It appears that Rapidshare has instituted a dramatic new change to their system. While those who aren't members will be linked as they always have been to Rapidshare's download page for the title, members of Rapidshare are experiencing something rather different. Upon clicking on a link
for any of our posts that use Rapidshare, instead of being linked to a secondary download page, the "download file" prompt from your computer will now pop up immediately for the title you wish to download. Theoretically, this should be happy news, reducing the number of steps members need to take to download a file. In practice however, what has resulted is that this system is working fine with some browsers, but less well with others. I've experimented using my two primary browsers and a secondary one I seldom use. Though I've hardly done a thorough check on this, all titles I clicked the download links for using Firefox appeared to work fine.
With Opera (my usual browser of choice) though, while most links that I checked popped up correctly, some did not, so instead of offering a .rar or .zip file, it would instead offer a .htm or octet-stream. Rapidshare doesn't recognize my ISP on the third and seldom used browser I checked (Shiira) and thus, demonstrated that non-members are experiencing no change, as clicking on a link resulted in my being taken to the usual download page.
I have no idea how this is playing out on more common browsers, but would be interested to know what problems others are encountering on more typical ones like Internet Explorer, Safari etc
(the latter I'd have checked myself, but the version I have is all screwed up and won't launch on my mac). At least it appears that, worse case scenario, Firefox is still fully operable.
I also tend to think that Rapidshare will ultimately get these glitches sorted out. Anyway, hope that helps.....
FWIW, I'm a non-member and an Opera user, and I haven't run into any download issues at all (though I have had lots of trouble downloading from Badongo with Opera). The issues seem to be restricted to premium members only. It's also my experience that people designing websites test them more thoroughly with IE and Firefox and little, if all, with Opera; if IE was busted I'm sure Rapidshare would hear about it in extremely short order :)
ReplyDeleteForget Rapidshare. I thought we were using Sharebee anyway. Are there problems with Sharebee? Even if RS doesn't work with Sharebee, I'm sure the other three options (Badongo, Megaupload and zShare) will.
ReplyDeleteanonymous-Sharebee's only been in use for the last few months. About half of the the links in the rest of the posts went loaded via rapidshare, the rest via massmirror, and the massmirror ones (in a stroke of great timing and fortune) were converted to rapidshare just before massmirror died. Thus, about 9/10's of the posts on MS contain rapidshare links. Ain't no forgetting them...
ReplyDeleteSo far no problem downloading with Firefox 3.0.1, and Firefox 3.0.1 mobile. It is more complicated from other servers, but lately things go smooth (though right click-> open in a new tab does not work in sharebee).
ReplyDeleteActually this is an option users that upload can choose. you can choose that the file will have a direct download or the old way. So it is an option ....
ReplyDeleteInge
Firefox user. No problems, except minor annoyances with Sharebee -- if I'm grabbing several things at once there are so many windows that it can be hard to sort them in my brain. I wish that if I clicked on the Sharebee page it would reuse the tab or window.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens with me is that sometimes I'm required to click OK in a dialogue box, and sometimes the download just starts. There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it to me.
While we're discussing things is it possible that there can be some easier way of navigating round the blog if you're looking for something particular? Case in point -- if I search for the Energy album by Energy (the dreaded s/t) there are so many reviews with the word "energy" in them that it's hard to find the actual post, and if it's an older post, sometimes it doesn't even make the search. Perhaps an index of artists is in order? Is it feasible?
totally fine on safari so far. love the speed!
ReplyDeleteNo problem with me on Internet Explorer.
ReplyDeleteHi, I'm old school and still use Explorer. I'm also a long time subscriber to Rapidshare. I've had no problems downloading. Thanks again for all the wonderful rare stuff you post here.
ReplyDeleteLhasa Crawler
i just tried rapidshare on my firefox browser. it didn't work. in fact nothing from rapidshare comes up. says url can't be found etc. even when i search rapidshare in google and click on the search result.
ReplyDelete1. Always use Firefox. Always.
ReplyDelete2. Rapidshare = Rapidshit
That is all.
No problem on Safari. and by the way, your blog is fantastic. Real thanks...
ReplyDeleteanonymous-no idea what your issue is about. I Just tested it on firefox and all is functional.
ReplyDeleteHey eric, another batch of new posts scheduled for tonight? The Creeping Dawn box Vol. 3 coming soon? Thanks again for all you do! Best music blog on the web because of your posts!
ReplyDeleteRapidshare's new game is to make downloads take forever. What used to take a few minutes to download is now sometimes taking over an hour. Maybe this is their idea of a compromise of not limiting daily download megabytes, but their new way of punishing non-paying users is to slow the downloading waaaaaaay down. I stopped using Rapidshare as a consideration for those who download my shares. I begrudgingly started using Megaupload.
ReplyDeleteThat's odd. I've always had my rapidshare account set to automatically give me a download link. I thought it was just an option you can turn on and off. I find it far more convenient (especially with a FF plugin like DownThemAll)
ReplyDeleteRapidshare accounts have always pointed either to direct download links, or to download pages, depending on the user's preferences: if you have a predefined server that you wish to use for DLs, OR if you would always accept Rapidshare's best option for downloading, then a direct link would appear. Conversely, if your preferences are set so as to prompt you every time for the server to use, then a DL page is displayed: has this last feature changed recently? (I don't know, I've always used default server and direct DL). By the way, to all users saying that Rapidshare sucks: Rapidshare's premium service is great and has always been. Free service may be not so good, but hey, it's free!
ReplyDeleteI've got Safari on Mac and have found Rapidshare to be consistently just fine as a subscriber or not. I've been downloading from blogs like yours for about three years and although I've noticed people griping about RShare I gotta say it's never caused the slightest problem for me. Nor have any of the other common options in fact. And thanks so much for the great music.
ReplyDeletego to your rapidshare premium account page, proceed to settings, uncheck direct downloads and you should be fine :)
ReplyDeletethanks a lot for your effort, every time i stumble here it's better than a time machine!
p
again, leave those services, and use bittorrent, the community here is enough to share the stuff you publish.
ReplyDeleteI use Firefox browser along with the Flashgot plug-in, which I've set to redirect files to Download Accelerator Plus. I'm a RS member and have my d/l preferences set to direct download. That said, I've seen no difference in d/l'ing.
ReplyDeleteOn the file hosting front, it's hard to beat the extras that RS gives (the direct d/l is downright cool), I find that Mediafire, zShare, and Megaupload offer better d/l speeds. Sharebee seems to give more people better options...