Flickr users around the world use Zilla to automate the upload of photos and videos to their Flickr accounts and save 100s of hours in the process. “I wanted to backup 100+ gigs worth of original sized photos to Flickr and after trying many many tools, Zilla was the one that finally worked. Dec 04, 2016 The Flickr Uploadr is a Yahoo! Widget that allows you to upload images to the Flickr photo-sharing service direct from your desktop. Simply provide the path of your files in the directory or drag and drop your photos into the interface and you're done. Now that rcrowley has left Flickr, is anyone at Flickr fixing the issues in Uploadr, or is the project on hold until another developer is hired? Posted ages ago. ( permalink) Zoolcar9 says: I've just ported DOM Inspector 2.0.0 to Flickr Uploadr 3.1 If you want to write extensions for Uploadr, you might find it useful.
Starting at Flickr a short nine months ago, I was given the state of the Flickr Uploadr and told to make it better. Better meant many things. It meant cross-platform so we could move forward with one codebase. It meant localized in all of Flickr’s languages without hackery. It meant new features that would make uploading easier and encourage people to add metadata to their photos. And while we didn’t explicitly talk about it at the time, better meant open source.
Settling on a platform
Straight C? No. Java Swing? Adobe AIR? XULRunner? So many choices, each with advantages and disadvantages. I ended up choosing to work with Mozilla’s XULRunner, which is what makes up the guts of Firefox and Thunderbird. The main advantages of XULRunner were the ability to link in outside code libraries (like GraphicsMagick) and the availability of real multithreading.
Learning the hard way
Since the project began I’ve jumped more than a few hurdles. I documented many of the more exciting problems on my blog (rcrowley.org) as I went. Crash course follows:
Cross-platform XPCOM (a howto)
Working from Mark Finkle’s crash course for Windows got me halfway and some other scattered resources helped to piece together the skeleton of an app that will run on both Windows and OS X. The code has evolved quite a bit since then but this process got me on my feet.
XUL overlays demystified
As apps grow you naturally need to break files up to save your sanity. I never found the crystal clear example of overlays that I wanted, so after I trial-and-errored my way out of the corner, I wrote out this common use case that Uploadr uses in several places. Download app store on mac 10.5 8.
Threading in Gecko 1.9
Flickr Private Photo Search
I’ve been developing against XULRunner 1.9 (and therefore Gecko 1.9) which are the underpinnings of Firefox 3. The thread primitives made available in 1.9 are much nicer than in Gecko 1.8. Uploadr uses a background thread for event queuing and this is a stripped down example of that same pattern.
MD5 in XULRunner (or Firefox extensions)
The Flickr API requires developers to sign calls with MD5. MD5 is built right into PHP but is conspicuously missing from JavaScript. There are JavaScript implementations out there but (just for kicks), here’s how to take advantage of Mozilla’s built-in hashing library.
Fun with Unicode!
Flickr has, from the very beginning, been an international place. Well before it was available in eight languages, it would accept user input in any language through the magic of UTF-8. Uploadr carries on this tradition but to bridge the gap between Windows’ UTF-16 Unicode support and GraphicsMagick’s non-Unicode-iness, some hacks had to be liberally applied. This code has changed a bit since, so check the latest out in Flickr Subversion.
Video interview with the Yahoo! Developer Network
Jeremy Zawodny from the Yahoo! Developer Network came up to San Francisco to chat about the new Flickr Uploadr a few months back. We talked about the development process, open source and where the future might lead.
The future is here now with an extension API ready for use in version 3.1. Check out the documentation and helloworld extension or check out the full source code and build tools. Download mac os x 10.5 8 free.
The all new version for Windows and Mac OS X makes it easy to add titles, tags and descriptions to photos, add them to sets and adjust each photo’s privacy settings. Plus, for the first time ever, you can reorder your photos before uploading by simply dragging them into place!
When you start Uploadr for the first time you’ll have to authorize it with Flickr (just like the old Uploadr). But, you don’t have to do this right away. Download from ipad to mac. Version 3.0 lets you work offline while adding and organizing your photos. When you’re ready, you can click Sign In and you’ll be taken to Flickr to finish up. When you get back, you’re all set and Uploadr will remember your account for next time.
Flickr Uploadr Videos
Drag your photos into the Uploadr to get started tagging and describing. When you’ve got everything just so, click the big Upload button and away they’ll go. Once you start an upload in version 3.0 you can immediately add more photos and start to tag and organize them, all while the first batch is being sent to Flickr. You can continue to upload new batches like this to your heart’s content!
We hope you enjoy Uploadr 3.0’s new powers. As with all new things, we’re sure you’ll have an opinion and we’d love to hear it in the official forum thread for Uploadr 3.0. Without further ado, there’s more information and downloads available on our Tools page.
Flickr Uploadr Download
Photos from John Baird.