Mass Downloader

SatisfiedUser
03/29/2006 07:01 am
I generally have used Getright for downloading files (rather than websites), but since Mass Downloader was so cheap when buying with OE Pro and Mass was advertised as being integrated with OE Pro, I decided to get the OE Pro / Mass Downloader bundle. Love OE Pro, Mass Downloader works great, but can`t really see any integration options. Does it "integrate" automatically when OE Pro encounters a file it thinks would be better downloaded with Mass Downloader?
Alexander
03/29/2006 07:01 am
Dear Sir,

Thank you for your kind words.
To use Mass Downloader with Offline Explorer please open OE Project Properties dialog, File filters | <type> section. Please use "Maximum size" and "Load with Mass Downloader" boxes to enable the integration. Please specify the size of files for Mass Downloader using "Maximum size" edit box.

Sincerely,
Alexander.
| Alexander Bednyakov
| Senior Developer
| MetaProducts Corporation
SatisfiedUser
03/29/2006 07:01 am
Thank you, Alexander.

I usually check more carefully before sending out questions, but looks like I simply overlooked something that now appears fairly obvious. I rarely edit the file filter dialogues and use the URL filters instead. Guess that`s why I missed it.

Now, for clarification on use. If you specify a maximum size and check the Mass Downloader box, does that mean that all files of a smaller size are picked up by OE Pro and anything at max size and over are picked up by Mass Downloader? Or does selecting Mass Dloader completely remove OE Pro from the equation for that file type at the point the option is selected. Seems like you might want OE pro to pick up small files and Mass Downloader to get larger files; but the options available don`t appear to allow this to happen, especially since the Mass Downloader option is inactive if you leave the "download all file sizes" option checked.

I guess that brings up the question of what situations warrant the integration. From my experience so far, OE Pro downloads files of any type or size much faster than Mass Downloader or Getright. I`ve done some less than scientific testing, but Mass Downloader and Getright seem to be getting very similar speeds with various program settings, but OE Pro can get double the bandwidth sometimes. So in other words, what benefit does the integration provide? I do understand the different individual uses of a web spider like OE Pro and download managers like Mass Downloader, I`m just curious that if in the process of downloading a website, one encounters large files and the spider can get them faster than Mass Downloader, why use the integration. Has your experience been that the opposite is true (i.e. Mass Downloader provides some benefit over OE Pro that I have not encountered) and thus your decision to provide integration?

Thank you for the best offline browser / web spider available.
Oleg Chernavin
03/29/2006 07:01 am
Dear Sir,

I agree that integration with Mass Downloader is not too obvious. However we made it this way to provide maximum flexibility for users. The current appoach allows you to pass certain big files to Mass Downloader (MD). For example, there is no sense to load big HTML files with MD, but it is good to download hige archive files. So, you can easily setup Offline Explorer Pro to get big .zip, .cab, etc. archives with MD and the rest - using Offline Explorer as usually.

Now to the speed issue. You are correct - Offline Explorer usually shows better downloading speeds than other software. It is especially true for modem connections. The reason is simple - it gets many HTML files at once. Since HTMLs are easily compressable, modems compress them twice or even better when transferring.

Mass Downloader, GetRight and other simular software deals with .zip and such files, which are already compressed and cannot be compressed better. So, using them is good for archives, while Offline Explorer is really very good to load Web sites.

Best regards,
Oleg Chernavin
MetaProducts corp.