# Download Manager

The Download Manager can be used to download single files or even whole web sites from the internet and save them on your hard disk. You can start a download in many different ways.

Using the menu item File > Download you can manually create a download. You can configure the URL and all of the download parameters yourself. If you control-click (right-click) on a link in a web page and select Link > Download from the contextual menu you can also create a download where you can configure URL and download parameters, but the URL of the clicked link is already provided for you, so you don't need to enter it manually.

When clicking a link to a file which can't be displayed by iCab, it will be downloaded automatically. But in this case you can't configure any of the download parameters. The download starts automatically and iCab chooses all the parameters automatically. The downloaded file will be saved in the download folder (see below).

If you want to download a linked file which iCab would normally display in the browser window, you can hold down the Alt key (Option key) while clicking the link. Then iCab will download the file immediately, all parameters will be chosen by iCab. The downloaded file will be saved in the download folder (see below).

## Download Parameters

If you create a download manually (menu item File > Download or click the New Download button in the Download Manager window) a dialog box will open where you can configure all the parameters for the download.

All of these parameters do have a default value which can be configured in the "Download" panel of the Preferences dialog. So in case you need certain default values for your downloads, you should configure these in the Preferences dialog first, so you don't need to modify these parameters for the individual downloads anymore.

The most important Parameter is the URL of the file that should be downloaded. The destination for the download is the location on your hard disk where the download is saved. In general this is the "Downloads" folder on your disk or the Desktop itself.

In the Download dialog you can also tell iCab if you only want to download a single file, or if iCab should also download all files which are linked from the first file (for example to download a whole web site).

Download one file only
  Selecting this option will download only one single file. This is the file that is specified by the URL. This is the most common setting and is used to download files (like software) from web pages. There are no other parameters available for this case.
Download all linked files in same folder
  With this setting you can download a whole web site including subpages and images and other files that are linked from the page. The only restriction is that all the files must be located in the same folder on the same server as the first file that is downloaded (the one that is addressed with the URL setting). By clicking the Configure limits button you can set various limits to make sure that you don't download files you don't need or to make sure that you don't download too much data. You can configure the following details:

  The Format setting can be used to tell iCab to save the files as individual files in a folder hierarchy on your disk, or to save all the files in a single Web Archive file. Saving the files as individual files has the advantage that you can directly open all the files with other applications. But opening the downloaded web page in a browser directly from your hard disk might not always work, because some web pages require a web server to work properly (for example by using absolute paths which are based on the server file system). Saving the downloaded files as a Web Archive has the advantage that all the data is saved in a single file and the web page can be opened in iCab even when the page would require a server to work properly. The disadvantage is that you can't access the individual files anymore.

  You can also set some limits like the number of files and the amount of data that will be downloaded at most, and the number of links that will be followed measured from the start page (the link depth). If you keep one of these fields empty, there's no limit for this setting anymore.

  It's possible to tell iCab to load or not to load certain file types. Many common file types (images, video, audio files, etc.) can be directly checked/unchecked. iCab can distinguish between files that are embedded in the web page (like images which are directly displayed in the web page) or linked files.

  You can also provide a comma-separated list of file extensions for files that must be downloaded (include extensions) or which must not be downloaded (exclude extensions).

Download all linked files on same server
  This setting is similar to the previous one with the exception that more files are addressed and downloaded. The files that are downloaded don't need to be located in the same folder than the first file, they only need to be located on the same server.
Download all linked files
  This setting is similar to the previous one, but this time there's no limitation anymore from where the files are downloaded. They can be located on any server. So be careful because without other limitations you could download the whole web with this setting ;-)

In the download dialog you can configure that iCab should automatically remove the download entries from the download manager window when the download has finished successfully. Using this option will automatically tidy up the download manager window so only unfinished and pending downloads are displayed. Downloads which are aborted by the user or by some kind of error will remain in the download manager and won't be removed automatically.

Postprocessing Downloads means that iCab will check if another application can process the downloaded file and will call this application. For example when downloading a "sit" file iCab could pass the "sit" file to the Stuffit Expander" application so that this application can extract the file. What exactly is happening when postprocessing is saved in a preferences file of the MacOS which can be configured with applications like MisFox.

When leaving the Download dialog with the OK button the download is not started automatically. The "Start Download" button will do this.

## Download Window

The Download Manager window can be opened by selecting the menu item Tools > Download Manager. In this window all downloads will be listed which are created, inactive, running or finished. You can start, stop, remove or create new downloads from here as well.

You can select downloads and then start, stop or remove the selected items. But you can also start all pending downloads without selecting them first. Just click the button Start Download to do this. This will start all downloads which are not yet running and which are marked with a check mark. iCab will automatically remove the check mark for Downloads which are finished. So these finished downloads won't be downloaded twice. By removing or setting the check mark manually, you can mark finished downloads as "pending" again or vice versa.

In the contextual menu of the Download Manager you can also let iCab reveal the downloaded file in the Finder.