FDM 5.0 wrote:Today marks 1 year from the the last update of FDM 5.0

IS IT DEAD ????
BUT IT WAS VERY GOOD PLEASE UPDATE IT

No it is not dead, you should read this earlier post from this comment thread (on the same page, too):

Victoria Nelson wrote:Dear all, our programmers are diligently working on development of a new extension for all popular browsers. Unfortunately, some new Google Chrome rules for all third-party addons (http://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protec ... cious.html) might slow down this process, as well as the fact of moving Opera and Google Chrome browsers from NPAPI to PPAPI. Anyway, we hope to release FDM 5 beta version as soon as possible until the end of this year.

So it seems they are working on getting an extension that works for Google Chrome and Opera browsers (which are basically the same browser... Opera 15 and later are rebranded versions of Google Chrome). And this means using a PPAPI instead of NPAPI plugin (a "Pepper" plugin instead of a Netscape-compatible plugin). For many years, NPAPI was the standard for browser plugins in MS Windows, not just in Netscape but also Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even older versions of Internet Explorer supported this, as well as Google Chrome until recently. We have seen some recent changes with browsers... Safari for Windows was discontinued, Opera became a Google Chrome clone, and Google Chrome as well as Internet Explorer now bundle the Adobe Flash Player (the most common plugin) as part of the browser, and meanwhile Apple is very anti-Flash Player and doesn't allow it on any iOS devices, and Flash Player for Linux has been discontinued.

So what does this mean for Free Download Manager? Well it means, getting it to integrate with Google Chrome and Opera will be a little hard. Among other things, besides just writing the code and getting it to work, it has to be approved by Google and go through a whole approval process to get on their App Store, and every developer for Google's App Store who makes Chrome/Opera extensions has to pay Google a 1-time fee of 5 dollars.

So my recommendation for what to do is very simple... everyone should use Mozilla Firefox! Free Download Manager will continue to work in Mozilla Firefox, which still supports standard NPAPI plugins. None of that Pepper nonsense with an App Store like in Chrome and Opera, it isn't discontinued like Safari for Windows, and it isn't ActiveX based and tied to your Windows version and full of security flaws like Internet Explorer. Mozilla Firefox is also the only major web browser developed by a nonprofit and which is truly open-source software and in the spirit of open source. Google Chrome is based on Chromium which is also open source but the giant Google corporation doesn't follow the spirit of open source at all, instead using their browser as a way to track and spy on users in order to better display targeted advertising, as Google is the biggest advertising service provider on the Internet by far. And of course Internet Explorer has a long history of being proprietary and not following web standards and having security problems and being tied to your Windows version and being totally closed-source and not customizable or supporting extensions, so using Internet Explorer is quite a bad idea. Opera is just an inferior knockoff version of Chrome now, although Opera used to be good up thru version 12.x. And Safari is discontinued, dead, not even getting security updates on Windows. So the only rational decision on what web browser to use in the year 2014 in our current state of affairs would be Mozilla Firefox, at least in my opinion. It is certainly by far the most welcoming web browser for third-party addon/extension developers, like the developers of Free Download Manager as one example. Out of all those major web browsers I listed, Firefox is the only one you see bundled as part of major Linux distributions, since it's the only one that truly embraces open source. And since it's open source, that makes it much easier for developers to write third-party extensions, addons, plugins, and so on.

So to summarize... it's obvious Free Download Manager isn't dead, they are just having a major headache getting it to work with Google Chrome and Opera, which is part of why you ought to use Firefox instead. I am sure they'll get it sorted out and have a working Chrome/Opera plugin eventually. In the meantime, though, you should use Firefox, it has no problems at all working with the latest versions of Free Download Manager (although some older versions of Free Download Manager are incompatible with the latest versions of Firefox). Personally I'd recommend using Free Download Manager 3.9.3 build 1360 since that's the most recently updated version of Free Download Manager at this time (updated more recently than FDM 5.0 Alfa, which has not been updated in a year). But I would not consider version 5.0 Alfa to be dead, I am sure they are still actively working on it, and perhaps the next release will be Beta instead of Alfa... Just remember that Free Download Manager is free open-source software so the developers do not get paid, so it is nice to show them your thanks and appreciation rather than demanding things from them like demanding a new version. I know of many other open-source projects where people on the forums of the projects constantly ask when the next version will be ready... and the response always is "it will be ready when it is ready, stop asking, every time you ask it slows things down". In fact on a few open-source projects, they are SO sick of people asking about when a new version will be ready that their forum rules have a rule against it (explicitly stating it is a bannable offense) and anyone who asks that question gets banned from those forums. Be glad that doesn't happen here and the Free Download Manager developers are nicer people than the developers of those other projects.

@ General Public,

Thanks for your post! I'm sure I speak for many FDM users when I say we do appreciate your efforts, but sometimes feel a little frustrated at the pace of progress.

My personal frustration is only with the inability of FDM to download YouTube videos with audio.

Other than that, I have no complaints .

Mauri.

Guest wrote:this is your advance version ???????
you people dissapoint me. this version need much more changes.

better you never change your UI. 3.9 is pretty good compare to this.

thank you.

I agree. New interface is disappointing.

This topic is closed. Use a new topic instead: FDM 5.0 alpha