When you run Speed Download for the first time the Setup Assistant
will help you to set preferences. You may change the preferences later
on by choosing "Preferences
" from the "Edit" menu If you wish, it will
also run the Download Assistant, which will guide you through the process
of downloading a file with Speed Download. You may use the Download Assistant
at anytime by choosing "Run Assistant
" from the "File" menu.
After you have done this, you will be presented with Speed Download's
main window, the Queue window which in day to day use may look something
like this. In the centre part of the window is a list of all downloads
in the Queue. These may be actually be transferring in which case progress
information is displayed.
Files that are queued have their position in the queue displayed and
will be downloaded in that order when the queue is active. Speed Download
will launch as many queued downloads simultaneously as you let it. You
may toggle the status of the queue by pressing "Stop Queue" or "Start Queue".
To download a file, click "Add
". This will bring up a dialog box asking
for the file's URL. URLs must start with the appropriate protocol specifier
(http:// or ftp://) . Fill in this information and click "Add" in this
dialog box. The file is now added to the queue. To actually start the transfer
the file you can either activate the queue if it is off or select the file
and click "Get it !". If you have not registered, you will be limited to
2 simultaneous downloads.
To add a file to the queue, you may also drag its address onto the main
window (this works with text clippings and Apple's Internet shortcuts)
or use the contextual menu.
Speed Download includes a contextual menu plugin to allow you
to access Speed Download's functionality from within other programs. To
install the contextual menu plugin, drag the "Speed Download CMM" file
onto a closed system folder, click ok when you are asked whether you want
to put in the "Contextual Menu Items" and restart.
Thereafter, when you are using a contextual menu compliant application
( for example Internet Explorer, iCab, Outlook Express or the Finder but
not Netscape) if you [control] click on a URL you will be given the option
of downloading that file with Speed Download. This also works if you [control]
click on a MacOS Internet shortcut file or if you [control] click on the
clipboard in a contextual menu compliant application.
Integration with a browser
 |
Integration with the Finder's clipboard |
 |
Downloading from an Internet shortcut file on the Desktop |
Selecting the "Download with Speed Download" menu item will launch Speed
Download if necessary and start the download. For the contextual menu plugin
to work properly, you must delete older versions of Speed Download from
all your hard drives, otherwise an older version which is not compatible
with contextual menus might be launched by mistake. You may also have to
rebuild the desktop database (hold [command] and [option] while your mac
is starting up until you are asked whether you want to rebuild desktop
files)
When you use the contextual menu plugin to start a download, whatever
parameters (proxies, buffer sizes, etc
) that were last used are
used for this download. If you have not defined a default download folder
Speed Download will ask for a download location before starting the download.