Saving downloaded JPGs in Firefox

September 27, 2004 7:14 AM

Firefox: How do I get it to simply save jpg's already downloaded, rather than downloading them again after hitting Save? Fetching the big APOD pic twice does not make much sense, especially on a dial-up. PS: The Firefox Help is almost useless. I am beginning to have my doubts about the utility of this browser over IE.
posted by mischief to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

get the 'copy image' extension, and then copy and paste it into an image editor.

This is a problem for other formats as well, though, like if quicktime handles an mp3 file, if you click 'save page as' it re-downloads the whole thing. Still better than IE though.
posted by Space Coyote at 7:43 AM on September 27, 2004

I used to see this in .8 and 9.3, but it hasn't been happening for me in 1.0PR. Don't know if it's been fixed or I'm just lucky, since it looks like the bugzilla entry is still open -- "Save as function refetches data or images that are in the cache"
posted by nikzhowz at 7:57 AM on September 27, 2004

Response by poster: "looks like the bugzilla entry is still open"

I was afraid of something like that. Oh well, back to IE then.
posted by mischief at 8:12 AM on September 27, 2004

This really bugs me, too. Safari will let you save an image that you drag onto the desktop, whether it's loaded with PHP or what have you. If you do this in Firefox, it will regularly give you a little PHP link to the picure. Thanks! And please don't tell me to second-click and select "save picture as" because it's a pain in the ass and a step backward in usability. I still use Firefox for a lot of things, though, including MeFi.
posted by squirrel at 9:01 AM on September 27, 2004

"looks like the bugzilla entry is still open"

I'm not sure that bug is applicable. It's filed under the Mozilla browser component, not under Firefox.

I googled this, which suggests the image is not actually being downloaded again, but there's a delay due to adding the image to a large list of files in the download manager. Do you still have the problem if you hit the "clean up" button in the download manager? Or maybe you're doing something weird like using a really small cache?

In Firefox 0.9.3/Linux, I can't replicate the behavior you describe. If I load a page and then disable HTTP in my firewall, I can still save the images.
posted by Galvatron at 11:41 AM on September 27, 2004

What version are you using? Using 1.0PR under Windows 2000, it doesn't pop up the download window if you choose "Save Image As". My experience in older versions is that most of the time, even if it seems like it's downloading it again, it's really not.
posted by skynxnex at 1:39 PM on September 27, 2004