It’s been just over two weeks since the release of Steadyflow 0.1.6, but the feedback was larger than I expected for such a simple program, and so, based on that, here is the new release: Steadyflow 0.1.7.

Highlights:

• The indicator menu has been expanded and now includes download controls for individual files and for all files at once.
• Password authentication is now supported for FTP, SFTP, SMB and so on.
• It is now possible to select multiple files to start, stop, or remove them all at once. In addition, a file’s context menu now includes a “copy URL” option.
• If Steadyflow is on the Unity dock, its icon’s context menu will include an “Add download” item.

For early adopters of Ubuntu Oneiric, Steadyflow 0.1.7 is now available in the official universe repository. Natty users can, as always, use the PPA.

It will probably be a while until another release.

By popular demand, I have added a Chromium extension for downloading links with Steadyflow, “creatively” titled Chromeflow. (Integration with Firefox and Epiphany is already supported through the FlashGot and Ephyflow extensions, respectively.)

The extension is available as a .crx install for i386 and amd64. Its code is based on a similar extension for the FatRat download manager, which is, incidentally, way more powerful than Steadyflow and may be a better choice for users who need advanced features like multi-stream downloads and torrent support.

Meanwhile, the unstable version in bzr has added support for FTP/SMB/SFTP authentication dialogs (they were a standard feature of GTK all along—blame me for not knowing this!), which means that password-protected FTP and brethren are now supported, not just anonymous connections. I have also added “Pause all” and “Resume all” menu items to the indicator icon, and intend to add per-file pause and resume support before the 0.1.7 release.

Today I released version 0.1.6 of my pet project, the Steadyflow download manager.

This release adds the much-requested remaining time indicator, courtesy of Hunter Rew, the ability to run an arbitrary command when a download completes, and of course, the usual bugfixes and translation updates.

Under the hood, the code has been fixed to build with Vala 0.12 and either the old or new libnotify, and dropped the deprecated dbus-glib in favor of GDBus. The latter means that it won’t build on Lucid anymore since it requires GLib 2.26 functionality. As such, I also dropped the flat-file settings backend; now Steadyflow exclusively uses GSettings to store its preferences.

Packages for Natty and Oneiric are available in my PPA. I’m also working on getting Steadyflow into the official Debian and Ubuntu repositories.

Three weeks from idea to implementation, and the first release of the Steadyflow download manager is now available on Launchpad!

PPA packages for Lucid and Maverick will be available in the newly opened Steadyflow stable build PPA as soon as they finish building.

This release features:

• A basic GNOME download manager, supporting all URL protocols known by GIO/GVFS. This includes, among others, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP and SMB.
• Pausing, resuming, and restarting downloads upon application restart.
• An application indicator, or a notification area icon for platforms without Ayatana libraries.
• An instant search/filter box.
• Ability to add downloads via the command line and D-Bus, for browser extension writers.
• Notification bubbles upon starting and finishing downloads (can be disabled).

What it does not feature (yet):

• A monochrome icon (planned for 0.2).
• Filter by file types.
• Different download folders for different file types.
• Limiting download speed and number of files downloaded simultaneously.
• Multiple download streams per file.

I’m actually not personally interested in implementing that last one, as I have a fast enough connection to render it irrelevant, so unless someone else gets to implement that, tough cookies.

I would like to thank:

• The Vala developers, for patiently answering my questions about the language.
• Everyone who gave feedback on earlier snapshots—in particularly the OMG! Ubuntu! users for testing and suggestions, and the GNOME design team for UI feedback.
• Translators from Launchpad, for making Steadyflow multilingual right from the first release.
• My beloved Alice, for inspiring me to start this whole project as a quirky expression of my feelings for her.

For the last two weeks, in my spare time, I’ve been working on a small personal project. I noticed that my desktop lacked a good standalone download manager.

But what about gwget? Well, I found gwget’s UI quite rough and lacking polish, and upon looking at its code, I decided that it would be easier to just write a new one from scratch—and that it would be a standalone application integrating with modern desktop technologies, not a wget wrapper. And now that I actually have a working download manager, it’s time to present Steadyflow.

Yes, the UI is inspired by Transmission. This was my idea: to have, basically, a Transmission for HTTP/FTP. The application is written in Vala, which serves two purposes: one, it ensures a relatively small memory footprint not dependent on the Python or Mono runtime, and two, it lets me write object-oriented code that Just Works, in a modern, strongly-typed language. I hope interested contributors will find the code clean and easy to understand.

What currently works:
* Basic download manager functionality: starting and finishing downloads.
* Panel indicator and minimizing to it.
* Notification popups.
* Preferences.
* Translations.

What is there yet to implement:
* Advanced control over downloads: pausing, resuming, saving and restoring the session.
* Controlling from the command line.
* Epiphany extension.
* D-Bus API (maybe not for the 0.1 release).

Translations are open on Launchpad, and I would appreciate code contributions as well—the code is in Bazaar on Launchpad. It should build and run on Lucid and Maverick, although on Lucid, you’ll need to install the Vala compiler version 0.9.8 from the Vala team PPA to build it.

I’m planning to release version 0.1 the coming week; in the meantime, I welcome your contributions, bug reports, and comments over here!