Pilfer, Firefox Image Browser For Numbered Images
Image browsing can be a lot easier if you have the right tools at hand. Imagine a directory with 50, 100 or even 500 images that are all named similarly and only differ in the last digit or character of the file name.
Wouldn't it be more comfortable to see all images of that directory on the same page? Depending on the way the images are presented it could reduce the number of clicks significantly, especially if thumbnails are not shown on the screen, or if the pictures are divided onto multiple pages.
Pilfer is a handy Firefox extension for exactly that purpose. It tries to find additional images hosted under the same directory structure by scanning a specific range.
If you find the image DCS0001.jpg you could for instance make it scan the next 50, 500 or even 5000 numbers for additional images. The extension would then scan from DSC0002.jpg to DSC5001.jpg if 5000 would be selected as the range.
Even better, you can use the extension to search forward, backward or in both directions. But finding images is only half of what Pilfer is all about. The Firefox add-on displays its findings on a new page in the browse, and with that I mean that it displays all images that it has found on that page.
That page is a basic image browser that displays all images that have been found during the scan. The thumbnails on that page are clickable and the image browser displays them in full mode along with options to browse to the next or previous picture in line.
The images that are displayed can be saved directly to the local system as well. Pilfer supports both number and alpha ranges, and the creation of custom strings that are then available from the right-click context menu. Very handy for adding digital camera specific file name strings to the Firefox extension.
Another feature that may come in handy is that you can manually use the pilfer command in front of urls to search for images, e.g. pilfer url with options to use place holders in the form [x-y] in the url. The Firefox image extension scans the selected range and displays its findings on the result's screen.
Pilfer is a handy extension for Firefox, especially for users who go image hunting regularly and users who need to browse photo directories.
Update: The add-on was last updated in 2011. While that means that it has been abandoned, it is compatible with all recent versions of Firefox and appears to work just fine in those versions as well.
