6 ms·

It's nice to see a finished piece of software.

schwartzworld 5y ago
For a downloader, that might be a bit of a bad sign. As pages like youtube change, downloader software code needs to change to keep up. See youtube-dl as an example.
- caddybox 5y ago
  This software only provides a means to batch and automate things you'd have to manually download through "save link as". It's not chasing a moving target like youtube-dl. It's quite useful where you have 50 PDFs on a school page and you'd like to download them all without manually clicking save link as on each one of them. I have fond memories of DTA from my bachelor studies.
theandrewbailey 5y ago
A quick read in the reviews suggests that there are still bugs to be fixed.
whoopdedo 5y ago
I think it's more that DTA was a victim of FF Quantum. > We are therefore limited to the tools the WebExtensions model provides to us, which sadly makes it impossible to provide some of the advanced features of DownThemAll! Version 3. I didn't even know they attempted a WebExtension rewrite and am not surprised that it wasn't able to do the things that made the old DTA worth using.
- qwerty2021 5y ago
  that's exactly the case. the rewrite took years, and it is only somewhat functional, but I don't blame the dev. pre-quantum version was a finished product, and then suddenly it had to be written from scratch again. I'm surprised he had bothered to do that at all, personally I'd never contribute anything to firefox again after that fucking stunt.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    I was responsible for extension author outreach at Mozilla at the time. The anger was terrible. And justified.
    - eitland 5y ago
      You might have knowledge and connections: Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api to let Tree Style Tabs work properly again, that kind of stuff, then go on to put Mozilla out of business as soon as the economy allows it? I'm only halfway joking here, and only about putting Mozilla out of business.
      - forgotmypw17 5y ago
        Either of these may fit the bill: PaleMoon Waterfox Classic
        eitland 5y ago
        Both are forks of older versions of Firefox, aren't they. This makes it harder to keep them patched I think.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Yeah, I don't see how the maintainers can patch security vulns or add support for newer web features (e.g. CSS variables) when the upstream fork is no longer maintained. They would have to write the fixes themselves, which just does not scale for a project that has 1 or 2 developers working on it part-time.
        forgotmypw17 5y ago
        I think we're at a point where there are enough sites out there that we can avoid a good portion of them (i.e. ones written without progressive enhancement in mind) and still be happy. For example, I am quite happy with visiting only sites which do not require JavaScript, do not use cookie banners, paywalls, and registration prompts. For my purposes of browsing Teddit, HN, and my own websites, there are more than 20 beautiful, usable, friendly browsers I can think of just off the top of my head. For everything else, I just close the tab and move on. Past experience leads me to believe I'm not missing much, because sites which break these requirements usually have crap content too. If I really need something, I can open Chromium (with UO and Vimium) for that particular site and then close it afterwards.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  I'm curious how far they even tried to replicate the old feature-set. Firefox out-of-box has awful limitations, but they offer also ways to circumvent them with integration of external helpers. There are several WebExtension who offer additional features with helper-scripts. A downloadmanager seems to be the perfect example for walking this road.
pkrumins 5y ago
You mean abandoned software. Software is never finished.
- Sporktacular 5y ago
  When it does exactly what it's scoped to do, it's finished. If the system around it makes it incompatible, then the scope has changed.
- tn123 5y ago
  I (Nils) am the maintainer, and I would more characterize it as slumbering, not entirely abandoned or dead. I keep meaning to fix bugs and make new releases, but as we all know the last two years have been a bit crazy ;) I know, that's a lame excuse, and I already planned to do better now that things in the world finally seem to settle down a little, even before seeing this little reminder pop up on HN.
amelius 5y ago
Meanwhile, Youtube-DL is continuously being updated, because they have to work around obstacles raised by Google to prevent automatic downloading.
- slightwinder 5y ago
  Actually, youtube-dl is dead at the moment for reasons of private life of the maintainer. So people now use a fork called yt-dlp. Which is ironic, because most people moved when google started to use a new harsh speed-limitation.
  - brokenmachine 5y ago
    Does yt-dlp fix the speed limitation problems?
    - ivanche 5y ago
      Yup!
  - Anthony-G 5y ago
    Thanks for that. I don’t watch many YouTube videos but when I do, I usually use youtube-dl as provided by the Debian Testing package. I wasn’t aware of the yt-dlp project¹ and I’d been wondering why the video downloads were so slow over the past few weeks. ¹ https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
- chuckee 5y ago
  > to prevent automatic downloading To prevent all downloading, not just automatic. When they remove a video, they don't want you to have an archived copy to prove the content ever existed, or to watch it without their permission.

For a downloader, that might be a bit of a bad sign. As pages like youtube change, downloader software code needs to change to keep up. See youtube-dl as an example.

caddybox 5y ago
This software only provides a means to batch and automate things you'd have to manually download through "save link as". It's not chasing a moving target like youtube-dl. It's quite useful where you have 50 PDFs on a school page and you'd like to download them all without manually clicking save link as on each one of them. I have fond memories of DTA from my bachelor studies.

theandrewbailey 5y ago

A quick read in the reviews suggests that there are still bugs to be fixed.

whoopdedo 5y ago

I think it's more that DTA was a victim of FF Quantum. > We are therefore limited to the tools the WebExtensions model provides to us, which sadly makes it impossible to provide some of the advanced features of DownThemAll! Version 3. I didn't even know they attempted a WebExtension rewrite and am not surprised that it wasn't able to do the things that made the old DTA worth using.

qwerty2021 5y ago
that's exactly the case. the rewrite took years, and it is only somewhat functional, but I don't blame the dev. pre-quantum version was a finished product, and then suddenly it had to be written from scratch again. I'm surprised he had bothered to do that at all, personally I'd never contribute anything to firefox again after that fucking stunt.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  I was responsible for extension author outreach at Mozilla at the time. The anger was terrible. And justified.
  - eitland 5y ago
    You might have knowledge and connections: Do you see any hope for a fork of modern Firefox that start with just the tiniest stuff, maybe adding back a simple tab strip api to let Tree Style Tabs work properly again, that kind of stuff, then go on to put Mozilla out of business as soon as the economy allows it? I'm only halfway joking here, and only about putting Mozilla out of business.
    - forgotmypw17 5y ago
      Either of these may fit the bill: PaleMoon Waterfox Classic
      - eitland 5y ago
        Both are forks of older versions of Firefox, aren't they. This makes it harder to keep them patched I think.
        TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
        Yeah, I don't see how the maintainers can patch security vulns or add support for newer web features (e.g. CSS variables) when the upstream fork is no longer maintained. They would have to write the fixes themselves, which just does not scale for a project that has 1 or 2 developers working on it part-time.
        forgotmypw17 5y ago
        I think we're at a point where there are enough sites out there that we can avoid a good portion of them (i.e. ones written without progressive enhancement in mind) and still be happy. For example, I am quite happy with visiting only sites which do not require JavaScript, do not use cookie banners, paywalls, and registration prompts. For my purposes of browsing Teddit, HN, and my own websites, there are more than 20 beautiful, usable, friendly browsers I can think of just off the top of my head. For everything else, I just close the tab and move on. Past experience leads me to believe I'm not missing much, because sites which break these requirements usually have crap content too. If I really need something, I can open Chromium (with UO and Vimium) for that particular site and then close it afterwards.
slightwinder 5y ago
I'm curious how far they even tried to replicate the old feature-set. Firefox out-of-box has awful limitations, but they offer also ways to circumvent them with integration of external helpers. There are several WebExtension who offer additional features with helper-scripts. A downloadmanager seems to be the perfect example for walking this road.

pkrumins 5y ago

You mean abandoned software. Software is never finished.

Sporktacular 5y ago
When it does exactly what it's scoped to do, it's finished. If the system around it makes it incompatible, then the scope has changed.
tn123 5y ago
I (Nils) am the maintainer, and I would more characterize it as slumbering, not entirely abandoned or dead. I keep meaning to fix bugs and make new releases, but as we all know the last two years have been a bit crazy ;) I know, that's a lame excuse, and I already planned to do better now that things in the world finally seem to settle down a little, even before seeing this little reminder pop up on HN.

amelius 5y ago

Meanwhile, Youtube-DL is continuously being updated, because they have to work around obstacles raised by Google to prevent automatic downloading.

slightwinder 5y ago
Actually, youtube-dl is dead at the moment for reasons of private life of the maintainer. So people now use a fork called yt-dlp. Which is ironic, because most people moved when google started to use a new harsh speed-limitation.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Does yt-dlp fix the speed limitation problems?
  - ivanche 5y ago
    Yup!
- Anthony-G 5y ago
  Thanks for that. I don’t watch many YouTube videos but when I do, I usually use youtube-dl as provided by the Debian Testing package. I wasn’t aware of the yt-dlp project¹ and I’d been wondering why the video downloads were so slow over the past few weeks. ¹ https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp
chuckee 5y ago
> to prevent automatic downloading To prevent all downloading, not just automatic. When they remove a video, they don't want you to have an archived copy to prove the content ever existed, or to watch it without their permission.