Andrew Gregory

Working Around the Extension-less Cache

Saturday, 21. June 2008, 03:27:53

extensions, opera, files, management, cache

For Opera 9.50, the cache management was changed so that the stored files had no extensions. While I've lost track of the precise reasons (an Opera employee made a statement early on in the beta tests), I have to conclude that it was done for a very good reasons and won't be changed.

Dare I point out that Firefox does the exact same thing? Or that Safari doesn't even make the individual files available AT ALL? Safari puts everything inside a single database file!

For three independent browser developers to arrive at the same solution, indicates to me there is a common problem, and that none of them will be reverting to their previous behavior.

Given that, what can be done to improve your cache-diving expeditions? Opera makes it really quite simple:

Go to Tools -> Advanced -> Cache (shortcut: opera:cache ).
Open the Links panel.
Optionally expand the panel to the full page.
Use the Quick Find field to search for file extensions, eg ".gif".
Use standard list selection techniques (Shift/Ctrl+click for multiple selections).
Right-click and "Save Linked Content As..." or "Save to Download Folder" (your Download Folder is specified under Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Downloads).

What would also be nice, and doesn't seem like a lot of work on Opera's part, would be to enhance the cache display page a bit. Two new columns to show the MIME type and download date/time would be very useful. Furthermore, since it's web-based, and that there are many drop-in solutions for sortable tables on the web, sorting the table by clicking the headings sounds like an almost trivial enhancement.

Poor Javascript Coding QualityMoving VMware Workstation License

Comments

wrtlprnft # 21. June 2008, 05:49

The most annoying part of this IMHO is the fact that external source editors sometimes have trouble figuring out the type of the file, especially if it's a badly written html document without any kind of header whatsoever.

NoteMe # 21. June 2008, 13:58

I have no idea why the extension was dropped, never read anything about it. But have you seen the JS/language fix Lex1 has made to show thumbnails in opera:cache? Nice little hack, and very useful.

Screenshot of it in action

- ØØ -

momo20859 # 21. June 2008, 22:46

MOMO here =]

momo addfrend say hi 2 MOMO?

Andrew Gregory # 22. June 2008, 03:36

@NoteMe: That thumbnails script trick is very good! Thanks for pointing me to that.

Edit: I've developed some tweaks to the cache thumbnail script: http://my.opera.com/Lex1/blog/show.dml/1014525#comment5528224

Lex1 # 2. July 2008, 22:18

there are many drop-in solutions for sortable tables on the web, sorting the table by clicking the headings sounds like an almost trivial enhancement.

I add sorting in «thumbnails script»

thetimfan # 27. July 2008, 10:13

When i moved from IE to opera 9.27 i was overjoyed with the product. I thought it was close to perfect. Many sites like Revver and Apple cache their videos and many flash slideshop apps cache the slide images to disk and like to pick them out of cache and save a copies for sharing, etc. (broadband is expensive where i live). I upgraded to 9.5 for the mail client revisions but all the other changes, especially this cache tweak, has screwed up my user experience. It's not at all convenient for me, so i've downgraded back to 9.27. But i know sooner or later 9.27 is gonna become critically outdated and then what? Does anyone else think they messed up a good thing since 9.27?

Prikolist # 21. August 2008, 14:05

Agreed, I regularly use sites that leave large files in cache that I save for later, and this is a horrible mistake on Opera developers part. I'm really annoyed how they keep copying bad things from Firefox, first the tab bar position, then the new tab shortcuts, good thing at least I can carry over settings so I don't need to change half the settings all the time. But while other annoyances can be fixed thanks to Opera's customizability, this one doesn't seem to be correctable. I'm very disappointed and thinking of switching back to 9.2x. Every version lately brings more bugs and disappointing changes then improvements. For example 9.51 randomly takes up one of CPU's cores at 100% until restarted, doesn't let you quit IRC, and changes the IRC font to something much less readable (to fix which you have to manually edit a file which gets overwritten with each next install, yey).