Firefox’s Super Speed Enhanement

After talking with a good friend about anticipating the release of Half Life 2 I decided to check out some of the movies and stuff released to promote the game. Now as many of you may know looking for these kinds of files usually ends you up in outrageously long queue lines and even longer slow downloads. So before Bible study tonight I went ahead and jumped in line for some huge 700 MB trailer or something. I expected to come home to find myself still in line or just beginning an incredibly slow download. Instead, I found something entirely different.

When I got home I found the download manager open asking me how it should handle the incoming file. I was grateful that I had made it past the line and I told it to just save it to the desktop. As soon as I had clicked the ok button the download started at completely unbelievable speeds! It seemed to instantly download 150 MB of the file! It was super cool! So here’s the proof and just an overall neat picture to show my dialup friends.

http://www.mathcaddy.com adam.b

Uh, Steve? I hate to burst your bubble — and maybe you already know this and were trying to be ironical — but the reason it reported that speed is because you spelled “enhancement” wrong. Typing “Enhanement” is actually a Super-Secret Firefox Uber-Trick Cheat Code. (Someone please loan me two dots to put over the “u” in uber.)

No, I kid… it’s because Firefox was already downloading to a temp folder when you told it where you wanted to put it. And it had obviously been downloading for some time, so when the DL manager was loaded, it made an adjustment to the KB/s rate, assuming that you just started the download, rather looking at the cold, hard fact, which was that you had been downloading it for some time. Darn download managers! Always assuming. And you know what happens when you assume, right? You make an “A” out of Sue and Me.
http://steve.mathcaddy.com Steve

I know.. SHHHH!!