Monday, April 4, 2011

How to download all items listed on a webpage with a Firefox add-on

I found a very handy free add-on for Firefox that allows you to download all items linked to on a webpage. I found this very useful and I’m sure you may do too.
My use for this was on the Derby City Council e-planning website. Building developments that require planning permission appear on the councils planning website. The documents page lists everything relating to planning permission.
On some developments there can be many documents to view. These are normally in .PDF format (Acrobat Reader) or in .DOC (Microsoft Word Document).
All the files are in a clickable list on a single webpage. Now obviously this can be quite time consuming clicking on each link and waiting for it to download then clicking back over and over.
The Firefox add-on “DownThemAll” allows you to do exactly that in just a few mouse clicks it will download all of the documents into one folder so you can view them off-line at your leisure.

How to install this add-on in Firefox.
In Firefox goto the Tools menu and select Add-ons
Click on the Get Add-ons tab.
In the search box type downthemall
Against the DownThemAll! Add-on click on the “Add to Firefox” button. Then the Install Now button, then the “restart Firefox” button when its finished installing.

Now an exampe of how to use it:
So in my example I want all of the documents for the Derby Canal Restoration so I goto this page that lists all the documents : Derby Canal Restoration Planning Ducuments.
There are currently 174 documents on this page.

To download all the documents you simply right-click anywhere on the page (not on a link) and the sub menu will show, just select “DownThemAll!” and the add-on will show where you can select which files you want.
Press Control A to select all the files then right-click and select “Check selected items” You can now deslect any files you don’t want. 

Now click the Start button and it will get all the files for you. All the PDFs and Docs.
A very useful add-on !
thanks
Andy

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