Christian’s Blog

I still greatly dislike IE8. I tried the original Beta and uninstalled it almost immediately. Windows 7 Beta shipped with IE8 beta so when using Windows 7 Beta I *must* use IE8. I hate this. There are too many options, too many features, too many icons, too many colors. IE8 is trying to provide the same amount of features of Firefox and they are failing. IE8 is a browser … Firefox is more of a tool for developers – it is a slim and efficient program for using internet applications. IE8 is a browser that has slapped on tools to use internet applications.

Despite my misgivings and dislikes I have found one thing I liked … Access to the You Tube Downloader and converter. Last night I was up until 2:00 a.m. looking for a small free application to convert .flv files to a common video type so I can put those videos on my Zune. I found nothing that worked the way I want. Firefox has download extensions, but nothing that also converts. Even afterdawn let me down.

So today I was checking out IE8’s websnips and found this: the You Tube Downloader. It is an application that downloads You Tube videos (duh) and also converts them to various formats. Despite the insinuation that this application would be part of IE8, it is not, it is a separate app. If you are looking to download and convert You tube videos I *strongly* recommend this application

source: http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/Time_Savers/YouTube_Downloader/

It is dead easy to use: To download the You Tube video, paste the link to the video where is says “enter video URL”. You can change the default download folder by clicking the little open folder icon. Make sure the “Download video from You Tube” radio button is selected then click OK, the download will begin.

Downloading …

After the download, select the “Convert video (previously downloaded from file”, the action is self explanatory – you have to download the video first …

You can adjust the quality of the video settings….

The process takes a few minutes then … Converted!

I’m still on the Ian Brown kick, especially considering he has never toured the US. So yeah, IE8 did something that I actually liked.