- Web Vacuum Review -

Nothing's duller than downloading lots of files from the internet. Now that most of us have put "dial-up" behind us and have moved onto cable modem for faster download speeds but the "click-click-click" of the mouse remains along with dead arm you get after being a mouse jockey for too long.

Now it's time to put that horror behind us for good with a program called WebVacuum. With Web Vacuum, you pick the URL that you want to get files from and then set various filters that will get just the files you're interested in. I've seen many other programs that are supposed to do the same thing as WebVacuum but they fall short in many ways. Most don't have the filtering abilities of Web Vacuum which results in a folder on your hard drive with four files you want and about forty that you have to delete. Some will only download files with jpg extensions while WebVacuum can download files with any file extension specified such as jpg, gif, mp3, avi, mpg, mov, exe, zip, pdf and more. Other programs that are similar to WebVacuum put SpyWare on your PC which sends all sorts of your personal information to who knows where and degrades the performance of you PC . Another side effect that some of these programs cause is to lose internet connection and crash your PC. Web Vacuum has none of these problems, is a full featured program that performs as stated and has NO SpyWare.

If you want to have WebVacuum on your PC so you can follow along with the directions, download it here and install it. WebVacuum will not autodownload from Usenet. If you want an autodownloader for this, please see the NewsBin Review.

Please note that the following guidelines are based on MY usage of the program and may vary depending on the web page it is used on. Bad and extra links will cause a variation in the performance of WebVacuum but the following guidelines should help you modify settings to get the results you need. As with any downloads from the internet, care should be taken to make sure the files are virus free by having an up to date virus scanning program. Check out the Security Page for some programs that add extra protection. If you choose to register this product, please use the "Buy Now" button on the program. After reading the review, you may find some other helpful programs on the Digital Picture Programs Page.

If you want to look at the WebVacuum review offline, it is now available in DNL format. More information on this format and the free reader can be found on the DNL page.


Getting started:

Follow these steps and you'll be downloading files in a matter of minutes:

1) Here's the startup screen; from the top menu bar, select "Options", then "Show Options Window".



2) Click on "Set Directory" and pick the folder you want your files saved to. Below is a reduced picture of the options page.




WebVacuum allows you to save your files based on Web site, Date and Directory as well as combinations of these by selecting one of the five radio buttons.

3) Close the Options window and type the URL of your choice in the top text box named "URL" on the main page. For those who don't know, "URL" means the web address of the site you want to access such as www.picpage.com.
4) Click on the Queue button and Web Vacuum starts finding the files with the extensions specified in the Options window and will then automatically download them.


Using this simple method, WebVacuum which will download all of the file types you've specified and place them in the folder you've picked. This is adequate for many users but it will download lots of files that you don't want as well; that means the work of hunting through the directory and manually deleting them. The many features of WebVacuum allow you to filter through the available files and take only the ones you want. The following examples deal with pages of jpegs (.jpg files) and was selected to easily show the many features of WebVacuum. The same techniques will work with any file extension.


Filter Techniques

For the following examples, the auto download will be turned off so you can see what is happening in the queue window. To turn off the auto download:

1) Click on the "Options" tab in WebVacuum and open up the Options Window.
2) Check the "Auto Download Off" checkbox on the bottom of the window.



3) Uncheck the "Pause queueing when 100 files are in queue" box located in the left center of the Options Window.



When auto downloading, you should limit the number of items in the queue to 100 so the act of queueing doesn't slow the download speed. After you are familiar with the settings, you may wish to reactivate the autodownload and pause queue features.


Select file types

This will show you how to restrict downloads to only the file types you want. I have selected jpg for these examples but any valid extension will work just as well.



1) Click on the "Options" tab in WebVacuum and open up the Options Window.

On the left side is a list of the types of files that will be downloaded. Many web sites use gifs images for buttons or small icons as well as using animated gifs for simple animations. By removing the gif extension from the list, WebVacuum will no longer download them.

2) For this example, I will delete all of these except for jpg; don't worry, you can easily put them back by using the "Add Extension" button.
3) Click on the "Queue" button.
4) When the queue process is finished, click on the download button. Only jpg files will be downloaded.


Select by size

Using the above step, we've limited our downloads to only jpg files but many web sites use small jpgs for the page layout and almost all web pages with digital picture galleries have tons of thumbnails that you don't want to download either. For those unfamiliar with the term, a thumbnail is a small version of the image you want to look at. Most web sites are set up so the main image is displayed when you double-click on the thumbnail. Since thumbnails are usually less than 10k in size, we can get rid of them by limiting the size of the files to download.

1) On the options window, make sure the box is checked next to "Don't download files smaller than --". The slider bar beneath controls the size of the files to download.
2)Queue and download the files as shown above.



If you set this to 10k you will probably eliminate most of the thumbnails. I've set it as high as 40k with good results.


Checking on file size

You can check on the size of the files that are in the queue easily.

1) Click on "Mode" in the Web Vacuum menu bar and select "expert".
2) Two new check boxes appear on the bottom; select the "Header Info" box and the next page you queue will have extra information in it such as the file size. Don't do this unless it is really needed since it slows down the speed of the queue operation.




Multipage Gallery

Sometimes web sites arrange digital picture sets in "galleries" or separate web pages. WebVacuum can handle this very well by setting the download level. Say there is a digital picture set spread over three galleries.

1) Set the "download 1 level" under the queue box to "download 3 level" using the up/down arrows next to the text box. You can also select the "1" in the text box and type "3".
2) Queue and download the files as shown above.



Web Vacuum will search the three pages and select the files you want.


Individual page per picture

Some web page creation software will generate a gallery page with thumbnails that point to a separate html page for each picture. If this is the case, setting the download level to 1 will only download the thumbnails and not the images you want. The solution is to increase the download level by one so that Web Vacuum searches not only the main gallery page with the thumbnails but also the individual picture pages as well. If you had a gallery page of 30 thumbnails pointing to 30 different html picture pages:

1) Set the "download 1 level" under the queue box to "download 2 level" using the up/down arrows next to the text box. You can also select the "1" in the text box and type "2".
2) Queue and download the files as shown above.



Web Vacuum will find every page pointed to on the main page.

Suppose, however, that there are multiple galleries as well. Just add one to the number of pages in the gallery and set the download level to that. For example if there are 8 galleries, set the download level to 9.


Sequence download - Classic

Since all web sites are different, the above method will sometimes queue many more files than you want. Dead or blind links will send Web Vacuum looking in areas that you're really not interested in. If you set the minimum download size to about 40K, you should keep most of the crap from being downloaded but it will take awhile. If you plan to set your filters, enter your URL and let the program run while you do something else, this is not a problem. If you want to be more precise, however, you can use the sequence download option.

Assume you want to download a sequence of pictures called SummerVacation001.jpg to SummerVacation157.jpg from a relative's family website at http://www.somebodysfamilywebpage.com and the files are located in the folder SummerSnaps. (Please note that this web page doesn't exist at the time of this writing)



1) Click on the "Sequence DL" tab above the queue window; this shows the sequence download options.
2) Type the URL of the pictures and the common part of the jpgs in the top text box. For this example you would type in http://www.sombodysfamilywebpage.com/SummerSnaps/SummerVacation.
3) Type the file extension you wish to download in the next text box. In this case it would be .jpg.
4) Add the range of pictures you wish to download in the next two text boxes. If you want all of the pictures, you would put 001 in the first box and 157 in the next. If you only want the last 10 pictures, you would start at 148 and end at 157.
5) Be sure to keep the "Keep Zeros" checkbox selected if zeros are required in the numerical series of the photos. If the series is named from 001 to 127 then you would need the zeros. If the sequence went from 1 to 127, the front zero would not be needed and the box should be unchecked.

In some cases, people like to put a letter or a series of letters after the numbers on their picture names. To use the sequence download on this, just follow the above example but place everything in the picture name that is after the number in the text box that has the extension. The following picture shows what to put for the extension for a series of pictures named Summer001pics.jpg to Summer157pics.jpg.



Notice that "pics.jpg" is in the second box instead of ".jpg"

The key to successful use of the sequence download feature is to find the location of the picture series. Many web sites use databases to dynamically generate images from a jpg using PHP or reference a folder of images from many web sites. The following technique can sometimes find the location of the image folder and allow more efficient downloads.

1) In your browser, select the thumbnail of the first picture of the first page, right click on the picture in the html page that appears and select "open picture". This will display the picture alone.
2) Use the URL of the picture to fill out the first text box of the sequence download options. Follow the instructions above and don't include the last number or extension of the image.
3) Select jpg for the second text box.
4) In your browser, select the last thumbnail of the series of images, right click on the picture in the html page that appears and select "open picture". This will give you the number of the last picture in the series.
5) Fill out the range of images to download.


Setting the Referrer URL

Many web sites that host pictures attempt to prevent autodownloading by checking what website a request for a file comes from. For example, if you are at www.pictureSiteA.com, and you click on a link to a picture with the URL www.pictureSiteA.com/Images/Picture01.jpg, the website will check to see that the request for the file is actually coming from www.pictureSiteA.com. The location URL where the request for the file is know as a referrer.

When the referrer is not correct, users often get faulty results that will download, only thumbnails, gifs images with nasty messages that the webmaster posted, or nothing at all. In normal cases, Web Vacuum will detect and match the referring site to complete the autodownload.

When the referrer is different from the website the files are loaded on then another technique will be used.

Clicking the "Sequence Download" tab then the "Get" tab will bring up the recursive download page.

This allows users to set a referrer site that is different from the site that the target files are located on.

To show how this works, we'll show how the ficticious website pictamatic sets up it's referrer. When using this technique, please remember that many websites rely on visitors to click on their ads to make a living. While autodownloading, please check out the host site's ads. You get your files without clicking file links a thousand time and getting carpal's tunnel while the file hosting site stays in business because you checked out their ads.

Assume you are at the page of a forum or blog that has a group of pictures you want to autodownload. Generally, the photos are shown at reduced size or as thumbnails with links to another site where the photo is actually hosted. The following technique will show you how to find the file list as well as the referrer value.

1) In WebVacuum, click on the "Seq DL" tab and then the "Get" tab to bring up the recursive downloading option. This box will open.



2) Obtain the link to the file hosting website with the pictures you want.
Right click on any of the pictures in a set and select the following:
Opera - Copy link Address
Firefox - Copy link location


2) Establish the referrer.
The link should have this form: http://pictamatic.com/show.php?loc=XXXX&f=name.jpg where XXXX is the folder number and name.jpg is the name of the image.

Paste the link in the text box named "Referrer" then delete everything after and including the ? symbol giving you the URL of a php file : http://pictamatic.com/show.php.

The php file (show.php) is what actually calls the individual pictures based on the parameters located after the question mark. The URL of the php file is the referrer.

This technique can be used on any site that follows the same pattern. The file that calls the images will be different but will always be followed by parameters. Delete the parameters and you'll have the referrer.

3) Obtain the picture link
Go back to the forum or blog that has the pictues on it and click on the first and the last pictures of the set to open them.
Obtain the picture location for each by using the following technique.
Opera - Right click on the picture and select "Image Properties" then copy the "Address" URL
Firefox - Right click on the picture and select "properties" then copy the "Location" URL
Most picture sets are names after the subject such as "RedCar" followed by a series of numbers to differentiate each photo in the set. Generally they will have the following format:
First Picture - http://pictamatic.com/XXXX/RedCar001.jpg.
Last Picture - http://pictamatic.com/XXXX/RedCar187.jpg.

4) Establish the picture naming pattern.
In the above example, the picture series goes from RedCar001.jpg to RedCar187.jpg. The Range is obtained by combining the two URLs with any differences being placed in the brakers. For our example, the range would be:

The base URL
http://pictamatic.com/XXXX/RedCar

Plus the range of numbers
[001-187]

Plus the file extension
jpg.

Which would give you this value for the range:
http://pictamatic.com/XXXX/RedCar[001-187].jpg.

The number range isn't always at the end of the name string. For example BlueCar012B.jpg. For that case, the B would just be moved out of the brackets to get the range:

http://pictamatic.com/XXXX/BlueCar[001-187]B.jpg.

5) Get Range

Press the Get range button to start the download.


Password Protected Sites

Some sites that you want to autodonwload files from are password protected. Aaron's Web Vacuum allows you to use your password to fully access these sites. It will NOT allow access to password protected sites if you don't have a valid password.

To use the password, click on the Password button shown below.



This opens the password page.



The passwords can be entered in two ways:
1) As part of the URL in the bottom text box.
2) As individual values. Check the standard password check box and two text boxes will appear for Username and Password.

Enter the values in the appropriate text boxes and click the appropriate Go button.


Slideshow Function

WebVacuum also has a slide show function to allow users to view images that have just been downloaded as well as images stored on your PC's HDD or removable storage devices.

To access the slideshow controls, click on the Files DLed tab.



This window normally shows any files that have recently been downloaded but is empty when Web Vacuum starts.

Right click anywhere in the white section under the tabs to bring up this menu. This menu is where the commands mentioned in this section of the review are found.



Click on Browse Files and select a folder that contains images you wish to view. A list of these images with checkboxes next to them will appear in the white text area.



Click on any image once, and it will appear in the viewing box on the right. Double click any file, and it will be opened by the default programs set on windows. This feature allows you to see the contents of zip or Shrink created .qcf files.

If you browse for further files, these will be ADDED to the list and will not replace the ones already there. To remove files from the list, select Clear List. Selecting either of the delete commands will remove the file from your hard drive. The delete function is best used when sorting through recently downloaded files and deleting those you don't wish to save. Deleted files do NOT go to the recycling bin and are permanetly deleted.

To start the slideshow, select the Slideshow command and the following menu will appear.



Select how long you want each slide to be displayed; the options are 1, 5, and 20 seconds. Click (on/off) and the slideshow will start beginning at the highlighted image on the list.

The images will appear in the small box at the right side of the Web Vacuum window but you can enlarge the view in two ways.

The first way, you merely left click on the image in the display box a full size version of the slide show will appear. Unfortunately, the pictures are shown at their full dimensions so the entire picture won't be visible if its dimensions are larger than your screen resolution. Click the red x in the upper right corner to close the full screen slide show.

The second option displays the slideshow with larger versions of the entire picture.

1) Start the slideshow
2) Click the enlarge button to make the AWV page full screen
3) Right click on the image to bring up this menu.
4) Click on Show/Hide Side Panel and Show/Hide Bottom Panel to create a full screen slide show.
5) Clicking on these values again will return the side and bottom panels.


Queue manipulation

The above examples show many ways you can download only those files you want while filtering out the rest. This does take extra time, however and in some cases you may wish to select the files you want manually.

The main problem with downloading image files is that the thumbnails (small versions of the image used for display on a web page) are often named the same as the image but with a "TN" or other code placed at the beginning of the image name. In other cases, the thumbnails have the same name as the images but put in a different folder, such as "thumbnails". Web Vacuum makes this easy.

1) Queue the files to be downloaded as described above. For this example, the prefix "TN_" is all that differentiates the thumbnail and image names, as shown in the image below.



Web Vacuum's filter functions allow you to prevent the thumbnails from being loaded onto the queue.

2) Click the "Clr queue" button to empty the queue.
3) Open the "Options" page. On the top right, you'll notice the "Filter File" as shown below.



4) To make sure the thumbnails aren't put in the queue, click on the "- File Filter" tab and enter TN_*.* in the text area as shown below.



5) Be sure the "Active" checkbox is clicked, close the "Options" window and queue the files to be downloaded. You'll notice that the thumbnails no longer show up in the queue.

The filter works in the opposite direction by adding information to the "+ File Filter" text area and selecting the "Active" checkbox. For example, if you ONLY wanted to download jpg files starting with "DCP", you would type DCP*.jpg in the + File Filter text area and check the Active checkbox. Only jpg files starting with DCP would be queued.

If you don't want to rely on the automatic method, you can manually delete the thumbnails from the queue using the following technique. To demonstrate this, I will use the same example mentioned above: thumbnails with a "TN_" at the beginning of the name.

1) Queue the files to be downloaded as described above; the queue window should look something like the following picture.



2) In the queue window, click on the "name" bar at the top of the window.
This will sort all of the files to be downloaded in alphabetical order.

3) Select the thumbnails in the queue window using the standard combination of left mouse click, CTRL key and/or the shift key. The queue window will look like the following picture.



4) Press the delete key on the keyboard and all of the selected files will be removed from the queue window.
5) Click "Download".

If the thumbnails have the same name but are in a different directory:

1) Queue the files to be downloaded as described above.
2) In the queue window, click on the "path" bar at the top of the window. This will sort all of the files to be downloaded in alphabetical order.
3) If you can't see the entire path, expand the path field by moving the mouse to the edge of the "Path" bar. When the icon changes, hold the left mouse button and move the mouse.
4) Select all of the files in the "thumbnail" subdirectory as shown in the path field of the queue window using the standard combination of left mouse click, CTRL key and/or the shift key.
5) Press the delete key on the keyboard and all of the selected files will be removed from the queue window.
6) Click "Download".



The download time will be faster since Web Vacuum won't have to spend time eliminating files you don't want.


Slow Sites

We've all seen these sites; they take a half an hour for the page to load or they just seem to stall half way through and sit there forever. Web Vacuum has a solution.

Open the options window and you'll notice a text box under the "Pause Queueing..." slidebar.



The default value is set to 60 seconds which is how long Web Vacuum will wait before it stops trying to get information from a site. Once the timeout value is reached, Web Vacuum will delete the file from the queue and try to download the next file. The 60 second default is to short of a time for some slow sites and should be increased to a larger number. Try several different values to determine what works bestsuch as 80 or 120. This will increase the chance of getting all of your selected files but not guarantee it so be sure to check that all the files you wanted are downloaded after Web Vacuum has run.


Stealth R

When all else fails, there is Stealth R.

In some cases, you may run into trouble when downloading files from a certain site. The usual problems are:
1) The files appear in the queue, try to download but don't.
2) The files all appear to have a memory size of 30,000 and won't download.
3) The files sit in the queue while the timer counts down and fails to download.


After you've checked for the usual typos, go to the lower right section of the options page and change the status of Stealth R by clicking on the checkbox.
Try the file download again and the problem will probably be solved.




GhostSurf Configuration

If you are using GhostSurf, you can easily configure Web Vacuum to work with it. Open the Options window and type in the following information in the proxy and port text boxes.



This information will point to GhostSurf which in turn will point to your regular internet connection and allow you to download files anonymously. For full information on GhostSurf, see it's review page.


Conclusion

As the above examples show, Web Vacuum can save you hours when downloading files from the web by allowing you to choose exactly which ones you want to download. Not only does it takes the work out of downloading files but it's real easy to learn how to use.
The previous examples should give you an idea of how well Web Vacuum works even though there are features that I didn't mention. If you want to find out about features like the stat and log tabs as well as the ability to save the queue, download Web Vacuum and try it out.
Unlike many programs on this page, Web Vacuum doesn't expire after 30 days if you don't register. Instead, each time it starts it will download the first 30 files and then display an annoying five second delay window between each subsequently downloaded file.



As with many programs, you have to ask yourself what your time is worth. If you don't like to download files then WebVacuum isn't for you. For the rest of us, the low registration cost of Web Vacuum will pay for itself in the first week of use.

To register Web Vacuum, start the program and use the "Buy Now" button in the center of the program screen.


This is the easiest way to register and it shows support for the sharewaregenie site.

You can download the trial version by clicking on the button below. I hope you find the program useful and would like to hear your comments at




- Dave -