About
Imagegrabber is a firefox extension designed to download pictures from image hosts such as imagevenue, imagebeaver, and others (see below for a full list of supported hosts)
This extension finds all the thumbnail links from the supported image hosts, connects to the hosts, and saves the actual images.So why is this different than using other tools like downthemall, or wget, or other tools designed to save a large amount of pictures?
Most image hosts don't link directly to the actual image. Instead, they link to a web page that contains the image as part of the html. If you want to save the image, you have to click the thumbnail(or link) which opens the web page, then right click/save as for every image. Imagegrabber does this automatically for every image so you don't have to.Please take note, this program will not download any attachments, images, or links to images. It only downloads images hosted on the free image hosts.
For the remainder of this help document, the word "images" will refer to the images hosted on the hosts.
Supported Image Hosts
10pix , adultimagehoster , allyoucanupload , babes-board , babeupload , campusbug , chickupload , divshare , dumpanimage , dumparump , echo , exs.cs , facebook , famousboard , fap2it , fapomatic , fileden , fotofap , freefilehosting , freeimagehost , freeporndumpster , friendlyimage , glowfoto , hostwhore , hqbeat , imagebam , imagebanana , imagebeaver , imagecrack , imagedemon , imagefap , imagefly , imagehaven , imagehigh , imagereverb , imageshack , imageshadow , imageshappy , imageshock , imagesocket , imagevenue , imagewaste , keepmyfile , mexaupload , monkeymedia , myphotos , myspace , paintedover , photobucket , picsie , piczhost , pimpshare , pixloads , porn.jj , pussyupload , radikal , shareapic , shareavenue , shareloading , snapshotgirlz , squirrelturd , storeimgs , storepics , supload , taod , theimagehosting , tinypic , toppichost , uploadem , upqt , urlcash , usercash , webshots , xs.to , zshare
Features
Get all pics on page
This feature downloads all the images from the current page being displayed.
How it works:
Goto the page that you want to download the images from. Click the "Get all pics on page", and pick the download directory.Suck the current thread
This feature downloads images from multiple pages in a thread; this is what I call "sucking". This feature was designed for use in vBulletin forums. Although it may work in other forums, I have not personally tested it.
UPDATE: This feature now works with facebook, myspace, and campusbugHow it works:
Goto any page of the thread that you want to "suck", click the "Suck the current thread" menu item, enter the first page number you want to start from, the last page number to end at, and pick the base download directory.
It will automatically create directories corresponding to the page number.For facebook, myspace, or campusbug, go to the album that you want to save pictures from. Then use the thread sucker like you would on a forum. Choose a range of pages from the album that you want. In facebook and myspace, you have the option to view all the images from all the albums at once. This is the best option to get all the images at once. In campusbug, unfortunately, you have to go through each album on your own.
Toolbar button
You can now put the ImageHost Grabber toolbar button for easy convenient access. It currently only does the "Get all pics on page".
How it works:
Open the "Customize" item under "View->Toolbars", find the ImageHost Grabber toolbar button, and drag it to the toolbar you want it to be located in. For further help on this topic, check out Firefox's help file, or email me.Abort download/request
This feature allows you to cancel a request for whatever reason. This might be an option you would consider if it is taking too long and you want to retry it at a later time.
How it works:
When the ImageHost Grabber Download Progress window is open, right-click on the dowload/request that you want to abort, and click "Abort download/request". You can select multiple requests to abort by using the shift or ctrl keys in combination with the mouse click.Retry download/request
This feature will allow you to retry a download that has been aborted, completed successfully, or that is in progress.
How it works:
Works the same way as the abort feature.View Request Details
This feature will allow you to view the details of the request, such as where the file is being saved, the thumbnail's URL, and the HTML associated with the thumbnail page.
How it works:
It works the same way as the abort feature. The difference is that you can only open the details for one request at a time.Stop All Sessions
This feature will allow you to stop all downloads in progress. It causes each download to abort, regardless of which session.
How it works:
Click on the "Stop All Sessions" button when in the "Download Progress" window.Revive All Stopped Sessions
This feature will allow you to re-start the previously stopped sessions. Each session will start with the previously stopped downloads, retrying them, and then continue with the rest of the session.
How it works:
Click on the "Revive All Stopped Sessions" button when in the "Download Progress" window.
Options
File Saving Options
What to do if file exists in target location
Hopefully the options here are, for the most part, self explanatory. There are three options: Rename File, Skip File, Overwrite File. When renaming the file(s) automatically, the extension adds a "_1" at the end of the filename, but before the extension. If, for some reason, that file also exists, it adds another "_1" to the end of the filename. It will keep doing that until the file does not exist. One important thing to note here is that the "Autorename" feature from previous versions used to take care of some of this functionality. However, that feature was split up due to the addition of the "Skip File" feature.Autorename imagevenue and fapomatic files
This functionality was originality part of the "Autorename" feature from previous versions. This modifies the filename from the file to remove the leading digits added by these two servers. Other servers could be implemented here, but I'm too lazy.Create a sub-directory with document title inside the target directory
This option will take the document title and use that as the new sub-directory to save the goods. The document title is what you see at the top of the Firefox window (called the "Application Bar" in windows). Most of the time, this should be a fairly unique way to identify the threads without the trouble of typing it yourself. Sometimes, this can produce lengthy directory names, and sometimes it is not unique enough. However, this has been more useful than it has been anything else in my experience.Prefix filenames to reflect page order
This option will add a prefix to the filename so that the files can be sorted in the same order as they are displayed on the page. The first part of the prefix is an eight character long, random alpha-numeric prefix that distinguishes the session. Each session will have a different prefix, even when running multiple sessions at a time. Also, when in thread sucker mode, each page will get a unique prefix. The second part is a number that corresponds to the picture's position on the page. The number is padded with leading zeros so that non-logical sort algorithms can sort the files properly (i.e. pre-WinXP and Unix flavored OS's)General
Show the Download Directory box
This option allows you to suppress the dialog that asks you where to save the images. If you uncheck this option, images will be saved to the last directory that was used.Show the status window when downloading
This option allows you to suppress the status window when downloading. When unchecked, the images are downloaded in the background. The only way you will know if it is working or not is to check the directory that you chose to save to.Show the Image Grabber menu in the tools menu
Many of you have asked for this feature, and here it is. It took a while to figure it out, but alas, it is done. This option will allow you to choose whether to show the imagegrabber menu in the "Tools" menu, or on the main menu bar.Host Options
Status window buffer size
This is the number of lines that the status window should retain at a time. The problem of having too many lines has been eliminated, so feel free to use a large value.Max. simultaneous connections
This is the number of connections to an image host that the extension will make at one time. In the past, there was no control over the downloads from the image host, only the HTTP requests. Now, however, this option restricts both the HTTP requests and the downloads. It makes a request to the page, finds the image, then downloads the image. If you were to set this value to 1, then it would download one image at a time (perfect for you dial-up users). Increasing the number may improve performance of the download, however, too large of a number, like more than 10, can cause connection timeouts and dropped downloads. Although this extension includes an automatic cancel/retry feature for long connection times, this can seriously slow down the entire process if it has to retry alot of connections. It has been my experience that 5 is the golden number for most high speed internet connections. The number can also be limited by the image host, and the time of day.Max. number of retries for each link
This option lets you specify how many times it should retry each link before it gives up and moves on. The following conditions will cause a link to be retried:Also note that there are three other cases where request is turned over to the retry function, but not because anything went wrong, but because an alternate URL was found. Imagevenue, URLCash, and Usercash are these three cases. They won't cause the retry number to decrement.
- incomplete request (but firefox thinks it was complete)
- request is taking too long (probably because the server gave up but firefox didn't)
- the request was cancelled by the server or by firefox (for some un-godly reason)
- there was some kind of error in the request
- and this one is imagevenue specific, but, the server sent you a file, but it's not an image
Request timeout before retry (in seconds)
This option lets to specificy how long the extension should try each request before sending the request to the retry functionEnable Thread Sucker Cache
When using the thread sucker, this option will save the image information on each page that you choose to download. If for some reason, you have to restart the thread sucking process, it will read the information information from the cache instead of having to re-download that information from the forum. The only exception to this is Myspace. Due to various reasons, caching of myspace pages is unavailable.Debugging
You should read over the descriptions of Console Logging and Debugging Logging below. This will give you a better idea of what to expect, and when to use them. If you don't understand even after reading them, then it won't hurt to enable both. Either way, you should enable Console Logging in both cases.Enable Console Logging
This option turns on the console logs. Use this if the extension doesn't work, or a feature of the extension doesn't work. This will record the fatal errors reported on the error console into a log file that you can then send to the developer. This will decrease system performance slightly. This won't help you if the extension is working, but isn't doing what you expected it to do (that's called a logical error, and is harder to debug). An example where you would want to enable this would be if you click on "Get all pics on page" and it does nothing.
Note: Firefox has to be restarted after enabling this option.Enable Debugging Log
This option turns on the debugging logs. Use this if the extension is working but is doing something different than what is expected. For instance, you click "Get all pics on page" and it downloads all the files, but the images it downloads aren't the one's you wanted. This is called a logical error. This is much harder to debug than a syntax error (as described above). Because it is harder to debug, a very verbose output of the program execution is made. As a result, system performance will drop very noticeably. You should be careful with using this feature. Try to use a page with a small amount of images (i.e. 20 or less). And when you're done, copy the log to a local folder and clear the log. The log file can get to several hundrea kilobytes in a single run.
Note: Firefox has to be restarted after enabling this option.Clear Debug Log
Use this to clear the debug log. This is a good idea after doing a single run through. The log file will get fairly large real quick. You will want to wait to do this until after you copy the log file to a local folder.Copy Debug Log To Local Folder
Use this to copy the log file to a folder located somewhere on your harddrive/desktop/storage device. You do not have a choice in the name of the file; it will be "log.txt". Once it is copied, you can read it, or stick it in your bum, or the better choice, email it to the developer.