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Wow. Didn't expect this :) I was the author of this tiny extension back in the days (extension #201, I still remember it) together with a friend who recently pa

Wow. Didn't expect this :) I was the author of this tiny extension back in the days (extension #201, I still remember it) together with a friend who recently passed away, Federico Parodi. We hacked the first version when we still didn't know much about JS, but it immediately exploded (500k daily users). Donations were super helpful at that time, being 22 years old with a newborn. After a couple of years (iirc) Nils Maier joined the team and helped us a lot. Years later he managed to transition the codebase to the new web extension tooling that was introduced by Firefox a few years ago. This little extension really shaped my professional career. The realization that something I made could have such an impact is what gave me the drive to keep creating small indie products, which I'm still doing nowadays with http://www.datocms.com http://www.datocms.com Thanks for making my day! :)

pionar 5y ago
Thanks so much for making this. I used this back in the day to download (legally) mp3s from friends' pages.
CodeMage 5y ago
Thanks for making DTA! I used it a lot back in the day.
XiS 5y ago
Thank you very much for creating this extension, I used it a lot back in the day!
_fat_santa 5y ago
Thanks for making this. I remember downloading ROM's back in high-school. This made downloading way way easier.
approxim8ion 5y ago
Many thanks to you. This extension was a darling of mine for a really long time, and brought me much joy.
Tijdreiziger 5y ago
Thanks for making this! I too used it back in the day. I thought the project died with WebExtensions, good to hear it's back.
- tn123 5y ago
  I (Nils) was the maintainer of it for many years at the point already, and I was genuinely considering to let it die for quite a while. I was furious at what mozilla did to the loyal and active extension community and especially on how they did it - essentially by decree without community interaction at all. I was part of the mozilla volunteer army, not just with DownThemAll! and a few other more minor extensions, but I also had been on the team reviewing add-on submissions - I think I reviewed something like 2000-2500 individual submissions including updates in the end - and contributed a few minor bits to Firefox itself. The carelessness of how mozilla approached this large chunk of their community, after declaring their "1 million mozillians" goal not too long before, was mindblowing to me. I eventually decided not to let it die... DownThemAll! had been a big part of my life, and while I recognized that I had to dumb down the feature set, I saw a way to at least make the core stuff work, maybe. I am glad I tried it even though it required a considerable amount of time to fully rewrite this thing. The net result of mozilla's move was that they killed a large number of useful extensions entirely, while the survivors then usually became available for Chrome as well thanks to the mostly shared API - DownThemAll! is available for Chrome as well right now - giving users even less incentive to stay with Firefox. Oh well.
  - Xamayon 5y ago
    I felt the same way about how they killed off the old extensions. It took a lot of work to rewrite my (much smaller) Image Search Options extension, and lots of once key features had to be removed... I tried to work with Mozilla to get a couple minor changes made to enable some of the missing features, but that went nowhere fast. The new extension works, but it's a shadow of its former self. Although I did also port it to chrome (why not, right?) I wound up not publishing the full version. For better or worse, I still feel Firefox is the best browser. Its a small measure, but if my extension has helped keep even a few users, I count that as a win.
tandr 5y ago
Thank you for such a time-saving extension! I got much more time to read while it was doing what it was doing, instead of endless "right-click, save as" sequences.
BeetleB 5y ago
Another thanks. I used this addon heavily.
Saint_Genet 5y ago
I pirated so many low-res seasons of tv shows with this tool.
rainboiboi 5y ago
Whoa, never thought I can put in a word of thanks directly to the creator of DownThemAll. Thank you for your contribution - this made my teenager days much more fulfilling. =)
calacatta 5y ago
+1. DTA + Usenet = happy days
tn123 5y ago
Hi Stefano, Nils here, long time no see. Yeah, it was 2006 when I joined you and Federico, if I remember correctly, while you and Federico started DownThemAll! in 2004. #201 is correct :D 2006 was really a long time ago... DownThemAll! went through a lot of revisions since that time, including the work it took to make it restartless, then make it compatible with "electrolysis" and so on. And in the meantime ensure it didn't break with every Firefox release. But at the core the functionality kept the same. People contacting me with questions could be quite overwhelming - and I am sorry if some of you HN'ers mailed me and I didn't answer - but it was very enjoyable to see what different kinds of people were using our creation and get in touch with all kinds of folks that way, from students downloading lecture videos to movie editors downloading the "dailies", and everything in between. I am still not happy mozilla decided they had to break all extensions, and I had to do a full rewrite as a WebExtension, and thus abandon a lot of features that simply are not possible anymore with that new API, while at the same time reinvent the wheel for the UI (now being forced to use vanilla HTML, which can be quite hard to get performant enough when people queue a couple of tens of thousands downloads at once). But the very core of functionality, namely selecting and queuing up a lot of links quickly, is still there, so I hope some people still find this new DownThemAll! WebExtension useful. Lastly, while the last release was indeed 2 years ago, I keep meaning to fix some bugs and make a new release. I was already planning to set aside a lot of time this month for that, even before seeing DTA pop up on HN again. I guess this HN post can only motivate me more :D Federico's death was incredibly sad. We only met once in person, but he was such a nice and humble guy, not just in real life but online too. I miss him too, may he rest in peace.
- wackget 5y ago
  As a life-long Firefox user who has been increasingly angry with Mozilla's direction for the browser for the past ten years, I honestly don't know how developers like you could put up with it. Trashing an entire swathe of extensions - hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work - and then making breaking changes in nearly every subsequent version after that... it's precisely why I've never even considered making a browser extension. It would be pure hell.
  - 5y ago
billwashere 5y ago
Thank you! You made my dial-up connection usable.
errantspark 5y ago
Thank you so much for this! It was truly a lifesaver for a young pirate. My dad blocked torrents on our home network and I hadn't yet learned enough linux to crack our neighbors WEP DownThemAll was key to pirating games and movies off 20+ part rapidshares. <3
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  That's funny, my internet provider (funky little wireless provider for people who live on mountains) was blocking torrents which made me gravitate towards rapidshare et similia as well. Incidentally, I wrote several premium link makers back in the day (including one particular implementation which I tried to sell and pirates leaked - oh well, that's what you get when trying to sell to pirates) and I don't remember rapidshare allowing you to download things directly, unless you were premium.
anoncow 5y ago
Thank you for making the internet that much more usable. I would install Firefox and DTA on all machines I configured back in the day.
jonathanlb 5y ago
Thank you for helping to make the Internet a delightful experience.
desi_ninja 5y ago
as a ardent user of the plugin back in 2008-09, I want to say thank you all who made it possible
danijelb 5y ago
Thank you so much for the extension. It was a real life saver back then
5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 5y ago
You are doing God's work. Thank you. I've used your extension almost everyday for many years now. Simple to use!
causality0 5y ago
Your extension is why I still have a copy of Firefox 56 installed on my desktop. It makes the webextension version look crippled in comparison.
andrecarini 5y ago
> Thanks for making my day! :) No, thank YOU for building and maintaining DTA for all of us, even after the webext framework overhaul! Been a happy user since the old days.
febed 5y ago
Your extension is one of the only reasons I keep Firefox installed, thank you.
thecleaner 5y ago
I used this extension to download lecture pdfs. Really good stuff. Also the CMS product page looks slick.
alienthrowaway 5y ago
Thank you for authoring DTA! I was a student with no personal computer, and our 3rd world computer labs' download speeds maxed out at about 3kbps and would drop all the time. I had Portable Firefox on a USB disk(thanks John T. Haller) with DTA, which meant I could dare to download live Linux ISOs over some days, which would have been otherwise impossible; live Linux was the hot new thing then. My heartfelt thanks to you, Federico and Nils.
AnnoyedComment 5y ago
Thanks for creating this! Great work, and saves so much time.

pionar 5y ago

Thanks so much for making this. I used this back in the day to download (legally) mp3s from friends' pages.

CodeMage 5y ago

Thanks for making DTA! I used it a lot back in the day.

XiS 5y ago

Thank you very much for creating this extension, I used it a lot back in the day!

_fat_santa 5y ago

Thanks for making this. I remember downloading ROM's back in high-school. This made downloading way way easier.

approxim8ion 5y ago

Many thanks to you. This extension was a darling of mine for a really long time, and brought me much joy.

Tijdreiziger 5y ago

Thanks for making this! I too used it back in the day. I thought the project died with WebExtensions, good to hear it's back.

tn123 5y ago
I (Nils) was the maintainer of it for many years at the point already, and I was genuinely considering to let it die for quite a while. I was furious at what mozilla did to the loyal and active extension community and especially on how they did it - essentially by decree without community interaction at all. I was part of the mozilla volunteer army, not just with DownThemAll! and a few other more minor extensions, but I also had been on the team reviewing add-on submissions - I think I reviewed something like 2000-2500 individual submissions including updates in the end - and contributed a few minor bits to Firefox itself. The carelessness of how mozilla approached this large chunk of their community, after declaring their "1 million mozillians" goal not too long before, was mindblowing to me. I eventually decided not to let it die... DownThemAll! had been a big part of my life, and while I recognized that I had to dumb down the feature set, I saw a way to at least make the core stuff work, maybe. I am glad I tried it even though it required a considerable amount of time to fully rewrite this thing. The net result of mozilla's move was that they killed a large number of useful extensions entirely, while the survivors then usually became available for Chrome as well thanks to the mostly shared API - DownThemAll! is available for Chrome as well right now - giving users even less incentive to stay with Firefox. Oh well.
- Xamayon 5y ago
  I felt the same way about how they killed off the old extensions. It took a lot of work to rewrite my (much smaller) Image Search Options extension, and lots of once key features had to be removed... I tried to work with Mozilla to get a couple minor changes made to enable some of the missing features, but that went nowhere fast. The new extension works, but it's a shadow of its former self. Although I did also port it to chrome (why not, right?) I wound up not publishing the full version. For better or worse, I still feel Firefox is the best browser. Its a small measure, but if my extension has helped keep even a few users, I count that as a win.

tandr 5y ago

Thank you for such a time-saving extension! I got much more time to read while it was doing what it was doing, instead of endless "right-click, save as" sequences.

BeetleB 5y ago

Another thanks. I used this addon heavily.

Saint_Genet 5y ago

I pirated so many low-res seasons of tv shows with this tool.

rainboiboi 5y ago

Whoa, never thought I can put in a word of thanks directly to the creator of DownThemAll. Thank you for your contribution - this made my teenager days much more fulfilling. =)

calacatta 5y ago

+1. DTA + Usenet = happy days

tn123 5y ago

Hi Stefano, Nils here, long time no see. Yeah, it was 2006 when I joined you and Federico, if I remember correctly, while you and Federico started DownThemAll! in 2004. #201 is correct :D 2006 was really a long time ago... DownThemAll! went through a lot of revisions since that time, including the work it took to make it restartless, then make it compatible with "electrolysis" and so on. And in the meantime ensure it didn't break with every Firefox release. But at the core the functionality kept the same. People contacting me with questions could be quite overwhelming - and I am sorry if some of you HN'ers mailed me and I didn't answer - but it was very enjoyable to see what different kinds of people were using our creation and get in touch with all kinds of folks that way, from students downloading lecture videos to movie editors downloading the "dailies", and everything in between. I am still not happy mozilla decided they had to break all extensions, and I had to do a full rewrite as a WebExtension, and thus abandon a lot of features that simply are not possible anymore with that new API, while at the same time reinvent the wheel for the UI (now being forced to use vanilla HTML, which can be quite hard to get performant enough when people queue a couple of tens of thousands downloads at once). But the very core of functionality, namely selecting and queuing up a lot of links quickly, is still there, so I hope some people still find this new DownThemAll! WebExtension useful. Lastly, while the last release was indeed 2 years ago, I keep meaning to fix some bugs and make a new release. I was already planning to set aside a lot of time this month for that, even before seeing DTA pop up on HN again. I guess this HN post can only motivate me more :D Federico's death was incredibly sad. We only met once in person, but he was such a nice and humble guy, not just in real life but online too. I miss him too, may he rest in peace.

wackget 5y ago
As a life-long Firefox user who has been increasingly angry with Mozilla's direction for the browser for the past ten years, I honestly don't know how developers like you could put up with it. Trashing an entire swathe of extensions - hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work - and then making breaking changes in nearly every subsequent version after that... it's precisely why I've never even considered making a browser extension. It would be pure hell.
- 5y ago

billwashere 5y ago

Thank you! You made my dial-up connection usable.

errantspark 5y ago

Thank you so much for this! It was truly a lifesaver for a young pirate. My dad blocked torrents on our home network and I hadn't yet learned enough linux to crack our neighbors WEP DownThemAll was key to pirating games and movies off 20+ part rapidshares. <3

jokethrowaway 5y ago
That's funny, my internet provider (funky little wireless provider for people who live on mountains) was blocking torrents which made me gravitate towards rapidshare et similia as well. Incidentally, I wrote several premium link makers back in the day (including one particular implementation which I tried to sell and pirates leaked - oh well, that's what you get when trying to sell to pirates) and I don't remember rapidshare allowing you to download things directly, unless you were premium.

anoncow 5y ago

Thank you for making the internet that much more usable. I would install Firefox and DTA on all machines I configured back in the day.

jonathanlb 5y ago

Thank you for helping to make the Internet a delightful experience.

desi_ninja 5y ago

as a ardent user of the plugin back in 2008-09, I want to say thank you all who made it possible

danijelb 5y ago

Thank you so much for the extension. It was a real life saver back then

5F7bGnd6fWJ66xN 5y ago

You are doing God's work. Thank you. I've used your extension almost everyday for many years now. Simple to use!

causality0 5y ago

Your extension is why I still have a copy of Firefox 56 installed on my desktop. It makes the webextension version look crippled in comparison.

andrecarini 5y ago

> Thanks for making my day! :) No, thank YOU for building and maintaining DTA for all of us, even after the webext framework overhaul! Been a happy user since the old days.

febed 5y ago

Your extension is one of the only reasons I keep Firefox installed, thank you.

thecleaner 5y ago

I used this extension to download lecture pdfs. Really good stuff. Also the CMS product page looks slick.

alienthrowaway 5y ago

Thank you for authoring DTA! I was a student with no personal computer, and our 3rd world computer labs' download speeds maxed out at about 3kbps and would drop all the time. I had Portable Firefox on a USB disk(thanks John T. Haller) with DTA, which meant I could dare to download live Linux ISOs over some days, which would have been otherwise impossible; live Linux was the hot new thing then. My heartfelt thanks to you, Federico and Nils.

AnnoyedComment 5y ago

Thanks for creating this! Great work, and saves so much time.