Image Surfer Pro Toolbar

File Button ISP Form Button Process Page Button View Button Tools Button Info Button Auto Range Override Direct URL Entry File Button ISP Form Button Process Page Button View Button Tools Button Info Button File Button ISP Form Button Process Page Button View Button Tools Button Info Button Auto Range Override Visualize Auto Range Modify Optimize Organize Cut/Copy/Paste Split Rollup Insert & Delete Nudging

Blow up of the Tools & Settings button on the Image Surfer Pro toolbar Tools & Settings
The Wrench Button

Drop down menu that appears when the wrench button is clicked File Button ISP Form Button Process Page Button View Button Tools Button Info Button Grab Images Toolbar Selection Segment Edit Menu Replace Text Clean Scratchpad User Configuration
The Tools & Settings menu is divided into four groups.
  • Tools which operate on the currently displayed webpage
  • Image Surfer Pro Toolbar Extensions
  • Fusker Collection Segment Editing
  • Image Surfer Pro operation and configuration
The most common uses of this menu are to change your user preferences or to activate and deactivate the toolbar extensions.

Grab Page Data:

The Image Surfer Pro Grab Page Data tool found on the Tools & Settings button on Image Surfer Pro Toolbar Tools & Settings menu grabs a copy of every image and video associated with the webpage currently in the IE display window and writes them to disk. It is similar to right clicking on every image and video and choosing "Save Picture As..." or "Save Video As...". However, this utility has several improvements over the Internet Explorer option.

The Grab Page Data tool does not grab Frame data (neither Raw nor Shockwave) - this type of data does not typically represent a single file which can be downloaded and used on your PC outside of a browser. It does however capture recognized types of static video files.

The webpage itself is also not saved as a file. To do this you should use the Internet Explorer save as option.

Continue reading about the details of downloading images by clicking here


Toolbars:

The Toolbars submenu from the Tools & Settings dropdown menu in Image Surfer Pro Auto Ranging Override menu selection Direct URL Entry menu selection
The Image Surfer pro toolbar may be expanded by two additional tools. Each option will have a checkmark visible to the left of the menu selection when that extension is already active. You can have these toolbar extensions appear automatically when Image Surfer Pro is first opened with general user preferences.


Auto Ranging Override:
The Auto Ranging Override toolbar extension is a text edit control which appears on the primary Image Surfer Pro toolbar just to the right of the Information Button

Auto Ranging Override NOT Active Auto Ranging Override Active
Image Surfer Pro toolbar with out Auto Ranging Override active Image Surfer Pro toolbar with Auto Ranging Override active

This toolbar extension allows you to quickly override the Auto Range user configurations when you are adding several image pictorials which are numerically fusked but don't have the same number of images from pictorial to pictorial.

Continue reading about the details of using the Auto Ranging Override by clicking here

URL Capture Bar:
The URL Capture Bar will appear below the main Image Surfer Pro toolbar when active.

URL Capture Bar NOT Active URL Capture Bar Active
Image Surfer Pro toolbar with Auto Ranging Override active Image Surfer Pro toolbar fully expanded


This toolbar extension is primarily used to parse "Embed Code" provided by most top tier tube sites in order to add video frame information to your fusker collection. It also allows you to directly enter any URL into your fusker collection. You may enter the information manually or via Cut-N-Paste in the text box. To add the URL to your fusker collection or process the "Embed Code" hit Enter while editing the text or click the + button to the right of the text box.

Continue reading about the details of using the URL Capture Bar by clicking here


Edit Selection:

The Edit Selection submenu from the Tools & Settings drop down menu Auto Range Modify Optimize Organize Cut/Copy/Paste Split Rollup Insert & Delete Nudging
The Edit Selection submenu is essentially the same as the Images Surfer Pro fusker collection tree view menu. This menu however does not include the Visualize option available from the tree menu.

This menu is provided simply as an alternative to right clicking to access the tree menu. Which menu you use is simply a matter of preference and you may find that for some commands you use one menu while for others you use the other.

Click any entry in the menu to continue reading about the functionality of that selection.

Replace Text:

The replace text dialog window Though it is rare, from time to time there is a need to change information in an entire sub tree of a fusker collection. This can happen for example if the hosting domain changes image file formats, file name structure, or the directory structure. Or maybe the site links to a particular resolution of an image by default and you wish to collect a different resolution.

This option allows you to quickly change text in all of the fusker collection segments below the current selection. You may use the check boxes at the bottom of the form window to specify what portions of the segment are searched.

Note there is no setting for changing values in a numeric fusk. If the same text appears more than once in a field only the first instance will be changed. The settings are persisted and will be set the same way the next time you use the tool.

If the processing takes more than a few seconds to complete a progress window will appear in the bottom right corner of the screen. After the processing completes a pop up window will inform you of the number of segments that were changed by the operation.


Clean Scratchpad

Example dialog seen when cleaning the Image Surfer Pro scratchpad During normal operation Image Surfer Pro creates a scratch pad directory within the user's application data directories. Each Internet Explorer browsing tab which has Image Surfer Pro running creates a unique scratch pad directory. These directories are meant to be temporary and in normal operation will be deleted automatically when the IE tab which created it is closed.

Depending upon the amount of work you have done with Image Surfer Pro, the directories may contain visualization webpages, fusker collection files, processing status files, and even image and video files.

In some cases IE itself may crash and leave an orphaned scratch pad directory behind. With IE11 Microsoft decided to give the impression of very quick webpage rendering by greatly extending their caching. They often cache webpages not only by saving the elements of the page in temporary files, but by caching the entire rendered browser window. Since Image Surfer Pro instances are also associated with the browser window it is also cached as a stale window and a new instance of Image Surfer Pro is created to go with the new webpage display. The Image Surfer Pro data and window should have remained while the browser window transitions to a new webpage, but instead a new blank collection is created with the new Image Surfer Pro instance. To make things worse, these cached windows are sometimes killed rather than closed down, a process that leaves orphaned scratchpad data in the temporary application directories.

In the 2.0 release we didn't fully realize how common this issue was with IE11 and provided only a manual means of cleaning the scratch pad area up. However, beginning in the 2.1 release we've added a silent daily clean up which runs the first time Image Surfer Pro becomes active for the day. This option in the Tools menu allows you to delete the scratchpad information at any time manually.

Using this tool will delete all Image Surfer Pro scratch pad directories. This includes directories which may be in use by other active browser windows. In most cases this will not cause an issue with Image Surfer Pro as they will simply be re-created if and when they are needed. However, it will terminate any Directed Search in progress. Visualization pages created in the active browser windows will no longer be available so "more" and "previous" image links will not be accessible. Fusker collections held in any active Image Surfer Pro window will be unaffected and may be used to re-create visualization pages or in any other normal fashion.

Preferences:

The final option on the Tools & Settings menu brings up the User Configuration window which lets you customize how Image Surfer Pro works based on your preferences and system capabilities.

Click here to explore the ways Image Surfer Pro can be customized.

Related User Preferences:

Image of User Preferences Dialog with the General tab selected - Toolbar Selection and Data Directory highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Processing tab selected - nothing highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Processing tab selected - nothing highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Views tab selected - nothing highlighted
Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Images tab selected - nothing highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Videos tab selected - nothing highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Frames tab selected - nothing highlighted Image of User Preferences Dialog with the Pages tab selected - nothing highlighted


General Tab: Default Data Directory
The {Default Data Directory} will be the default location used when you grab data from the displayed webpage.

General Tab: Tool Bars
The Auto Range Override and URL Capture Bar will be visible by default in newly opened Image Surfer Pro windows based on the {Show Auto Range Override at start up} and {Show URL Capture Bar at startup up} configurations.

Differences in Free and Full Versions

Screen capture of free version limitation dialog Grab Page Data:
The Free Version of Image Surfer Pro does not support grabbing image and video data from a webpage.