Membranophonist’s Ramblings

I wanted to add all the photos from a web gallery to my personal photo organizer. I thought first of using Automator to script this task because I know it works, but a potentially simpler method came to mind.

I dragged the URL of the thumbnail page from Safari’s address field (a .webloc URL pointer file) to iPhoto’s Dock icon:

After starting an import (it works!), this dialog popped up (no dice!):

Instead, iPhoto should offer to download images embedded on and linked from the URL contained in the <string> portion of the .webloc plist file. The dialog would default to offering to place the images in an album named using the page’s <title> element, which the user could edit:

The completed process:

• The dialog could be eliminated entirely if only the embedded images were downloaded, but I think the benefit of the options make up for having to address the dialog.
• A background image checkbox could be included, but I doubt it would be used much.
• The window area should also be a valid drop target. Currently, the green and white Copy cursor is displayed, but the URL is silently rejected; no snapback animation indicates that iPhoto cannot handle the object (which should also be indicated using the “Not allowed” cursor).
• iPhoto 5 is shown, but I know it doesn’t work in iPhoto 6 either.
• Aperture could allow the same kind of import interaction.
• Preview could open all the images in a group window.
• This would be a great place to use my spiffy dynamic iPhoto icon!

It appears that Safari is the only browser from which URLs dragged from the address field are seen as actionable objects by iPhoto.

In addition to being the author of the popular RBSplitView, Rainer Brockerhoff is a pretty damn good photographer.