How to Prevent Auto Resuming Of Downloads When Firefox Restarts?

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What was the feature I despised about Internet Explorer? Well I remember back in the day when I was stuck with a Windows PC on a 56.6 kbps dial-up and how the “Return To Castle Wolfenstein” got stuck at 98%. The line just dropped. I remember thanking the heavens the day I came across Firefox with its bevy of features and options. Firefox 3 has an inbuilt Download Manager that allows active downloads to be paused and subsequently resumed without having to start over.

Well one thing that is for certain with Firefox is “With great power, comes greater options”. The Browser.download.manager.quitBehavior actually handles the way Firefox would treat a download when the browser quits midway. So we detail the options and how it will effect your downloads the next time you have a power cut (I hope you don’t). How ever should you ever want to remove the feature owing to safety concerns there is always a way. By changing the Browser.download.manager.quitBehavior value in the pref.js file of the Firefox you can actually accomplish this task. The string can take up to 3 values (0,1 and 2) and for each value that is assigned to it Firefox will behave differently with the active downloads. So the function of each value the sting can take are.

• 0 — Active downloads will be paused. However the downloads will be auto-resumed the next time the browser starts (Default)
• 1 — Active downloads will be paused
• 2 — Active downloads will be canceled

So it is clear that one should set the value of Browser.download.manager.quitBehavior to 2 if you want to cancel your downloads on the event the browser is abruptly shut down. It is also noteworthy that all the servers may not support resuming downloads. According to a Bugzilla listing an active or paused download may automatically resume if a program called MineField was run. However the issue has been patched in later versions. Well nothing is perfect as it seems.