BitLet, abbreviation for BitTorrent Applet, is a BitTorrent program that enables the use of this file sharing protocol inside any Java-enabled

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

 web browser, without the need of an external dedicated client program.

Features

The software intends to make the use of BitTorrent very simple. To make a download, the user first needs to obtain a valid torrent metafile URL

Uniform Resource Locator

In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....

. The user then copies the URL to BitLet's main page and clicks the download link, initiating the downloading process.

All the sharing is done by the user's computer, which is actively uploading and downloading

Uploading and downloading

In computer networks, to download means to receive data to a local system from a remote system, or to initiate such a data transfer. Examples of a remote system from which a download might be performed include a webserver, FTP server, email server, or other similar systems...

 as long as the program window is open. This differentiates it from other services like ImageShack

ImageShack

ImageShack is a free image hosting website. ImageShack has a subscription service but the majority of its revenue is produced from advertising related to its free image hosting. The imageshack.us Alexa ranking in September 25, 2007 was one of the top 40, but now as of September 25, 2011 it's...

's torrent download feature, which does the sharing on the server side, allowing the user to download the torrent by HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a networking protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web....

 in the end.

This system also allows webmasters to easily distribute files using the BitTorrent protocol without requiring the visitors of their sites to install and know how to use a BitTorrent client

BitTorrent client

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer program developed by Bram Cohen and BitTorrent, Inc. used for uploading and downloading files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol. It is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. Since version...

. To do that, a webmaster needs to find a tracker

BitTorrent tracker

A BitTorrent tracker is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. It is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads...

 that directs the BitTorrent downloads and uploads of his file, host the .torrent file, and then display a link in his site, prefixing a URL code to the torrent's online location. The BitLet site provides a code generator

Automatic programming

In computer science, the term automatic programming identifies a type of computer programming in which some mechanism generates a computer program to allow human programmers to write the code at a higher abstraction level....

 to create the HTML for that link; some sites that distribute torrent files already provide such links along with the URL to their torrents, including Fenopy and Suprnova. However, no means of embedding the applet and player into third-party sites exists as of July 2009.

BitLet also allows streaming audio in MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 and Ogg Vorbis

Vorbis

Vorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...

 formats, an experimental streaming video feature (mostly using Theora

Theora

Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container....

, with optional HTML 5

HTML 5

HTML5 is a language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard and is still under development...

playback), and an uploader for turning a file into a torrent.