GripIE Mass Downloader Plugin for Internet Explorer

GripIE is a plugin for Microsoft's Internet Explorer that integrates itself nicely in the Internet Explorer toolbar. It is assisting the user in downloading multiple media files at once from the active website. Supported are image, video and audio formats that are either embedded in or linked from the website.

A click on the GripIE icon in the Internet Explorer toolbar opens the plugin. I had the difficulty that the popup blocker blocked the plugin at first and that I had to allow it on a per site basis to use it. The popup blocker can be bypassed by clicking on the GripIE icon while pressing the CTRL key.

Once loaded it presents a color coded list of files that it detected. Images are light blue while movies are dark blue for instance. Each of the available media files can be filtered so that only the interesting files are displayed in the list sorted by server. Each file can be selected individually in the interface but it is also possible to check a server directly which will download all files from that server.

The download is started by pressing the Download Files button. Each file is downloaded separately directly in Internet Explorer and stored by default in the My Documents folder under the server name. The plugin works pretty well as long as the media files are directly linked from the website but fails when it comes to media streams. It does not work on Youtube for instance but that's probably not the main application for a mass downloader anyway.

Update: The developer website is no longer available on the Internet. The Internet Explorer add-on gallery offers a few alternatives. This includes the Bulk Image Downloader for image downloading needs, The Download toolbar for general purpose file downloads or The Flash Catch Video Downloader.

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