14 DAY TRIAL // There are file downloaders and then there are file downloaders. When I hear this term I immediately think of Gigaget or FlashGet, Free Download Manager and the like. It is only normal, but applications getting movies, images and whatnot from a webpage are also called file downloaders.
The one that drew my attention today is PimpFish. If only for the name and your interested is stirred and you get an impulse of trying it. The software is designed to help you download movie files and images from web pages you visit. It integrates perfectly in Internet Explorer's shell as it comes under the form of a toolbar.
Unfortunately this web page elements grabbing instrument does not come for free and the price tag reads a pretty high price, $29.95. There is no trial period bu for this version you'll have to accept the 300 files download limit imposed by the developer.
Considering it is an IE toolbar you'd think that it does not come with too much of an interface, but the truth is that it appends quite a bunch of options to IE. The toolbar makes available a series of menus providing you file grabbing options, access to the options of the application and downloader interface.
The main advantage of PimpFish is that it can download all the images on a web page at once, dodging the advertisements on the page, giving you only clean images. Besides batch download of web pictures the application is also capable of downloading video files. However, regarding this, PimpFish may be a bit restrictive as it has absolutely no problem with Google Video, but upon trying other websites it did not place any video file in the download folder.
Grab options are available both in IE's context menu as well as in the toolbar menu. PimpFish allows you grabbing pictures, pictures the web page links to or movies the page links to. If you want to download all the files available on the page there is a "Grab Any File Type on This Page" option that does just that. The only condition to achieve this is to provide the specific file extensions the application should focus on.
In "Control" menu there aren't too many functions available though it is pretty consistent. The first chink of options is the most useful and interesting as it shelters the access to program's configuration options, download folder, offers gallery shortcuts and enables viewing download manager's window. Everything else is just a huge list to links for getting help using the app (from online help, online walkthrough and forum to program's homepage and developer's website).
PimpFish comes with security measures that can be enforced so that content from certain pages cannot be grabbed without introducing a password. Unfortunately, this feature did not work properly in IE7 and though a web page was protected by a password the application was not at all hindered in downloading the pictures available.
Downloader's interface is straightforward, presenting all the options in plain view. Its main window displays the files that are currently being downloaded and the status (download successful or not). In the right hand side there is a thumb of the last downloaded file (if available). The controls for downloading the files include a Start button, stop and skip function. There is no pause option available which comes as a downside.
Besides these functions PimpFish also allow the user to add his/her own link to be downloaded or share a file with a friend (SLAP files enabled).
Options menu in PimpFish is quite something. It contains lots of settings designed to customize the behavior of the application. General window let's you set the default download folder, enable the creation of M3U playlists for grabbed movies,maintain a history of all the grabs or choose the highlight color for grabbed pictures and movies (after grabbing these are marked by a colored border, so you can see at a glance what elements have been deposited).
Appearance settings deal with what it is displayed in the toolbar (password button, downloader), applying transparent window effects, enabling balloon tips for successful results or hiding the downloader task button when minimized.
The flexibility of the application allows adding your own extensions for movies and pictures. PimpFish already comes with a bunch of file formats, but you can customize the lists to suit your own needs. Filtering is another option designed to comply to your standards. This option lets the user choose a minimum and maximum of image size to be downloaded to the computer. Making the necessary settings in here ensures that only images with certain dimensions are taken into consideration. Additionally, the Ban list lets you filter out advertisements.
SkinFinder analyzes the pictures and determines which of them should be grabbed. The options available in this sense are dependent on user defined skin threshold value. This tool is particularly valuable for analyzing thumbnails.
FloatBar is a total fiasco as during our testing nothing worked. The modified settings were not saved and we could not make it visible no matter what.
A very fishy thing happened to the various passwords we applied for protecting certain websites. After a while the accounts began to disappear. This option's purpose would be to password protect websites against downloading files from them. But, as I said before it is useless to use the option as we had the same results with protected and unprotected ones.
Power users can handle PimpFish directly from the keyboard. The application can be imposed grab menu commands. The only trouble is using Ctr+Alt in the combination is mandatory for any shortcut.
PimpFish comes as a different kind of download manager, but unfortunately does not do too much of a job as there are some non-working functions. During our testing there were few video hosting web sites we could download movie files from.
The Good
PimpFish offers a different approach to downloading online content to your computer. Batch downloading images on a website is as easy as pushing a button.
The Bad
I think the application may still be "under construction" as there are several non-working options. Password protection is one of them and FloatBar options is another. Also, there aren't too many websites allowing downloading their content with PimpFish.
The price is another issue. $29.95 for a download manager that does not even work at full capacity? Also, getting an installer down on your computer requires typing in the extension type, otherwise the application will not recognize it.
The Truth
PimpFish works fine with picture downloading from web pages, but that is it. It simply replaces all those "right-click-save-picture-as" operations for each image on the page. There are issues to attend and the price is not doing a favor at all.
To tell you the truth those 300 downloads available in trial version are simply not enough for a proper evaluation.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
