Many sites on the internet have the silly habit of disabling browsers’ contextual menu and drag ability in order to forbid users from saving pictures to their computer; Facebook and IMDB are two sites that come to mind.
Now, copyright infringement is a crime. I hate copyright infringers. But I also hate those who treat me as one without me doing anything. Saving pictures to my own computer is a fair use. If I save a picture and don’t spread it around, I’m not violating any copyright laws.
So, if you are like me, and want to save some pictures for your own private use, there is an easy and simple way to do this.
In Safari, make sure that you have the ‘Develop’ menu enabled (Preferences->Advanced: check the ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar’).
Now, whenever you want to save a picture, while viewing the picture, select ‘Disable Javascript’ from the ‘Develop’ menu. With Javascript disabled, the contextual menu will show up when you right-click/control-click on the picture, so you can select ‘Save image’ to save it or you can drag it to your desired location on your system.
Then after that, enable javascript again so that you don’t lose any functionality.
thank you so much for the post. i have google chrome and it always disables pic dragging or saving from google. i got safari which is alot easier now for doing some photoshop. ty