What Are The Odds of Ever Seeing An Integratd BitTorrent Client?

[bazokajoe_2k]

At this point, BitTorrent is becoming an accepted form of legitimate file transfer, and I have a lot of respect for the people developing Opera for including an integrated BitTorrent client into their OS.

Are there any plans to ever incorporate this kind of thing into OmniWeb? Any ways to reduce the number of applications I'm running is always good (IMO), and this seems like something that is going to become standard not too far from now.

[danielandrews]

I hope not. Omniweb is a browser. Let it do one thing, and do it well. One of the things I dislike about Opera is how it tries to be a 'jack of all trades', with widgets, torrents, email, and more.

[bazokajoe_2k]

I don't want OW to have widgets or e-mail, I don't see a widgets place in a web browser, and e-mail is distinctly different than "the internet."

IMO, OmniWeb is a browser, and a browser's responsibility is to interact with the internet. I don't see you complaining about how there is support for downloads integrated into OmniWeb, and my argument is that it isn't going to be long before Torrents become at least as popular as direct-link HTTP/FTP downloading simply because it saves companies money. It's a far more cost-effective form of transferring information. Torrents could be seamlessly integrated into the download manager, so the end user wouldn't even know the difference between clicking on a direct link or a torrent.

Operas "flaw" is that it tries to be flashy in adding GUI elements and features for the user. What I'm asking is if there will ever be transparent back-end functionality added to the browser, which is distinctly different.

EDIT: After a quick search, it appears that people are also integrating BitTorrent into Firefox as well (http://code.google.com/p/bitfox/).

[Forrest]

my argument is that it isn't going to be long before Torrents become at least as popular as direct-link HTTP/FTP

Would you like to put some money on that? Pick a date and an amount and I'll let you know if I take you up on that.

Torrents are a fine niche. When comparing market share, torrents to HTTP is like OS X to Windows. The poll on this subject is a fair indication of just how fine of a niche it is.

[hardcoreUFO]

IMO, OmniWeb is a browser, and a browser's responsibility is to interact with the internet. I don't see you complaining about how there is support for downloads integrated into OmniWeb, and my argument is that it isn't going to be long before Torrents become at least as popular as direct-link HTTP/FTP downloading simply because it saves companies money. It's a far more cost-effective form of transferring information. Torrents could be seamlessly integrated into the download manager, so the end user wouldn't even know the difference between clicking on a direct link or a torrent.


I totally disagree with this. Great applications do one thing, and do it well. Browsers should not be email clients, torrent clients, or RSS clients -- there are many stand-alone applications that do a better job of these specialized tasks. I think, for instance, OW should scrap its RSS aggregation -- it does a terrible job of this at the moment -- and simply rely on third-party apps or online readers for this. Once you start bundling all sorts of disparate functionality, your application turns into a dog's breakfast (like Opera, Firefox). After all, its a browser, not an OS.

[Forrest]

hardcoreUFO, you helped me realize another point in that. A web browser's responsibility is to interact with the web, not the internet. Without bringing up Al Gore and sticking to the wikipedia's definition of the "world wide web" being "a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet", I think it's easy to define OmniWeb's role in this.

If the basis for building in torrent control in OW is that it's responsible for interacting with the internet, then it should handle much, much more. A few examples include:
VOIP
SMB/IP
SSH
Hotline
Instant messaging
Email

But since OmniWeb is a web browser, not an internet browser, those tasks are not within the scope of a web browser and thus not within OW's scope (as I imagine.) Not that the scope can't be changed, but it shouldn't be done piecemeal and without long-term considerations.

Additionally, bandwidth is becoming less and less expensive. Not only that, but distributing the bandwidth sharing doesn't actually save bandwidth.

[bazokajoe_2k]

Forrest,

I'm a poor student, I have no betting money :( But I would argue that you will see the use of torrent-based distribution increase in the next couple years.

However the argument that OmniWeb should not have a Bittorrent client within the scope of it's role is lost on me. I can only see that if that were the case, than HTTP/FTP/SFTP transfers should fall outside it's role as well and be handled by a dedicated application (like the Terminal!).

[Forrest]

I'm a poor student, I have no betting money :( But I would argue that you will see the use of torrent-based distribution increase in the next couple years.

I'm sure it will increase, there's no doubt there. But become as mainstream as HTTP? That's a whole other thing. That's like saying MS is going to sell as many Zunes in the next couple years as Apple sells iPods, but even less likely.

However the argument that OmniWeb should not have a Bittorrent client within the scope of it's role is lost on me. I can only see that if that were the case, than HTTP/FTP/SFTP transfers should fall outside it's role as well and be handled by a dedicated application (like the Terminal!).

But HTTP is how one accesses hypertext documents. (Hence the HT in HTTP.) So that protocol, by definition, is part of the Web. OW doesn't support SFTP, so you're right there. FTP could fall outside of the scope of "Web" though. But it's important to know OW only does FTP listings. I think FTP gets grandfathered in as a lot of companies offered FTP downloads before they offered HTTP downloads.

A long time ago it wasn't uncommon to have two web browsers - one for HTTP and one for FTP.

[bazokajoe_2k]

Consider this scenario. Lots of sites out there offer multiple download mirrors to get whatever from; FTP and HttP being the main choices. Now consider that all of these options are instead running BT servers and you have only a single link to click. For major files/download sites (like Sourceforge, Freshmeat, etc) there will always be at least a handful of mirrors, we know this because such mirrors already exist, and as such we will have a handful of seeds to start with. Even if every BT client out there is by default set up in leech mode, there will still be major servers ready to seed important/popular files. Such a download client would be a great asset to the computer world. And of course, if everyone has the client and beoming a seed is only a single click away, there will be respectable numbers wishing to click that link and help out.

[Forrest]

I know the virtues of it, but the market doesn't support it. If it did, it would have taken off much faster than it has.

[Ilgaz]

I know the virtues of it, but the market doesn't support it. If it did, it would have taken off much faster than it has.

The time when market decided to test the bittorrent, bittorrent.com "portal" appeared and we saw all pirate movies, games and even Sid Meier's "Civilization" spotlighted on that site.

They have done it to drive traffic to site but took away little credibility which torrent gained hard way.

Still sad, it could change the face of media on internet. Still, there are people who uses it in its original purpose, check http://www.getdemocracy.com as an example.

[Gustomela]

At this point, BitTorrent is becoming an accepted form of legitimate file transfer, and I have a lot of respect for the people developing Opera for including an integrated BitTorrent client into their OS.

Opera is a nicely bloated piece of software but it's not yet an OS (but I bet that's their secret dream!) :) And honestly, I don't see the point of having BT integrated in a browser, unless you're downloading files all the day every day. But a browser is not a download machine, dedicated apps would be a better choice (a browser happen to freeze, even Onmi does :)). There are good options out there to handle BT transfers, Trasmission (http://transmission.m0k.org/) is one, very quiet and unobtrusive ;)

[zottel]

Personally, I do think that integrating a simple BT client into a browser is a good idea. As others have stated before, BT becomes more and more accepted among content providers as it is by far cheaper to host a torrent than to host a number of very big files like videos for a large number of downloaders.

Sure—a good BT client will always be better than a simple implementation in a browser. But the same is true for FTP, most browsers aren't good for much more than downloading a dedicated file from an anonymous FTP server. The same could be done for BitTorrent: Leave fiddling with myriads of preference items to dedicated clients; implement a simple client with not many options into the browser, automatically seed only till a 1:1 ratio is accomplished, period.

Not a bad idea, IMHO.