Back in the early 2000s I was a teen on a 56k dial-up modem. There would be frequent connection drops, or if not that, my dad would simply kick me off the Internet so he could make a phone call. Trying to download large files through the browser would only end in tears, so a download manager that supported resume was absolutely essential.
I used something called FlashGet (I was a Windows user back then) which looking it up now apparently turned into a malware-riddled mess towards the end of its life, as did so many things. But it was an absolute lifesaver at the time.
I have memories of using a free dialup internet with ads and trying to download a Worms Armageddon demo of like 11-12MB and using FlashGet because my sister was kicking me off dialup.
I used one called Go!Zilla. I remember the UI being somewhat similar to Winamp, and that I liked to configure it to think that my connection speed was 14.4 kbps so the “speed graph” was always in the “high speed download” zone when I was downloading at 50 kbps 😅.
That’s probably due to all those sites putting their own authentication mechanism in front of the download instead of just letting the webserver handle it.
Built something like that myself a few years ago with PHP. And while it wasn’t super hard it wasn’t trivial either and not supported out of the box by the common libraries.
I think I just never need it, so I have no idea how “solved” it is. It’s absolutely supported by most clients, and I’ve had downloads resume, but I rarely Downloads anything large enough, over a network unreliable enough, to notice that a resume is needed.
I’ve had downloads resume properly over http back in the 2000s at least 4 times.
Back in the early 2000s I was a teen on a 56k dial-up modem. There would be frequent connection drops, or if not that, my dad would simply kick me off the Internet so he could make a phone call. Trying to download large files through the browser would only end in tears, so a download manager that supported resume was absolutely essential.
I used something called FlashGet (I was a Windows user back then) which looking it up now apparently turned into a malware-riddled mess towards the end of its life, as did so many things. But it was an absolute lifesaver at the time.
FlashGet brings me back haha.
I have memories of using a free dialup internet with ads and trying to download a Worms Armageddon demo of like 11-12MB and using FlashGet because my sister was kicking me off dialup.
I used one called Go!Zilla. I remember the UI being somewhat similar to Winamp, and that I liked to configure it to think that my connection speed was 14.4 kbps so the “speed graph” was always in the “high speed download” zone when I was downloading at 50 kbps 😅.
This caused me to spontaneously remember RealPlayer.
I used Get Right. That type of program was a life-saver.
Yes the problem is solved, but it’s not well supported where it’s needed.
That’s probably due to all those sites putting their own authentication mechanism in front of the download instead of just letting the webserver handle it.
Built something like that myself a few years ago with PHP. And while it wasn’t super hard it wasn’t trivial either and not supported out of the box by the common libraries.
I think I just never need it, so I have no idea how “solved” it is. It’s absolutely supported by most clients, and I’ve had downloads resume, but I rarely Downloads anything large enough, over a network unreliable enough, to notice that a resume is needed.
I haven’t really had a problem with this, tbh.