Downloading a Complete Picasa Web Album (Without Installing Picasa)

Google’s Picasa Web Album supports downloading an entire album, however, it requires the Picasa software to do so. Bummer if you are on a Mac, or don’t want to (or can’t) install Picasa on your computer.

There’s another tutorial online that suggests using a Greasemonkey script to surface the download links, then use the DownThemAll Firefox extension to grab the links.

Sadly, the Greasemonkey script in question stopped working after a recent code change on the picasa website. I was able to easily fix it, but due to the lack of an open license, I am unable to share the script with you :(

However, I found an alternative solution: The album’s RSS feed! Along with the aforementioned DownThemAll extension, you can easily download a complete album off Picasa Web. Here is how:

Go to the desired Album, and click the “RSS” link on the right hand side:

Firefox will show you the RSS feed in a more or less appealing way. Note that each of the pictures shown has an “attached” JPEG file underneath:

The only thing we need to do is download all of these with DownThemAll. For that, right-click, and choose “DownThemAll”. In the “links” tab, it’ll automatically grab all pictures for you:

Just hit “start” and let it load!

Hope this helps!

Getting Firefox to Use Leopard’s Download Stack

Find your downloads quickly in one dedicated stack. Downloads from Safari, iChat, and Mail are automatically saved to the Downloads stack. Say goodbye to desktop clutter.

… says Apple’s “new feature” description for Mac OS X Leopard. What it doesn’t mention is that you can make (almost) any software you like use the “Download Stack”.

Fact is, the “Download Stack” just displays the contents of a folder named “Download” in your home directory (which Leopard automatically creates). So, making Firefox use it is fairly simple — here is how:

Go to the preferences window, into the “Main” tab:
Download Preferences for Firefox

Under “save files to”, go to your user folder, then choose the folder named “Downloads”.

Save the settings — and next time you download something off the net, you’ll see that it is easily (and instantly) accessible through the neat little “Download Stack” in your dock (in this case my local bus schedule. What a meaningful file name.).

OSX Leopard Firefox Download Stack
“Goodbye, desktop clutter”, indeed!

Categories: Mozilla Crosspost, Tech Talk | Tags: , , , ,