Open Instead of Saving Downloads in Firefox

By Josh | June 27, 2008

One option that I have missed in Firefox compared to Internet Explorer is the option to run a download instead of saving it to your hard drive. This can be usefull if you are downloading a compressed file that you are going to uncompress anyways. Then the left over compressed file that you downloaded is just taking up extra space. It’s also usefull if you download an executable file that you are going to run right away. The only problem is that Firefox doesn’t add this feature.

In order to get this feature in Firefox, you should download the OpenDownload addon. This addon has not been updated for Firefox 3, but that is easily fixed by downloading the Nightly Tester Tools addon. Once OpenDownload has been installed, it will add an option to your download dialogue. When you try to download a file, you will be able to click on “Open with default Win32 application” to open the file.

Of course the files are downloaded to your temporary folder, but that can easily be cleaned out through a number of ways. At least this way you won’t have files sitting around that you’ll probably end up forgetting about. It’s definitely worth installing if you are a Firefox user.