View websites with cached images?
Hello, new here...
Is there an extension/addon/plugin for Firefox where you can view cached images on webpages so that it doesn't have to reload them anymore? Then when you have images disabled (to prevent more images from coming through from a webpage), it will just use whatever images are cached locally for that particular webpage? I have SettingSanity 1.2 extension so that I can turn off/on images whenever I please. However, this extension only fully turns off or on all images, it does not use image cache. Thus when it is turned off, all images are blank whether or not it was already downloaded to your browser from the website. This feature is built into other browsers such as Opera for many years now. This is an important feature especially for those who wish to keep webpage downloads to a minimum due to mobile data plans where your gigabytes are limited, because images take much greater filesizes than text, when all you need is to just download the image once instead of repeatedly. Or am I wrong and that Firefox does show cached images (when images are Enabled, not disabled)? If there is, where can I tweak this in options/prefs? I am on a FF version exactly a year ago. Thanks.
All Replies (12)
No there is not a Extension for that do to security risks . But it can be done this way, I think : https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html Makers of many useful utilities.
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
When all other content used on the page is in the disk cache or available locally then you can switch to "Work Offline" mode to prevent Firefox from retrieving data from internet.
Pkshadow said
No there is not a Extension for that do to security risks . But it can be done this way, I think : https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/image_cache_viewer.html Makers of many useful utilities. Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.I do not understand why it could be a security risk when other different brand browsers have this feature. Yes, I think that Image cache viewer only lists what images are in the cache, and not show them on a webpage in their proper locations. I have not tried it but I suspect that is all what it does, just some kind of list. No, it does not solve this issue.
cor-el said
When all other content used on the page is in the disk cache or available locally then you can switch to "Work Offline" mode to prevent Firefox from retrieving data from internet.It would not make sense to Work Offline because then you are not connected to the Internet when you are still browsing. Is that what you are saying?
If this is confusing to some people, go download & install Opera browser. Now in the Status bar at the bottom (if the status bar is displayed), turn on (Show) images , go to a webpage that has text & pictures. It now has that stuff in the cache. Now change images from "Show" to "No" images & all the pictures will disappear from that page. Now change from "No" to "Cached" images & all the pictures on that webpage will re-appear, but the difference is that those images are coming from cache & not streamed from the webpage. Now you save data by not having to download those images again. The only time the pictures will be redownloaded is if you refresh the page and/or you clear the cache. Now sometime later, that webpage might change & add new images (that are not in your cache), so that means when you go back to that page like a week later (with Opera still set to "Cached images"), the images on that page that are still there will still appear because they are coming from your cache, while any updated/added images on the webpage will only show up as blank (because you are set up as "cached images"). I hope that makes sense. This is the type of scenario that would also be advantageous in Firefox, when you try to keep your amount of downloaded data to a minimum. Some kind of Firefox extension would be nice. I still don't understand how this would be some kind risk. Opera has been doing this for years & no one has complained of security nor has this feature been deprecated/deleted.
Look did the program work ?
Yes it was a security risk : https://www.howtogeek.com/333230/why-firefox-had-to-kill-your-favorite-extension/
Mozilla ok;s Extensions submitted by the Developers to be used with Firefox. They ok them only and give the Developer a web page to distribute their Extension from. This in no means that Firefox Support does the Developers Support when their page has a Support link and a contact Link.
So that said , Make a Extension.
Note put in old extension name : https://mozilla.github.io/extension-finder/
Going on about te issue does not solve your issue. If there is no Extension there is no Extension and there are other ways to do things before Extensions where invented.
Maybe 2 months from now there will be. This is the solution as it stands today.
Pkshadow said
Look did the program work ? Yes it was a security risk : https://www.howtogeek.com/333230/why-firefox-had-to-kill-your-favorite-extension/ Mozilla ok;s Extensions submitted by the Developers to be used with Firefox. They ok them only and give the Developer a web page to distribute their Extension from. This in no means that Firefox Support does the Developers Support when their page has a Support link and a contact Link. So that said , Make a Extension. Note put in old extension name : https://mozilla.github.io/extension-finder/ Going on about te issue does not solve your issue. If there is no Extension there is no Extension and there are other ways to do things before Extensions where invented. Maybe 2 months from now there will be. This is the solution as it stands today.Which program? Image cache viewer? No, that only shows a list of what's in the cache. I read that article "why-firefox-had-to-kill-your-favorite-extension/" but did not really see anything about cached webpage viewing, it was more about obsoletion of older extensions. I had gone through the extension lists earlier but nothing really showed up, as I would have thought something like this would be in the first 10 pages or so of extensions, but I can keep looking. I would not know how to make such an extension myself. True, if such a feature as the one I mentioned does not exist today, whether as 3rd party extension or integrated in main program, then someday later it might. For that reason, I will stick with Opera when using a limited data plan. Or run Firefox in certain cases with images disabled (blank spots where the images should be).
Yes, just keep checking for something as there is always someone willing to move in on that. In the meantime there must still be away to view these that will work for you.
https://techjourney.net/display-and-view-firefox-cache-files-without-browser-cache-viewer/
https://free-cache-view.soft112.com/
Just have to search for a stand alone program that will view it.
This drastic but will give you to May : Going back : unfortunately 56.0.2 and below is no longer safe to use for every day use do to security issues, but 52.5.0 ESR is. It will continue to get security updates until May 2018, and you can download and install it from this page: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/organizations/all/ Note : Legacy Extensions will be deleted or removed in any version update after May 2018.
You should make a backup of your Profile before going back and just because: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
As said in that Techjourney article, in the first paragraph... "The usage of web cache and cached objects is to reduce bandwidth usage,". That is the most important concept here, to reduce bandwidth usage, and is what I've been explaining.
That Free Cache View looks like it only views cache from some sort of list, and not via the website/page.
Here is the help page at Opera about this image caching in their browser: http://help.opera.com/Windows/12.10/en/images.html
Ok, I found a Firefox extension that is very close (but still no cigar) called "Load from Cache": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/load-from-cache/
In that extension's review section, there is someone named "harl windwolf" that explains that Opera has already this type of feature for a long time (search for his name or 'opera' on that page).
I will not add the extension though as it would not seem to behave as I would like it as it is in Opera, i.e. 'Load from Cache' forces Firefox to get everything from cache even if you do a page refresh, which is not how Opera works with cache and/with images. In Opera, if you do a page reload/refresh, then it will request everything from the website and not from cache.
Oh, another feature that Opera has is if it is set to "Cached images" & you suddenly switch it to "Show images", it will automatically grab all images from the webpage that is not already in cache and will show it. Thus the webpage you see has a combination of newly downloaded pictures & those that were already in cache.
The Seamonkey browser also has this same limitation, i.e. images can only be turned on or off, but no cached images.
So yeah, for now, I will just have to be satisfied using the SettingSanity extension which can disable/enable images, because the FF developers took that feature out in later versions of FF. :/
Modified by webnoid
I do not understand. If say want them gone because of speed so delete them from Options. Use CCleaner or is it you want to save the ones you want to keep or the ones that are of the pages you use all the time...
Am still not grasping this logic if you could please, simple as I am stupid tonight.
Hehe, I have tried to explain as much. I will try again, this will get long in the tooth, lol ...
When you load a website/webpage, you download the html code, the javascript code, text... and images, if any. Each of these have filesizes, right? One image could be 1 kilobyte, or it could be 1 megabyte, in size. Text can be compressed as it gets to your PC, saving file space (56k dialup modems could also compress text). So in effect, one webpage could total up to 10 kilobytes of stuff or if it is pretty busy in design, it could download 10 megabytes in size. And a lot of times, most of that 10 megabytes of bandwidth could be lots of images that are on that webpage. It really depends on the quality of images that website designer put on that page, whether he/she knows about image compression or not, or if it's necessary for the image quality to be high. The higher the image quality or image size, the larger its file size is going to be. And when that image pops up on your browser, you just effectively downloaded that image to your browser and whether or not it was 10 megabytes or 10 kilobytes, it still used bandwidth. Does that make sense so far?
So back to the example of that webpage that has 10 megabyes full of stuff that got streamed to your browser when you pulled up that page... So, with images enabled, all 10 mb of that webpage gets to you. Let's say again, for example, that roughly 80% of that 10mb is pictures on that webpage... if you now disable images on your browser, that means your browser will only load everything except images. When you pull up that webpage, a lot of places will look blank and empty, because those spaces are where the images should be, but since you turned off images, they won't show, which also means those images DID NOT GET DOWNLOADED TO YOUR BROWSER (AND CACHE). If we now calculate the bandwidth usage for this example (80% images, as we said earlier) when images are turned off, that means that for the 10 mb of stuff on that webpage, your browser only downloaded the text and javascript, and no images, which only comprised of 20% of the bandwidth (100%-80%=20%). And 80% of 10 mb is 8mb, but you only downloaded 2mb (text, html & javascript code). You just saved 8mb of bandwidth. Now accumulate all those webpages you might peruse in one sitting and those bytes of stuff accumulate, from 1kb to 100kb to 1mb to 10mb to 100mb, depending on what sites you are looking at.
Staying with this example above, you have images enabled, so you pull up that page worth 10 mb of stuff. Your bandwidth just used 10 mb to see the webpage full of text and images. All that 10 mb is now in your browser cache and it will stay there unless you delete the cache or something (or some of it might get recycled if you go over your cache size limit). Ok, you're done browsing and you close your browser. Now, a couple days later you open up your browser and you go back to that webpage. If you refresh/reload that page, you browser will most likely download that 10mb of stuff again. Now your bandwidth just used up 20mb (10mb from a couple days ago and a page reload today). You just wasted 10mb bandwidth of the same stuff that you redownloaded, when it wasn't necessary if you had not refreshed the page. Let's say that if a couple of days later, the webpage designer added a few more images that wasn't there before when you were perusing it a couple days ago. That means that webpage has changed, but the image pointers to the older images that were there a couple days ago has not changed. That means those images are still in your cache and they will pop back up on the webpage in their correct places, i.e. image1.jpg and image2.png are still in their same spots on the webpage.
In Firefox, afaik, when you pull up a webpage full of images and text, just like other browsers, all that stuff gets into the browser cache. However, standard current Firefox versions do not have the ability anymore to turn off images, because the developers for some reason deleted that feature to disable images when it used to be there in older versions of Firefox. Because of that, when you pull up a webpage, you get everything downloaded, images, text and all. You sucked up all the bandwidth for that webpage, 10mb worth of it. If I wanted to save bandwidth and not have to downloaded/see the images and all I needed to see is the text, then I would disable images, either in older versions of Firefox or with the SettingSanity extension I mentioned earlier.
In Opera, I have the choice of changing between No images, Show images, or Cached images, when looking at a webpage and I can switch between those with a mouseclick. Let's say I wanted to see all that 10mb worth on that example webpage, I just change the setting to Show Images. Ok, so I just downloaded 10mb of that page. I don't want to have to redownload it to save bandwidth, so I change setting to Cached Images. If I delete the tab of that webpage in Opera, but then make a new tab and pull up that webpage again, it will not download the 10mb worth of stuff again, it will just pull up what is now in the cache. I just saved 10mb when I pulled up that webpage again (and I didn't also not have to refresh the page), because everything was loaded from the browser cache for that page. If I wanted to, I can also turn off all images, by changing to No Images. This turns off images so they won't download from a webpage (on the first time), or not show images that are already in cache.
The difference here between current Firefox and Opera is that in Firefox, it's either show all images or no images, and in Opera I can show images or use the images that are already in cache, or thirdly I can turn off images. The difference is that Opera can show images on the webpage that's coming from cache but in Firefox it does not. When you have an Internet service that has unlimited bandwidth, all of this does not matter (it is moot), you can pull up and reload those images on that one webpage over and over again. If you have a limited data plan, like for some cell phone plans and you are using the Internet on your smartphone, the data plan may only be limited to say 10gb per month. Or in some cases, it can be unlimited or with some crappy plan it may only be 5gb or less per month. By turning off images (or loading the images once on the first try), you save bandwidth by not have to redownload the images, because as I said earlier, images have larger filesizes than even the entire page's worth of text and html code.
The other advantage of cached images (or cached pages in general) is that they pull up faster on your browser screen because they are not getting downloaded again off the internet. The slower your broadband connection, the more you will notice how slow that page is getting downloaded. Compare the difference in speed between 56k dialup and say something like 10mbps broadband. Huge difference. With cached images/pages, it's pulled up immediately. Download a page chock full of images with 56k dialup. It's going to be snail-slow. But once all that stuff is in the browser cache, and you pull up that page again, it will be lightning fast, compared to when you pulled up that page for the first time on dialup.
Once again, cached images on a webpage helps to save bandwidth and also for speed. Opera has it, but Firefox does not, I think. And I think it's a nice feature to take advantage of saving bandwidth. The big question is, are current versions of Firefox using cached images to save bandwidth whenever I pull up the same webpage again or does it download those images again? Maybe it does or maybe it does not. Only the FF developers might be able to answer this.
Well, I don't know if all that wall of text I just typed helped clear some things up or it confused it even further, but I will stop here for now for you and anyone else who is still confused to soak this all up. And I can discuss further later.
, Yes knew that, just needed what you were getting at. SO this is broad view but still holds as that is what caches do : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Firefox/Tweaks
Now, this may work, it may break things but it may get you your addon back. https://www.ghacks.net/2017/08/12/how-to-enable-legacy-extensions-in-firefox-57/ As for using a nightly build no idea. The setting is in current release.
Now if have the room can do this : download the Developer Edition https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/developer/ it inspects stuff on a website but you do not need to use the tools. It has a compatibility setting at the end of the install and can run 2 versions of Firefox. So could test in that with out breaking anything in daily browser or you could go back to the ESR Version yet have a modern Firefox also.
Just trying to give you options to play with here.
Thanks I appreciate your effort, but the addon is fine, it is not broken in any way. SettingSanity works the way it should, but it does not behave as natively as it does in Opera. In other words, SettingSanity turns off/on images in modern versions of Firefox the way Firefox used to be in older versions before the developers started monkeying around with it and coded it out completely for some strange idiotic reason. I am not totally satisfied with it, but it is better than nothing. For that reason, most of my browsing will be done in Opera.
webnoid said
Thanks I appreciate your effort, but the addon is fine, it is not broken in any way. SettingSanity works the way it should, but it does not behave as natively as it does in Opera. In other words, SettingSanity turns off/on images in modern versions of Firefox the way Firefox used to be in older versions before the developers started monkeying around with it and coded it out completely for some strange idiotic reason. I am not totally satisfied with it, but it is better than nothing. For that reason, most of my browsing will be done in Opera.
Believe provided this in private message. https://www.howtogeek.com/333230/why-firefox-had-to-kill-your-favorite-extension/
Keep looking, 1 may turn up yet.