Customer’s bug report form

Now (since v. 1.0.0.232) you can report bugs, feature requests etc. straight from the application. To do it go to Help and click Bug report … In the opened window write about a problem and press OK. Don't forget about short description and your e-mail.

Flickr.Manager shortcuts

Here is the description of all Flickr.Manager keyboard shortcuts:

• Ctrl+O — Connect/disconnect to/from Flickr.
  
• Ctrl+L — Open application log where all errors or some useful event are written.
  
• Ctrl+A — Open photo upload form.
  
• Alt+1, Alt+2, Alt+3 — Choose the type of image that is loaded into picture box (1 — medium, 2 — large, 3 — original)
  
• F1 — Open About Flickr.Manager dialog.
  

Improvements in errors’ handling

Automatic submission of all unhandled exceptions that may appear in Flickr.Manager into bug tracking system implemented. Thanks to BugzScout about the feature. I hope it will help me to improve the application. This feature implemented since 1.0.0.229 version.

Help request

To whom who knows well Russian and law. Could you help me to translate licenses into Russian? I'm a piece of ignorance in law so I could make a lot of silly mistakes while translating licenses into Russian.

New feature and new initiative

Now you can change the license of your photos using Flickr.Manager. To do it just right click on any of your photo and in the drop down menu choose License … option and in the dialog choose necessary the license type.

And the second news is — now you can post bugs and features you want to have in the product using Flickr.Manager bug tracker. Thank FogCreek company which gives us free startup version of their excellent bug tracking and project management system.

In addition to web interface you can use e-mail - just drop a message with bug report or feature request to flickrmanager (at) gmail.com.

Resizing and some small improvements

Image resizing and some minor improvements have been implemented. Resizing means that you can resize a photo on upload into Flickr. Resizing uses an excellent imaging library AForge.NET. Implemented bicubic interpolation algorithm.

Photos rotation

Real (not pseudo) photo's rotation implemented on upload. But there are a bit remarks about the feature. This feature implemented using GDI+ API of Microsoft but because of some bugs in it there is the quality loss for some JPEG files. The algorithm of the app is quite simple — the app tries to rotate a photo without quality loss but if a GDI+ error occurs it'll do it with quality loss. Honestly this loss is quite small but if it's too important to keep maximum quality I would recommend using your favorite photo editor to rotate photos before upload. Implemented since version 1.0.0.192.

Small bug fix release

Released version 1.0.0.173 where a small bug has been fixed. The bug was if you uploaded two or more photos and created a new set for each of them. Distribution by these new sets didn't work at all.

Roadmap for the 1.1 version

1. All photos backup.
   
2. Photo uploading from main form window.
   
3. Photos search.
   
4. Own flickr library (NFlickr).

1.0.0.171

Released build 171. A couple bugs fixed:

1. There were inconsistent thumbnail title behavior - sometimes photos which owner are different from the current one had title like From: <user name> but sometimes they had real photo title. Now title's behavior are consistent.
2. Implemented changing photo's title color after adding it to your favorites. Before this release you had to change navigation tree node and then return.

1.0.0.168

Implemented deleting sets. To do it just right click on the set you want to delete in the navigation tree and you will be promt to delete it.

There is a small bug on uploading photos - when you upload a new photos and add a new set, photos incorrectly distributed over this new set.

1.0.0.167

Implemented:

1. WYSWYG HTML editor on add comments operation.
2. Application log colorizing.

I wanted to implement a richer HTML editor but flickr allows to use only a few HTML tags in posts. You can read about it in Flickr FAQ.

A couple improvements

In 1.0.0.164 build have been made a couple of improvements:

1. All windows but upload photo window can be closed without an action by pressing ESC button
2. Implemented small and plain (so far) HTML editor for your descriptions. More rich editor will be later.

I have been working about HTML Editor for comments and it'll appear soon. And of course some bugs have been fixed.

Photo rotation info

As you may noticed the uploaded photo rotation feature was implemented. I would like to tell more about it. It doesn't really rotate uploaded image original but only uses the rotation feature of Flickr API. So the original image isn't changed. Of course the displaying of the original uses this rotation info so you'll see correctly rotated original within Flickr.Manager but the displaying of the original through web will not use this info.

I did so because i don't know how to save all EXIF tags while image handling in .NET. I think the real rotation will be implemeted instead of this Flickr API option in the future.

Interface changes

Since version 1.0.0.155 i have decided not to use separate tabs to display the photos of user and contacts and do it on the same tab page. Single navigation tree allows to select desired photo section (user's all, user's by tag, contact's recent etc.). Other tab(s) will do other operations (photo uploading for example), but it isn't implemented yet.

Network settings explanation

Since version 1.0.0.99 Network settings feature implemented. This feature is to setup your internet connection properties.

There are three options of the setting:

1. Direct internet connection. Doesn't use proxy automatic detection.
2. Automatic proxy detection (this is the default option).
3. Manual proxy settings.

It's highly recommeded to use Automatic proxy detection tune this only if you have connection's problem.

You can find the feature in Tools -> Network Settings ...

Network settings are stored in registry. Key name is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Egoroff\Flickr.Manager\NetworkSettings

Don't edit it manually but if you have a connection problem and want to restore default settings you can just drop the key and restart the app. The key will be restored and default settinngs will be applied.

Proxy support bug in 1.0.0.99

Today the version 1.0.0.99 was released. I implemented proxy support in it but i made a mistake. The bug is if you choose custom credentials for a proxy server these setting are not saved and default Windows credentials are used to authentificate the user. The bug will be fixed in version 1.0.0.100

New features since v1.0.0.65

Since version 1.0.0.65 i have added a number of new features:

1. Implemented adding and deleting an existing photo into sets and groups
2. Implemented thumbnails cache that makes return to previous pages very fast. But it works only during a session. On Application closing everything clears up.
3. Implemented viewing Flickr.Manager's log.
4. Implemented several keyboard shortcuts.

Current version is 1.0.0.77

Checking new version

Since version 1.0.0.65 implemented mechanism of checking Flickr.Manager's new versions. It is being requested on every application start and if a new version available user will be promt to download it.

Edit user's tags list.

Implemented a new feature - editing user's tags list. v1.0.0.64. Fixed a couple of small bugs.

Some improvements

New version of Flickr.Manager is available for download. Some useful new features has been implemented in it:

Selection of an image type that will be downloaded into preview window
Implemented asynchronous downloading of an image into preview window and displaying download progress
Improved Upload window layout.
Improved caching.
Some bus has been fixed (and new introduced :))

1. Selection of an image type that will be downloaded into preview window


2. Implemented asynchronous downloading of an image into preview window and displaying download progress


3. Improved Upload window layout.


4. Improved caching.


5. Some bus has been fixed (and new introduced :))

The app has a small number of minor bugs but it doesn’t prevent normal functionality. Version 1.0.0.63

First user but me

It seems that someone uses Flickr.Manager. The first step has been bone and the target not to scare off him(her).

Critical bug in v1.0.0.52

Versions prior 1.0.0.53 contains a critical bug that erases all photo's tags on deleting any of them. Now v1.0.0.57 has been uploaded and it's rather stable. I use it myself i.e. eat my own dog food :) More about own dog food.

Adding to groups

I have just implemented adding a photo into a group on uploading. It works fine here but it's not roughly tested yet. Version 1.0.0.52

Another bug fix

It's rather interesting to unaware but this is the kind of bug that cannot be discovered by unit tests and pair programming. Well, after adding a new contact _rebekka and trying to view one of her photo i discovered interface to freeze for a time and the program didn't respond 10-30 second. The problem was the number of comments of a photo. Every each photo of rebbeka has hundred comments and after uploading photo and start displaying it i updated interface for each comment and that caused great load on Windows GUI so interface was unresponsable. Changing interface redraw on every 25 comment and do the main job of creating comment in different(background) thread solved the problem. Fixed version (v1.0.0.51) is available for downloading.

New feature (comments)

Since v1.0.0.50 you can comment photos. Deleting and editing comments are not implemented yet.

New feature, bug fix and diagnostics.

I realize that it's not ideal situation but sometimes when you do something in the app and nothing happens. It may be caused by slow connection or large object to download but sometimes an error may occur and nothing changes even if you want it. To diagnose that situation you can look at application log file that can be found within the application's directory (C:\Program Files\Flickr.Manager by default). The application's log file name is log.txt.

Now some good news - i have impemented the option of add a photo to your favorites list and exclude it from the list. Fixed some small bug that was caused by my fault (cross-threading interface operations that are illegal in Windows) and may cause some pictures cannot be displayed. Fixed version has already been uploaded (v1.0.0.49).

First public version

Yesterday, i opened Flickr.Manager to everybody. In the previous post i published the link to the application, but it seems that this blog are not read by anybody :). The tool can do a small number of things and a lot of work to do, but i suppose it has grown enough to be show to public. FUN: Just after opening i found a critical bug that caused of new tags lost on uploading a photo if the photo has no old tags attached :). The program can be downloaded from here.

Flickr.Manager draft

As i promised before i did a draft version of the program that can manage and view your flickr stuff. It's not even alpha version only prototype that can do almost nothing but viewing your photos, editing description and deleting a photo's tags.

You can download it from here: Flickr.Manager

Plans over Flickr

Several days ago I run into an excellent Flickr API library that helps managing your Flickr stuff like uploading photos, viewing photos, editing all photos parameters, managing contacts etc. It's written in C# and uses .NET Framework. Well it's possible to create your own tool to manage Flickr account.

The library has some awkwards of course but it's very good in general. My new tool will be named Flickr.Manager. It'll be free so far but maybe not quite free some time later after creating enough features to pay for.

technorati tags:flickr, software, plans, tool, photo

The first entry

Well, this blog (i hope) will be devoted to my photography hobby and some traveler's notes. To be frankly - i don's travel a lot (only few times a year) but i would like to do it more often. Current job doesn't allow me to do that (i'm a software developer of InfoWatch company).