March 15, 2010 by sharky
http://code.google.com/p/avalanche-rt
Avalanche’s main interface is designed in a style that’s similar to Transmission’s Clutch WebUI. One thing in particular that truly stands out is the option to use short cut codes (O for Open, Delete for Remove, R for Resume, P for Pause), as well as keyboard arrows and other special keys. This alone makes Avalanche a perfect choice as a mouseless WebUI. Below is a quick outline of the available features (refer to the Avalanche QuickGuide for advanced details).
The Avalanche Main Interface:
1. — Header Menu: Where all torrent jobs can be added, removed, paused, stopped & resumed. At the far right side there is an integrated torrent web search field (click the binocular icon to change default search engine).
2. — Filter Bar: Torrents that have been added can be filtered by status criteria (downloading, seeding, paused, completed), as well as a filter search field to be used primarily as a quick method for finding a particular torrent job.
3. — Torrent List: Here is where all torrent jobs are displayed in the main window. Info includes a progress bar, peers, size of job, percent completed, total uploaded, current upload rate and individual torrent ratio.
4. — Status Bar: Displays the global client settings. Users are able to sort torrent jobs by criteria (name, label, ratio, peers, etc).
• Click on the Name (
• Further down the status bar on the right, global upload & download stats are reported. Users can edit the bandwidth cap for rTorrent in both UL & DL directions (note: this is global for rTorrent, and not torrent-specific).
5. — Details Pane: This is where Avalanche really excels over other rTorrent GUIs. There are four distinct tabs for which info is displayed for a selected (highlighted) torrent job:
• General — Displays general info about the torrent. (Name, create date, hash, tracker, current transfer rates & settings, save location… and more). One thing that stands out is that the total available storage (aka "Effect on Disk") for the seedbox/server is displayed here, as well as how much space a certain torrent takes up in comparison to available storage.
• Files — Files in a torrent can be set to differing priority levels, but more importantly, individual files in a torrent can be skipped over.
• Peers — Peerlist info is shown for each torrent; which includes the BT client, current DL/UL rates, amount ‘taken’ and ‘given’ to each peer.
• Trackers — Trackers for the selected torrent are listed here, with the ability to remove certain trackers from the list.
A Review of Avalanche…
Avalanche is still under development (beta), and definitely needs a little more work if they’re looking to break into the private tracker scene. Thus far, torrents can only be added by URL - which is amazingly handy for browsing public torrent engines, but it’s not exactly private tracker friendly. In our tests, we were unable to successfully add torrents from any passkey-supporting private trackers, with Demonoid being the exception (if you count this as private). RSS feed support would also be a welcome addition.
Then again, it appears Avalanche isn’t intended (yet?) for the seedbox/private tracker clientele. Having said that; it could possibly turn into the next big thing in torrenting through Android phones, since downloading actual *.torrent files is not required, and neither is a keyboard or a mouse. All in all, Avalanche is a great effort with a ton of potential!
Advanced References: Be sure to check out the Avalanche Wiki for info about how to install & configure it, complete with video tutorials.
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