Side Panel vs Options Page: How the Two Surfaces Work
Two surfaces, one workflow
Bulk Image Downloader From URL List is built around two distinct surfaces, and understanding the split is the key to using it well. The side panel is your image finder. The options page is your download engine. Find images on one, download and process them on the other. They are not duplicates of each other — they are two halves of a single pipeline.
The side panel: finding images
Click the extension icon and the side panel opens. This is where you collect and prepare image URLs. It is the finding stage: scraping pages, running URL lists, applying scraper filters, deduplicating, and saving sessions all happen here, alongside the current page you are looking at. The side panel’s job is to turn a website or a raw list into a clean set of image URLs worth downloading.
Because it sits beside the page, the side panel is the natural place to start when your images come from somewhere you are actively browsing.
The options page: downloading and processing
The options page is the full download engine, and it is where the heavy lifting lives. You reach it via the Open Options Page link, or through the extension menu under Options. This is where you:
- Build one or many download tasks.
- Apply processing — resize, convert, strip EXIF, watermark, the filename constructor.
- Control execution with parallel and queued modes.
- Run quality tools like the Advanced Image Filter and Duplicate Finder.
Crucially, the processing options live on a download task on the options page. That is the mental anchor worth keeping: if you are configuring how images get saved or transformed, you are on the options page, working on a task.
How the two connect
The surfaces are designed to hand off to each other. You find and refine your image set in the side panel, then send those results into the download engine on the options page, where you turn them into named, processed, downloaded files. “Find here, download there” is the whole model. The side panel answers which images; the options page answers how they get saved.
Why the split makes sense
Separating finding from downloading keeps each surface focused. The side panel can stay lightweight and live next to the page you are scraping, while the options page has the room to expose tasks, processing, and execution controls without cramming everything into a narrow panel. Once the division clicks, navigating the extension stops being a question — collecting URLs is a side panel job, and everything about saving and transforming them is an options page job. Knowing which surface owns which step is the fastest way to feel at home in the tool.
Keyboard shortcuts speed the handoff
Use the side panel shortcut to open the finder without leaving the page you are scraping, then jump to the options page when the URL list is ready. Docking the toolbar on the options page keeps queue status visible while tasks run in the background. Once you memorize which surface owns which step, you stop hunting through menus for settings that live on the other half of the workflow.