Firefox Addon of the Week: BitTorrent WebUI

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Keeping with my uTorrent/BitTorrent theme this week, it only makes sense to show you how you can go about pulling .torrent files through the Firefox browser. But wait, you say! What am I talking about? Clicking on a .torrent link allows you to open it right up in your client of choice (I'll assume uTorrent for the sake of this post), and that, in turn, slots said file (or magnet link) into the application and begins the download.

Why would you need a fancy addon to do that?

Good point. In fact, you don't need an add-on in Firefox to load torrent files. Where an addon becomes handy is when you're using Firefox from a different computer and would like to somehow get a .torrent file you've found onto the download queue of a different machine. Think it's a strange setup? It's not that uncommon: perhaps you've left your PC on at home to make best use of its super-speedy landline connection, yet you're browsing around various BitTorrent sites at work, in a coffee shop, or in your car.

I guess you could email the .torrent file to yourself and queue it up later. That's lame, especially when a little addon called BitTorrent WebUI is ready to do all the work for you!

Here's how it works. Go into your uTorrent preferences menu and turn on the program's WebUI feature. You can change the default login and password if you want (I recommend it). Install the BitTorrent WebUI addon and restart Firefox. When your browser loads back up, it'll want you to put in your system's IP address as well as the port that uTorrent uses for its connections. Select uTorrent as the client, then hit OK.

Assuming that uTorrent is running on your main computer--and that's a critical factor--then you'll now be able to click on any .torrent link in your browser and load it into your main system's uTorrent client. Simple as that. You can now start BitTorrent downloads (or access the Web UI to do much, much more!) via any computer with the configured addon installed!

Maximum PC picks one new Firefox add-on as its favorite of the week each... week. Have a nifty extension that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.

Chrome Extension of the Week: uTorrent for Google Chrome

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Unlike its companion addon for Firefox, the Chrome Extension uTorrent for Google Chrome doesn't actually give you any way to remotely add a torrent to a uTorrent client that's running on a different, Web-connected system. That's kind of funny, considering that the uTorrent Firefox addon doesn't give you a way to control what's actually being downloaded by the remote system--Google Chrome's extension does.

It's a weird mish-mash of features, but it doesn't mean that uTorrent for Google Chrome is any less valuable of an addon for your daily browsing. If you're a BitTorrent junkie, you'll find this addon to be a considerable upgrade from the experience of having to load the default uTorrent Web UI every time you want to check on (or edit) your downloads.

Web UI... remote BitTorrent... this might be a bit over your head. Let's back out for a second and take a more general look at what this extension actually does. The uTorrent app comes with a nifty little feature--a Web UI--that allows you to remotely "log in" to your BitTorrent client. It's a great tool for when you want to capitalize on the fast speeds of your home (or office) Internet connection, yet do much of your actual browsing in the various coffee shops, libraries, or other WiFi hotspots around your community. You can fire up this Web interface to do everything you could normally do if you were sitting right in front of your running uTorrent app: start downloads, stop downloads, pause downloads, label downloads, et cetera.

The aforementioned Chrome Extension takes all of this functionality--and the painful process of typing in a large URL to access said Web UI--and slaps it into a tiny button near the address bar in your browser. You can't add new files, but you can check and see the status of your downloads using a pretty visual bar that indicates the percentage done. You can also get a quick look at your client's upload and download speeds, the estimated time remaining for your download, and the exact number of seeds and peers that are also grabbing the files in question. Of course, you can also perform all the basic uTorrent commands: starting files, stopping files, deleting files, et cetera.

It's small, it's pretty, and it's quite useful--save for that whole "adding new files" bit. For a great Google Chrome uTorrent manager, this appropriately titled extension is just what you need.

Maximum PC picks one new Chrome extension as its favorite of the week each... week. Have a nifty extension that you can't live without? Twitter David Murphy @acererak with your latest suggestions.