like a browser running in the background
(browsers are the worst by the way for there memory leak in windows because its used so much)
The Whole Idea Is Just Silly !
Utorrent to date is the best bt-client for downloading due to its memory usage & cpu usage. since 82% of the people that use a bit torrent client only use it while they sleep.
just take a step back and look at the two in a verses style
(A web browser that will take up a lot of ram and cpu usage just for a bit torrent client that will also make your system leak ram over a period of time)
Vs.
(a bit torrent client that is small compact. isn’t a ram hog. you don’t have to use your web browser for and will not use a lot of cpu when your machine is running idle)
you tell me the better of the two..
I’m a frequent bit torrent user.
and i think i know the better of the two.
thank you very much
_–FFD–_
@FFD
if you use it at night why bother how much ram is used? leaking memory … what age do you come from?
Stop seeing bittorent as an elite download program, it makes more sense if all downloads on the internet whould use the protocol and it would just be like any other download from your browser (except you upload to). Of course you can still use your own download program (but hey, people use standalone download managers too) if you want more advanced settings.
Ram consumages should be the last factor to influence your decision, what is it these days… 100$ for 4gb ? so why bother when a program uses 200mb of that
i agree guys
Lol, it’s not silly if you are downloading just one file…
hey how do you play zip torrents from azureus on my pc
how i can get the password torrents
When come to Bittorrent client use the opensource azureus. don’t go for any closed source bittorrent client, you don’t know what it is doing, connecting to a different site and reporting your ip somewhere.!