Rapidshare is becoming one of the number one sources for downloading illegal materials damn near anything. Of course, downloading from Rapidshare can be a bit of a hassle. The problem is two fold.
- Rapidshare forces users to click a download link, even if they are premium users
- Often times downloads are split into multiple parts
This guide will set you up for downloading everything you want from Rapidshare through Firefox, with the use of some handy addons.
Set Up Direct Downloads
This is something that can be configured through your Rapidshare premium account. Log in to your account and look for the account settings link. You want to look for the configuration section and make sure that Direct Downloads is checked off. Then you can save your changes. This ensures that if you are logged into your Rapidshare account you will be able to bypass the button click to download files. Simply pointing your browser to a valid file will let you download it. We’re almost done here, but DON’T click log out. Because of how Rapidshare works, as long as you are logged in you can continue to download without clicking the link and logging into your account.
Getting a Download Manager
Since at FHB we try to stay as cross platform as possible, I’m recommending one of the best addon’s you’ll find for Firefox, DownThemAll! DTA! lets you quickly download all the links or images present on a page. It also offers you a comprehensive download manager as well as a host of other options. I suggest you check out our post on DTA! for a full run-down. Regardless, even if you don’t use Rapidshare files, you’ll want to install this addon. There’s no point in using it just yet though as you’ll find that Rapidshare links are often posted as text instead of actual click-able links (referred to as Anchor tags). This is a problem since DTA! can only read actual links, so we’ll need some sort of mediator between the two.
FlashGot (The Mediator)
FlashGot also allows us to highlight links and select download, but it also offers us the handy ability to highlight a selection of text links and select “FlashGot Selection” to download them. This is what allows us one-click access to downloading Rapidshare files. The Problem with FlashGot is, it doesn’t come with its own download manager. It just sets up everything so that another download manager can get use them. When you first start FlashGot it will ask you what download manager you want to use, make sure you slect DownThemAll!. And that’s it, with this addon in tow, we’ve now got an excellent way to download any illegal legal rapidshare files.
