Created 6 January 2012, last updated 12 May 2012

This is an application that downloads all your tabblos from Tabblo, the photo-sharing story-telling site I helped build, and which is due to be shut down on May 31, 2012.

Getting the program

Tabblo Lifeboat runs on either Windows or Mac. Download the version that's right for you:

Windows: Tabblo_Lifeboat.exe. This is not an install kit, it is the program itself. Run it after downloading it.
Mac: Tabblo_Lifeboat.dmg. Opening this will give you a "Tabblo Lifeboat" disk. Open that, and you will find a "Tabblo Lifeboat" application. Double-click it to run it.

Running the program

When you run Tabblo Lifeboat, a new window appears in your browser. Enter your Tabblo username and password. Other than that, you have only one choice to make: whether to download full-sized photos or not. If you do, it will take much longer. If you don't, you'll only have photos at the size they appear in your tabblo.

Once you've entered your account information, click Start. It will connect to Tabblo, log you in, get a list of all your tabblos, and then start downloading them one at a time. This can take a long time. The green-on-black window shows the geeky stuff happening behind the scenes, and should give you a sense of the progress.

If you need to stop the program, just click Quit, and it will stop. You can then close the browser window. Re-launch Tabblo Lifeboat when you want to continue downloading. Once you enter your username and password and click Start again, it will pick up where it left off.

Eventually, all your tabblos will be downloaded, and a message at the top of the browser window will show you the location of your tabblos.

What you get

When Tabblo Lifeboat is done, in your Documents folder, you will have a folder called Tabblos. In there will be a folder named for your Tabblo username. You can use Tabblo Lifeboat with a number of different usernames, and each will download into its own folder. In the username folder will be a sub-folder for each tabblo. Each sub-folder has an HTML version of the tabblo and the full-resolution photos. Unfortunately, the tabblos don't include the comments or the view history. The layout of the page should be the same as on Tabblo, although speech bubbles aren't included. If you find other problems, let me know.

In addition to each tabblo in its own sub-folder, you will have three HTML files that act as a table of contents:

all.html shows all of your tabblos, regardless of their status.
published.html shows all of your published tabblos, regardless of their access setting.
public.html shows only public published tabblos.

All of these files are in a form that you could put on a web server so the pages are viewable on the web. How to do this is complicated, and I'm afraid I can't help with it. If you do this, keep in mind: the access controls on Tabblo are not present in these files. If you put a private tabblo on a web server, anyone will be able to see it.

Change history

Version 2.2

Sometimes, the downloaded tabblo zip file seems OK, but is actually missing some images. Tabblo Lifeboat now checks for this when the zip file is downloaded, and will retry if parts are missing. It will also check all your previously downloaded tabblos in case you had downloaded them with an earlier version.

Version 2.1

Added a choice about whether to download original photos or not.

You can download from more than one account without getting things tangled up.

Better indications of current status, and better handling of starting and stopping.

Version 2.0

Added a browser-based UI.

More help

If you're having trouble getting your tabblos, let me know. Maybe there's something I can change to make it work better.

If you know what you're doing with Python, you can hack on the code for Tabblo Lifeboat yourself.

Comments

Peter Portante 6:26 AM on 23 Jan 2012

Hi Ned,

Thanks for polishing this. It works great.

It is super slow, though, given the resources HP is probably devoting to the site. Is there a way you could indicate when the script is waiting for the first byte back from the request vs. slowness of transfer speed?

Thanks again!

-peter

Eric Foster 11:01 AM on 24 Jan 2012

Thank you SO much Ned!

Nice work, which I'm sure Tabbloers will appreciate!

and "Hi" Pete!

Eduardo Affonso 11:28 AM on 24 Jan 2012

Good job, Ned! Thank you A LOT.

JamesNicolay 4:53 PM on 24 Jan 2012

This is very helpful! Thanks, Ned!

Peter Portante 8:11 PM on 24 Jan 2012

FYI: All 175 Tabblos were eventually downloaded. I never had to rerun the program, I started it on the day I was notified about v2.0, the 21st, and it just completed sometime today (not sure when).

Thanks Ned!

Ps - "Hi" Eric!

Rhonda Ewers 12:46 AM on 25 Jan 2012

Thank you and bless you Ned! We love our tabblos - they are the stories of our lives...

Peter Portante 9:03 PM on 28 Jan 2012

Ned, nice work on 2.2. I reran it, after moving my tabblos into the account name subdirectory and it found a bunch that needed to be re-downloaded. Thanks! -peter

David Boudreau 3:00 AM on 2 Feb 2012

Thank you for this Ned! Extremely considerate, and I think I've got all my tabblos downloaded to my PC. However, it seemed to hang on one single particular photo in my last tabblo, so I just copied and pasted the URL I saw in the running log, and downloaded the zip file of that tabblo directly. All photos in the tabblo appear to be fine except for the one photo that may have gotten corrupted: /tabblo_1832449/photos/tabblo_P8220129.JPG (giant leather boot without any people standing in front of it). One photo out of many is not bad considering I liked to cram a ton of photos in many of my tabblos! Anyway just thought I'd mention it since Lifeboat didn't seem to officially "finish" cleanly. I had selected "include original full size photos (slower)" but let it run for a few hours, still hung at the same spot... I also tried restarting Lifeboat and it wouldn't even display the "Read 1234567 bytes" info as when originally run, just appear to get stuck at the "Downloading 12 of 12" message. Here's the last few lines of my log when I first ran it:

Downloading 12 of 12: http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/zip/1832449/?orig=1

Read 1048576 bytes..

Read 2097152 bytes..

Read 3145728 bytes..

Read 4194304 bytes..

Read 5242880 bytes..

Read 6291456 bytes..

Read 7340032 bytes..

Read 8388608 bytes..

Read 9437184 bytes..

Read 10485760 bytes..

Read 11534336 bytes..

Read 12582912 bytes..

Primoz 10:57 AM on 13 May 2012

HI! What does it mean: "Retrying... (Didn't get a complete zip file.)" and continuing the d/l? Will I miss some of my pics?

Ned Batchelder 11:47 AM on 13 May 2012

@Primoz: that message means some data wasn't downloaded, but the retrying will automatically keep trying until it is complete. You shouldn't have to worry about it.

Dennis Irwin 10:20 AM on 14 May 2012

Hi, I have tried "Lifeboat" several times and get a browser msg: "Error on Page." Any idea what the problem could be? I have 46 Tabblos.

Thanks, //Dennis//

LostAbroad 11:29 AM on 14 May 2012

Hi Ned, I got now for 3rd time the following message:
"Retrying... ([Errno 22] invalid mode ('wb') or filename: 'tabblo_442002\\photos\\tabblo_=?ISO-8859-1?Q?y=F6maisemaa.jpg?=')
[Errno 22] invalid mode ('wb') or filename: 'tabblo_442002\\photos\\tabblo_=?ISO-8859-1?Q?y=F6maisemaa.jpg?='
Done"
and all stops. Any idea what to do?
thanks,
LostAbroad (184 tabblos)

Ned Batchelder 2:09 PM on 14 May 2012

Everyone: as problem reports come in, I'm working on them privately with the people affected. I'll post solutions or updated code here as we find solutions.

Maria 11:03 PM on 14 May 2012

Hi,
I just wanted to Thank you, I will let you know if i experience any problems.
Instructions are very clear and it is super nice of you to give us this great gift !
Maria

Primoz 5:31 PM on 15 May 2012

I'm sorry to bother again but here's what happened (after 3 days of downloading):
Downloading 51 of 106: http://www.tabblo.com/studio/stories/zip/1798053/?orig=1
Retrying... (HTTP Error 500: INTERNAL SERVER ERROR)
HTTP Error 500: INTERNAL SERVER ERROR
Done
I've tried to restart 3 times and it stops after several tries saying what you read. Any help?
Thnaks.
P.

Maria 5:36 PM on 15 May 2012

Hi,
I've been trying to downlaod since last night and have only got to 5 of 32, is that normal?

Ned Batchelder 5:38 PM on 15 May 2012

It often takes a long time to download the tabblos, especially if you are getting full-size photos. As long as it seems to be making progress, however slow, it will finish.

George Libbares 10:56 PM on 15 May 2012

Thanks Ned. I appreciate this a lot.