About
This application exists because I am a big fan of a collection of Flickr Groups called Views 25 through to Views 25000. The idea of these groups is that as soon as your photos have over a certain number of views they are eligible to be added to the group. However the rules say that a photo can be a member one view group at a time. I found the process of searching for photos and manually moving them between groups quite laborious. So I created this application :-)If you like the app and want to comment then please send me a Flickr mail.
If you *really* like the app then please consider a PayPal donation to cover the hosting and bandwidth costs!
Any app related issues or feature requests can be posted in this discussion.
How to use
When you submit a search for your photos you are presented with a grid. Each picture in the grid is made up of a number of elements. The elements provide information about the photo. Some of the elements have popup help to explain their purpose.
Bottom right: A link to the Flickr photo page
If the picture is eligible for a group move then it is highlighted in one of two ways:
Top right: The group the photo should be in
Top left: Group the photo is currently in
Top right: The group the photo should be in
Click on the photo to move it to the correct group. Any problems (such as reached posting limit) will be written at the bottom of the grid.
Photos that are already in a group could be Ready to Say Goodbye. Meaning that they have 5 views until they are ready for graduation to the next group. Photos that are ready to say goodbye can be added into the relevant forum discussion to advertise that the photo is on the cusp of graduation. Photos that are ready to say goodbye are highlighted as such:
Top left: Click to open the view discussion page
Top right: Click to open the photo size page
Flickr Groopy Badge
Spread the groopy word by pasting the following HTML into your Flickr profile:
<a href="http://xrrr.co.uk/groopy/about.php"> <img border=0 src="http://xrrr.co.uk/groopy/images/groopybadge.png" /> </a>
Author
Technology
Everything has been written in PHP and Javascript but as with anything it is a work in progress! The todo list below lists the things I still want to add into the app.
This site relies on phpFlickr!
The loading indicator is from ajaxload.info.
The tooltips are provided by boxover.
Change Log
- v0.9.3 - 07 December 2008
Fixed a problem with the Views 25,000 group having a comma in the group name. I don't have any photos eligible for that group so I have been able to test it :-( - v0.9.2 - 22 September 2008
Made the new ready to say goodbye highlight more obvious and added new quick links to the relevant discussion and photo pages. - v0.9.1 - 18 September 2008
Some users had problems with the styles added into v0.9. It was because the stylesheets are cached. I have renamed the file which should fix it. - v0.9 - 16 September 2008
Been a long time since the last update. I have been experimenting with javascript to try to improve performance. No luck yet. However I have added tooltips and a new highlighting colour (yellow) to identify photos in a group that are Ready to Say Goodbye. In other words they are five views away from graduation from the group. I hope to extend the function in a later release with some additional automation. - v0.8 - 13 July 2008
Modified the look and feel slightly. Added the ability to choose what to sort the results by (limited to Flickr's sort options) and store the results in a cookie. - v0.7 - 2 July 2008
Redone the layout so that the screen draws first before any photo processing is done. Found and fixed an unusual bug that causes the "Oops! The API key or signature is invalid." error in Flickr when the user clicks on the "Views" link directly from the index.php page. Some minor code tidy ups (because it *really* needs it!). Added a wait icon. - v0.6 - 16 June 2008
Upped the photo count on the grid to 25. Added a link to join a group if there is an error suggesting the user is not a member of a group. Changed the sort option for the search to go back to "interestingness". Added links to the views searches on the grid page. - v0.5 - 9 June 2008
Fixed problem with "Error: Insufficient permissions. Method requires write privileges; read granted." error.
My new 'index.php' was requesting 'read' permission and Flickr stores the first permission request. If you get this error, check the permissions for Flickr Groopy by clicking "Edit" in the "Extending Flickr" tab on the "Your Profile" page. If it says "read" then delete the Groopy authentication from your profile and re-authenticate by accessing Groopy as normal. Finally check that it is updated the permission in your profile to say "write" - I have now fixed the code to make it always request a "write". - v0.4 - 4 June 2008
Fixed IE compatibility. Now tested on Safari, Firefox, IE6 & IE7 - v0.3 - 3 June 2008
Added new 'advanced' search page that allows the user to search by Views group rather than by text. - v0.2 - 2 June 2008
Found that the search will return the number of views so no need to call a separate API call for each photo. Speeds up photo processing by about 0.6 seconds per photo
Changed the search to search by 'relevance' rather than 'interestingness' - v0.1 - 27 May 2008
First initial version of the app. Has a few known issues (see todo list) but fundamentally works. Please notify me of issues as a comment on this Flickr discussion page.
To Do List
- View pics already in "Views nn" groups
- Microsoft IE compatibility
- Prompt to enrol for a group if not already a member
- Get the search results screen to fully draw before populating the images
- Wait icon for ajax updates
- Search sort options
- Make the key to the images, numbers and colours more accessible/obvious from the photo grid page
- Add links to the search pages to allow the user to jump more than one page forward.
- Create some visual indicator of how many postings per group are left.
- Performance
- Sort by views if the Flickr API ever makes it easy!
- Add a tag cloud to the search screen
- Allow users to search by the photos in their sets
- Detect picture in more than one group and tidy up
- Support for the Faves groups