5.1 The Preferences Dialog

The Preferences Dialog is accessible via the "Preferences…" item of the "Edit" menu. It should look something like this:

Speed Download's preferences are stored in the "Speed Download Preferences" file in the preferences folder of your System Folder. Preferences are divided into 4 sections, General, Queue, Proxies and Connection. Click on the corresponding tab to see the corresponding preferences.
A discussion of each option follows.

The general tab is the one which appears above. The preferences that are set here are:
 
• Download Folder: This folder is where all files are downloaded to. Beneath the heading is the path to that folder. By default, this is set to a folder called "Downloads" that is created inside Speed Download's folder. To change it, drag a folder onto the Preferences dialog
• Retry downloads automatically: When this option is on, downloads that fail because the connection with the server was lost will automatically be retried
• Use individual progress dialogs: When this option is on, every time a download starts downloading, a progress window comes up, with progress information. This information is slightly more detailed than that which is displayed in the queue window. When this option is off, the only feedback about the progress of a download is that given by the queue window.
• Use passive ftp: This only affects ftp downloads. When this option is on, Speed Download uses passive ftp for downloads from ftp servers. This setting does not usually make any difference but it may help with some servers. If you are using a proxy, passive ftp is automatically used, independently of the setting made here.
• Use error log: When this option is on, and if an error occurs, instead of displaying an alert box, Speed Download will put in an error log that you may look at by choosing "View Log" from the "File" menu. This log is not saved to disk, every time you launch Speed Download, you will start with an empty log. The information displayed in the log is often more detailed than that displayed in alert boxes. If you are not a very experienced user, you might find the error log confusing as you will not be notified of errors, it will be up to you to check the log. However if you will be leaving your computer alone for long periods, with many downloads queued you might want to turn the error log on otherwise if an error occurred, the alert message would stop Speed Download's queue.
• Post Process Downloads: When this option is on, downloads will be post-processed using the Internet Control Panel (Internet Config before MacOS 8.5). For example, if you download a Stuffit Archive (a .sit file), Stuffit Expander™ will launch and decompress the file.

The queue tab looks like this:

The preferences that are set here are:

• Start Queue at application launch: If this option is on, Speed Download will automatically start the download queue.
• Only if connected: This option works with the "Start Queue at application launch" option. When it is on and the "Start Queue at application launch" is on, the queue will only be started at application launch if a Internet connection is already established. If you have a modem, you might find this useful to avoid Speed Download automatically causing a dial-up.
• Stop Downloads when queue stops: When this option is on, when the queue is stopped (either manually, by the user or because it was scheduled) all active downloads are stopped. If this option is off and if you stop the queue, no new downloads will be started by the queue but downloads that had already started will be allowed to continue.
• CMM may start queue: If this option is on, when you add a file to the download queue using the contextual menu plugin, the download queue will automatically be started so that the added file will get downloaded
• Max. simultaneous downloads: The number of simultaneous downloads that can occur. For unregistered users, this is fixed to 2. Registered user may have up to 16 simultaneous downloads. If you use many simultaneous downloads, you may need to increase Speed Download's memory allocation

The Proxies tab enables you to setup proxy support for Speed Download. You should refer to your Internet Service Provider's documentation or your network administrator to determine whether this is necessary.

To activate Proxy support for either the ftp or http protocols, tick the appropriate checkbox and enter the address and port to use. For http proxies, if you turn on the Tunnel HTTP Requests option, the CONNECT method is used instead of the GET method.
If you turn on proxy support for ftp servers, passive ftp is automatically used.

The Connection tab looks like this:

The following options are set here:

• Default number of connections: The default number of simultaneous connections that will be used for downloads. You may ask for a specific number of connections when you add the download to the queue. Speed Download suggests a default value based on the information you gave the Setup Assistant.
• Anonymous ftp password: Anonymous ftp servers often ask for an email address as a password. The address entered here is used for this purpose.