Flickr hack: Download flickr’s protected photos with single click; no script, no extension

Flickr protects pictures by putting the transparent spaceball.gif on the photos to protect some from being downloaded. It’s been done by the users not wanting to publish their private photos. Normally, in firefox, you can right click on the photo, and then click on “Save Image As…” to save the picture. But with following the method above, you may com across with a 1×1 pixel picture.

By googling, you will find some solutions which let you bypass the space. For example by means of extensions or extra scripts and even firefox’s own menus. These tricks are a little bit time consuming and sometimes boring while you have opened some more pictures and do not want to move away from the page, or you are not at you own desk, or if you are a new web surfer. Just a single click in firefox and the photo is in your computer:

1. Open a download-protected flickr photo page. [example]
2. Press CTRL+A on the page to select everything.
3. If you look carefully on the very bottom of the photo, there you’ll see a blank-left space of spaceball.gif about 1mm.
4. Right click on that space and from the appeared menu click on “View Image”.
5. Now you can save the picture.

I, accidentally, ran into this bug of flickr and I have always succeeded. Give it try! That’s completely free.

Some other solutions:

• How to remove the flickr spaceball

• Flickr photo download HOWTO

• Download Flickr Photos Protected by Transparent spaceball.gif

• Flickr remove spaceball

How to Remove the Background Color of the Desktop Icons

If you are using a computer which is not only yours, and others use it frequently and always put a finger in every PROHIBITED pies (settings) in Windows XP, you might have encountered the problem that I have just had.

I had Desktop Icons with annoying colored background which stopped me from enjoying the beauty of my desktop wallpaper. I tried some of the ways that I always use to fix the problem. None of them worked. I did some googling and some solutions found again. They were all the same as I already knew. I’ll put them all here; then I offer my own solution as the last resort.

1st suggestion:

- Right click on the desktop and hover on “Arrange Icons By”.
- From the appeared sub-menu, select “Lock Web Items on Desktop”.
- If it is checked, “uncheck” it.

2nd suggestion (alternative for the 1st suggestion):

- Right click on the desktop and select “Properties”.
- “Display Properties” window appears. Click on the “Desktop” tab.
- Click on the “Customize Desktop” button.
- On the “Desktop Items” you can add/remove or modify desktop items. Check “Lock desktop items” from the “Web” tab.

3rd suggestion (Achilles heel):

- Right click on “My Computer” and select “Properties”.
- Choose the “Advanced” tab, then click on the “Setting” button.
- You can check or uncheck the settings to the ones preferred.

If you are not sure of the appropriate settings, you may choose “Let Windows choose what’s best for my computer” or “Adjust for best appearance” as well.

I, myself, prefer the last solution because I did fixed mine using the last.