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I have been using FDM with Opera since before 9. The plugin really is not as good as it should be, and I suggest three things;

1) go into your preferences for FDM, and do NOT check the Opera Integration under monitoring. Instead make sure you have the clipboard monitoring checked. This way if you want a file downloaded you right click on the link and choose “copy link”. The advantage of doing it this way is there are no blank tabs opened for the downloads. BTW Opera… Fix that already!

2) Get “Oget” and install it. This will modify your download preferences, which is a little difficult for the more armature user, so that most of your common download file extensions are set to download with FDM. It never sets it up the way I like and I am sure that it will miss something you want too. If you want to use it though, you can use the clipboard monitoring setting in FDM to get the ones it misses.

3) Modify the downloads preferences yourself as you need them. Make sure the FDM plugin is off at the bottom of the settings, then change the radio button settings to “Open with other application” and point it to the FDM.EXE file in your program files, then check the box underneath that says pass URL to application. Do this for every file type you want to download. Just remember in some certain cases Opera will override this and make you download it using Opera’s file manager. If it is a large file you want to use FDM for, stop it in the Transfers Tab and at the bottom of the screen you can copy the path that it is downloading from. Put this in FDM and it should work.

Im using Firefox 3 with DownThemAll. Can a download manager improve the download speed even further?

I’ll try to get it fixed asap.

I’m very surprised not to have seen the DownThemAll extension for Firefox. It’s the first thing I use and will use Orbit’s Grab engine for those tough to grab files.

Never had a good experience with FlashGet. I don’t even think it’s being actively developed anymore.

It also allows capturing of videos from YouTube, Metacafe etc.

I recently installed FlashGot extension because I came across a few pages with multiple links, but was delighted to find that FlashGot extension has a “media” icon in the bottom menu that I notice only when there’s an flv loaded (maybe it loads at other times, but I don’t look for the icon then). I can get around the Grab thingee in Orbit, which I used to have to reload the embedded webpage in order for Grab to ‘grab’ the flv. Now all I do is click on the icon in the status bar.

But Orbit doesn’t get all flv’s for me; I guess some sites block anything other than a browser, and I haven’t found a way to change my referral info in Orbit.

Oh, and although I had found a site saying Orbit can be setup to DL from file sharing sites, I wasn’t able to work it out at the time. I tried RapGet after reading the post from MUO, but it failed on me LOL, so jDownloader works great after learning it. But it would be great if I could only use one DL manager. I don’t see jDownloader, or Rapget in FlashGot extension’s dropdown menu.

Gantry asked why people use DL managers. If I didn’t want to DL flv’s from obscure sites, I probably wouldn’t use one anymore. Unless it’s an flv, I usually just use FF’s DL manager.

Download managers are especially handy if you have to download a large batch of files.