Setting
download folder
By default the pictures you download are saved to the program folder.
If
you want to change this, select the 'Settings' tab and click on the
'Select
folder' button. A folder tree window is opened that lets you select the
folder
for the images. When you've found it, select a folder and click the
'OK'
button.
You can always see the path of the current folder in the blue title
region
of the main program window.
Setting proxy server
If your computer is behind firewall or has to use proxy setting for
another
reason, you will have to turn the use of proxies on if you want the
program
to work.
Select the 'Settings' tab and enter the IP of the proxy computer and
the
port number that it uses. Then check the 'Use proxy' button.
Saving settings for
the next run
If you want to save current settings for the next time you run the
program,
select the 'Settings' tab and click on the 'Save settings for the next
run'
button. Current settings will be saved to Windows registry and will be
loaded
every time the program starts. In this version these settings are
saved:
- download path,
- proxy settings,
- window possition,
- window size
- timeout setting
- size filter settings
Setting download timeout
Set the download timeout if the program gets stuck on one image and
won't continue. by setting the timeout time the program skips to the
next image after the time has elapsed (Settings tab -> Timeout).
Setting file size filter
If you want to download only files bigger than a specified amount of
bytes, enable the Filter option in Settings tab. Enter the smallest
file size in bytes for the images that won't get deleted. Any file
smaller then specified size will be deleted after the download.
Setting referer URL
Some sites allow downloading the pictures only if the user
came
there from their pages. Mihov Picture Downlaoder gives the original
link that images were found on to the web site. If you want to change
that URL, you can do so in 'Settings' tab -. Referer.
Running another copy of
the
program
If you want to run another copy of the program with the same settings
as
set in the original program (download folder, password settings,
download page), select the 'Settings' tab and click on the 'Run another
copy of the
program' button.
This feature is useful when you would like to speed up the downloading
process
of the pictures from a long list. Instead of downloading 200 pictures
at
once run two instances of the program and download 100 pictures with
each
instance at the same time. The second case is in most cases faster than
the
first one.
Downloading from a single
page
After you've set the desired download folder you can start downloading
the
pictures. The program helps you doing this by showing you the steps you
have
to take. You can download all the images from a web page in five steps.
- Enter the URL address of the web page where the links to
the
pictures
are. If the URL address is in the clipboard, you can click on the icon
right to the URL box and it will paste into the field.. From the
drop-down menu select the file type for the files that you want to
download. You can choose from gif, jpg, htm, html, mp3, avi, mpg, rm,
ram, or *.*
- Click on the 'Load page' button and wait for the page to
be
loaded.
You will know that the page has loaded when you see a list of
selectable
picture files. This step is very important, so here are some
explanations
if something goes wrong:
- No files found
Perhaps the page does not contain links to the picture files.You should
choose
another page for downloading.
The files could be in a different format (have different extension)
than
you chose in the drop-down menu. Widen your selection of allowed
extensions.
It is also possible, that a page, that you are trying to reach, is
password
protected. In that case see the section 'Downloading
pictures
from a password protected site'.
Some of the web publishers are 'hiding' their content and don't want to
display
the pictures unless you view them on their pages (and with their adds
and
pop-up windows). Mihov Picture Downloader has many mechanisms to trick
such
web sites. However, it is not perfect and some pictures may still be
unreachable.
Maybe the URL that you gave to the program contains frames - in that
case
give the program URL of the frame, that contains the links to the
pictures. - Page not found
The URL you gave to the program does not exist. See if you've made a
typing
error and try again.
Maybe the server is currently down. In that case try again after some
time.
You are not connected to the internet. Check the connection.
If your computer is behind firewall, you will have to set up proxy
settings.
To read more about this see the section Setting
proxy
server - Other errors
If you have still trouble after checking all of the above, you should
look
for help in the online forum.
If
no
such topic or problem solution is found you should ask the question
yourself.
- When the page is loaded you will see links to all the
images
that
can be downloaded. Select the images that you want to download. By
holding
down 'CTRL' key and clicking on image list you can select more images
that
are not listed together. By holding down the 'Shift' key and clicking
you
can select more images that are listed together. You can also select
multiple images by clicking on one file and dragging it forward along
the list. If you want to select all files in the list click on on efile
and press CTRL-A keys.
Buttons
on the right side of the list can help you:
- by clicking the '*' button you will select all the
files
- by clicking the '<->' button you can
reverse the
download order
of the selected files
- by clicking the '/2' button you will select every
second file
If you want to add a prefix to each file name on your local computer,
enter the text in the box above the 'Save pictures' button.
Under the list there is a small counter, that tells you how many
downloadable file were found. - Click on the 'Save pictures'
button
to start downloading
images. You can observe the process in the 'Message window' on the
lower
side of the program window, where you can see the name of the file
currently downloaded, percentage complete of the current file, file
size of the current file, and the number of files already downloaded.
If the program tries to download a picture with a file name that
already exists it will not overwrite
it; instead it will add numbers to the name. If the file
name is
not a valid file name under Windows OS, then it will be changed to a
new name that will have the forbidden characters replaced by underscore
(_).
- When the download is complete click on the 'Disconnect'
button
to disconnect from the download site and allow the program to start
from
step 1 again.
If the site that you're downloading images from is inactive for more
than 60 seconds a 'timeout' occurs - the image automatically starts to
load again. If the image is not available four times the program
continues to download the next image. Note that the time to timeout can
be set on the 'Settings' tab.
The files that have file size equal to zero (empty files) will be
deleted after download.
The links, that have been used for downlaoding, are saved to a drop
down list (history) and can be accessed even the next time the program
is run. To clear the list click the 'Clear history' button in 'Downlaod
zone'.
Downloading embeded images
If you don't want the program to look for LINKS to images, but download
just the images instead, check the 'Download embeded images (not with
links)' check box that can be found on 'Download zone' tab. This way
the program will not look for 'A HREF' attribute in HTML, but for 'IMG
SRC' attribute.
Downloading from a list of
pages
You can download images from several pages at one site at once. Supply
the
URL to the index page that has links to other pages and click the 'Load
list'
button. When the list is loaded you can click on 'Start!' button and
every page will be downloaded as it would be if downloaded from the
Download zone (see Downloading from a
single page).
On the right side under the list the number of all links
found on
the page is shown. If you want to find out the number of a single line,
just move the mouse cursor over that line. If you want to continue
downloading from a specified line in the list
just input the line number in the 'start with item' field. The download
will begin from the line number specified.
If you want to populate the list with the links to
subfolders (for
example when the link shows directory listing) you should click the
'Load list of subfolders' instead.
The images saved from the 'List download' zone will have
automatically a number prefixed; the number will increase by one for
each new link the program downloads.
The lists can be saved to file or loaded from file by using
the 'Save list to file' and 'Load list from file' buttons.
Downloading pictures from
a password protected site
It is also possible to download pictures from a password protected web
site
in you have a valid username and password. Select the 'Settings' tab
and
enter the username/password details in the appropriate fields in 'Page'
region
of the window. Press the 'Use this password' button and continue to use
the
program as you would if the page hasn't been protected.
Important: if you want to download pictures from a non-protected page,
you
have to reset the password. Select the 'Settings' tab, clear the 'user'
and
'pass' fields and click the 'Use this password' button. Now the
password is
cleared and the program will not use it to download pictures.
Saving the list of pictures
to a file
You might want to save the image list for future use or for sharing the
list
with your friends.
After you have already loaded the images from a page (after steps 1, 2,
and
3 in the 'Download zone' tab) you can save the list to file by
selecting the
'Save list to file' item from the 'Lists...' button in the 'Download
zone'
tab. The standard Save dialog will appear, where you can select a
folder
of your choice and enter the file name you want to use. The list will
be
saved with the .txt extension.
Loading a list of pictures
from a file
You can open a web page with links to pictures locally from your hard
disk.
In 'Download zone' tab click on the 'Lists...' button and select the
item
'Load from file'. An Open file dialog is displayed and you can select
any
file with .html extension. Found links are loaded into the picture list
and
from here on you can continue with step 3 of normal download process.
Creating a list of pictures
If you click on the button 'Lists...' in the 'Download zone' tab and
select
'Create list' a poweful tool will open. It is used to create custom
lists
of pictures. This can be very useful when the images have increasing
names
(i.e. 001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg or pic1.jpg, pic2.jpg, pic3.jpg or even
img01big.jpg,
img02big.jpg, img03big.jpg) and the index page doesn't exist so there
is
no way of getting the whole list from one page. With this tool you can
create
a list of pictures that can later be downloaded.
How to create a list
Let's say that you have found a web site that hosts images that you
would like to download but the images are embedded in html files. You
try to list the folder
index to see all image files but you can not. You discover, that the
images have similar file names, let's say pic01.jpg, pic02.jpg,... The
URLs of the images would be something like
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic01.jpg
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic02.jpg
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic03.jpg
...
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic20.jpg
In the first field in the opened window you have to write the address
without the http:// and without the file name. In this case you would
input only the part shown in red:
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic01.jpg
Now you have to build the file names for all the files. We will do that
with concatenating three parts of the file name: the first and the
third parts, that are not changing, and the second part, which is a
number and is different for each file name.
In the field 'Start' you would write pic
and in the field 'End' would go .jpg.
Now all we need is the middle part. We have images from 01 to 20, so
you input 1
in the field 'From' and 20
in the field 'To'. Set the number of
decimal places to 2 so that the right file names will be generated.
Click the 'Create list' button and this is what you should get:
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic01.jpg
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic02.jpg
...
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic20.jpg
If you set the number of decimal places to 5 you would get this (and
this is wrong, so you
would probably get a 404 error or no files found):
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic00001.jpg
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic00002.jpg
...
http://www.somesite.com/folder1/photos/pic00020.jpg
When you have the list like it should be you can check a single link by
clicking the 'Test selected link in browser' button. If the link opens
successfully then you can continue downloading the files. Click the
'Download'
button and the tool will
close, populating the Download list with the addresses of the files
that you want to download.
Now you can select and download the files like you normally would (see Downloading from a single page),
starting with step
4.
Viewing downloaded pictures
After you hit the Download button a new button apears right to it. By
clicking
on 'View images' the download folder is opened where you can view the
images that you have downloaded.
Displaying
pictures as they are
downloaded
If you want to see the pictures as they get downloaded make sure that
you check the 'View as you download' check box in th e'Download Zone'.
A new window
will open that will show the image just after its downlaod will be
finished. The window will stay on top of other windows and the picture
will change when a new one is downloaded. You can turn this feature off
by closing the 'View image' window or by unchecking the 'View as you
download' check
button. The location of the 'View image' window is rememebered for the
next run of the program.
Command line parameters
The program supports four different ways of being run from the command
prompt. You can pass to it between two and five parameters. The first
one and the second one are always URL and Local Path. You can also
supply username and password if a site that you're downloading images
from is password protected. Third (or fifth, if you're downloading from
protected site) argument can be word 'start' thates makes the program
to start downloading images right away. If you specify the parameter
'exit', then the program will exit after it has finished downloading.
Below you will find a list of available combinations of command line
parameters:
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath User Pass
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath start
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath start exit
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath User Pass start
PictDL.exe URL LocalPath User Pass start exit
Example of a command line:
PictDL.exe http://www.test.com/test.htm c:\test start exit
Note that when running the program with command line
parameters the program
window will not be displayed (only a program icon in the taskbar).
Error log
The program saves the links to files that weren't successfully
downloaded to a file error.log that can be found in the application
folder (usually c:\Program Files\Mihov Picture Downloader\error.log).