.topic howtoDown
.title "How to download a site"
I am going to try to guide through the steps of downloading a site.
It is very easy to download more than you want.
Save makes the current options be the default options for Getleft and Load sets the current options to the default values.
Notes:
The dialog has a taskbar with the following buttons:
From left to right:
In case there are links to download in the page but they are not
available with the current options, the window will show a message
indicating you will have to change the options. In this case, it is
usually a good idea to check the original page in order to know
which options you need to set.
Please note that if the links are within
JavaScript code, there is nothing Getleft can do about them.
Below the taskbar there is a second one with several file extensions followed with '+' and '-' sings, you can use them in order to activate or deactivate the links ended in the respective extensions.
There is also an empty entry in which you can enter any extension you
may want to activate or deactivate.
If you right click on the dialog, a context menu will appear, mainly
you may need it in order to:
If you stop it, you will be asked if you want Getleft to keep the download in the queue to continue later.
The short answer is that you can't, not with Getleft.
As usual the long answer is more complicated:
If you want to download two sites at the same time, you can do it simply by running Getleft twice and downloading one site from each instance of the program.
Eventually, I will release version 2.0 of Getleft that will be able to download several sites simultaneously.
'Eventually', by the way, is more than six months.
But if you want to download more than one file from the same site at the same time, I am afraid you will have to use another program, I don't think Getleft will ever do that, as I don't think we have the right to monopolize servers, I mean, I don't want to turn Getleft into a one man slashdot effect.
Besides, you must consider that the bandwidth your ISP allocates you is not going to grow because you are downloading more than one file. That means that it is only worth it if one of the servers you are downloading from is slow, otherwise all the files will download more slowly than they would if you were downloading only one and Getleft will take pretty much the same time anyway.
If you disagree with what I just said, please, don't hesitate to
let me know.
.topic howtoAuto
.title "How to download all the sites in the queue"
If you have several sites in the queue and you want Getleft to download them all without asking you any questions, you only have to:
Getleft will change the colour of the sites you selected and start downloading them all, one after the other.
If you want to stop Getleft, click on the 'Auto' button again,
the current site being downloaded will keep being downloaded on
manual mode.
.topic howtoDelay
.title "How to program a delay"
Imagine you want to download a site but not right now, maybe it is cheaper to do it at night, or maybe you get better speed at certain hours.
So, how can you do it?
It is quite simple really, you only have to:
Notes:
Getleft won't connect the computer to the Internet or
disconnect when the downloading is done.
Look in the 'Tools' menu and click on the 'Configure proxy' entry, a dialog box appears in which you can enter the address of your proxy. You can check the address in the configuration of your browser, failing that, you can ask your network administrator.
If your proxy requires authentification you can enter your username and password, if you choose not to save the password you will be queried for it when Getleft tries to download a file for the first time.
Getleft doesn't support authentification through Microsoft's
NTLM protocol.
.topic howtoOther
.title "How to save space"
This option allows to recursively scan through a directory tree, deleting files that match a certain pattern and substituting them with empty files with the same name.
This is useful is a site takes more than a session to download. For example, imagine you use two computers, one with a fast, reliable or, at least, cheap Internet connection, like the computer at work or at college, and another one, your very own, without it. You can download the sites in the first one and take them to the second, in floppies, Zips,... With this option you can free space in the first computer and Getleft, seeing that the file already exists, won't try to download it again.
As the files get changed to keep only relative paths, the original ones are kept with an '.orig' extension. This command deletes the new files and renames the original ones to their real name.
This is useful, is you actually want to mirror a site. This program, though, is
not a good tool for mirroring sites.
.topic howtoUpdate
.title "How to update a former download"
After finising a download, Getleft saves the url and the directory where you saved it, you can access this log by clicking in the button with the book icon.
If you double-click on one the urls, a popup dialog will appear giving you the choice between updating the site or simply downloading it again, which makes sense if you first change the downloading options or if you the stopped the download before it was completed.
If you right click on the url, a more complete menu will appear, to update, download, change options, change the local directory,...
This log only has space for 100 entries, after that the first one gets overwritten. If you
don't want one url to be deleted, you can right-click on it and check the 'Do not erase' entry.
.topic howtoSingle
.title "How to download a single file"
If you just want to download a single file, like for example:
http://www.somedomain.com/somedomain.tar.gz
You only have to enter that url, Getleft will then save it into the directory
you tell it, without the directory structure of the original site.
.topic howtoPage
.title "How to download a single page with images"
You only have to enter the URL of the page in the usual way, when the dialog to choose files appears, you use the buttons at the bottom to disable all files and then enable all image files.
Or if you want to do it in automatic mode, you set the 'Levels' option
to '1', this will download the page and all the links in it, including images.
.topic howtoHelp
.title "How to get help"
Since you are already reading the manual, I am not going to tell you to
do so, you can: