|
|
 |
Chasr blog |
 |
|
Chasr 2.0.2 is now available for download. The only thing changed was the Spanish translation.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: June 12th, 2007
Chasr 2.0.1 is now available for download. Notes on this release:
- Fixed description code.
- Minor default theme changes.
- Minor language changes.
- An improved caching system. Simply put, it makes the cache faster and smaller.
- The admin page has a new option to clear the entire cache. This is particularly useful if youve made a lot of changes on Flickr and want Chasr to show those new changes.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: June 12th, 2007
After a really, really, really long wait (sorry!) and some keyboard struggles (my keyboard broke on Tuesday; figures), Chasr 2 is finally here! You can download it now. While not even half of what I wanted it to be, its a pretty decent version. Here are some of the new features:
- Improved caching. The new caching system is really great. It knows what to cache and when to cache it.
- The new admin page. The new administrative page is where you set almost every preference (except the initial database preferences).
- More languages. Chasr ships with US English, British English, and Spanish. Please contact me if youd like to translate Chasr into your language.
- New customization. A lot of the code in the theme is customizable.
- Favorites. A person browsing your site can add a photo to their favorites, and browse their favorites of your photos.
- Improved searching. The search page has been renovated and includes a couple of new options.
- New archive. The archives page has been renovated as well and includes options such as date posted and taken.
Despite all of the work that has gone into this version, there are a lot of things to be improved upon. Here are some things youll see in the coming months:
- Machine tags, as recognized by machinetags.org, will be supported in the future. Right now there arent really any applicable machine tags to be included with Chasr, so when useful tags are recognized by machinetags.org Ill be sure to include support in Chasr.
- I have more work to do on displaying notes and adding new ones. This will probably come in the next few months.
- There arent any RSS feeds in this version; they will probably come in the next six months or so.
- The location archive was not finished in time for this release. This feature is a lot of work, but Ill eventually finish it within the next six months.
- I discovered a better way to cache things a couple of days ago, and Ill be sure to implement it within the next few weeks.
Overall, Chasr 2 is a big step up from the first version of Chasr, but its a bit disappointing because I had such high expectations. Regardless, I suggest that you enjoy Chasr. Feedback is always welcome as well.
-Chasen
- Categories
- Comments: 1 Comment
- Date and time: June 7th, 2007
There hasnt been an update to Chasr in well over a month, let alone an update with new features. What gives?
Ive been working on the next version of Chasr for many, many months now and I thought I would have it finished by this month; thats not happening. The new version, with all of its improvements and new features, has taken a tremendous amount of time to develop.
Ive determined that the next version of Chasr will be released on June 5th of this year (Im not that slow!). I might cut back on one feature or two that I have stated before, but I dont think that I will need to.
When the next version of Chasr is released, it will be the best way to put your Flickr photos on your own website. If youd like to test an alpha version of Chasr 2, get in contact with me and Id love to share it with you.
-Chasen
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: April 24th, 2007
Chasr 1.3.4 is now available for download. Notes on this release:
- A character encoding issue on the sets page has been fixed.
Releases of Chasr 1 (such as this one) are only maintenance updates that are published as bugs are found and resolved. Chasr 2 will be a substantial upgrade and will be released in either this month or next month.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: March 6th, 2007
I dont have a release today, so I thought Id give a little preview of what Im working on for the next version of Chasr. Heres a list of things that Im currently developing.
- Improved caching. The new caching system is really great. It knows what to cache, when to cache it, and more; even when Flickr is not available, Chasr can still work.
- A new admin page. The new administrative page allows you to control the database and caching.
- More languages. On release, Chasr will ship with US English, British English, and Spanish.
- New customization. The language will be customizable, along with the headings for each particular bit of code.
- Machine tag support. Machine tags, as recognized by machinetags.org, will be supported.
- Favorites. One can add a photo to ones favorites, and browse ones favorites of your photos.
- Notes. Notes on photos will be viewable (and if I can finish it, one will be able to add notes too).
- Improved searching. The search page has been renovated and includes a couple of new options.
- RSS feed for recent photos. There will be at least one RSS (and ATOM) feed shipped with Chasr, and that one will be recently uploaded photos.
- New archive. The archives page has been renovated as well and includes options such as date posted, date taken, and where a photo was taken.
If youre interested in playing with pre-release versions, or translating Chasr into your language, contact me.
-Chasen
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: February 20th, 2007
Chasr 1.3.3 is now available for download. Notes on this release:
- The htmlspecialchars_decode bug has been fixed; Chasr would throw errors in PHP versions less than 5.2
The 1.3 series of releases are the last of Chasr 1. The next version of Chasr will debut in a few weeks, with a release expected sometime in March or April.
The website is now functioning as it is supposed to; while moving hosts, I had a minor .htaccess issue that I didnt figure out until today. Sorry for the inconvenience!
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: February 6th, 2007
Chasr 1.3.2 is now available for download. Notes on this release:
- If your Flickr username is in UTF-8, the preferences file should be able to handle it. However, if youre having problems right now, re-save your file as UTF-8 and it should work.
- Minor styling and code improvements included.
This series of releases marks the end of Chasr 1. The next few releases will be minor bug fix releases; no new development will show up until Chasr 2. One can expect Chasr 2 to debut in a couple of weeks, with a release sometime in March or April.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: January 23rd, 2007
While Chasr is a specific solution to a very broad problem, its not always the best solution. Instead, using the Flickr API in conjunction with a programming language such as PHP can provide a customized solution that fits your exact needs. Building your own Flickr application with PHP can be a daunting task, but Rob Kunkle and Andrew Mortons Building Flickr Applications with PHP makes the ordeal much easier.
Chapters
Chapter 1 introduces Flickr, PHP, and Phlickr, the latter being a PHP 5 library written by co-author Andrew Morton to interact with the Flickr API. This was an intelligent move by the authors: with the inclusion of a library, some of the basic and harder to program details of interacting with the Flickr API are automatically taken care of (note: Chasr itself uses a different PHP library) and it makes the experience more enjoyable.
Chapter 2 is an overview of Flickrs features. While one shouldnt purchase this book on this chapter alone, its not one to skip either; most likely, youll learn a thing or two about Flickr in this chapter (I personally learned about some key shortcuts to use in the organizer).
Chapter 3 introduces the installation process for Apache, PHP, and Phlickr on Windows and Linux. The explanations are in-depth and take a step-by-step approach, instead of brushing over small details (that end up to be the most important). This chapter also reviews Flickrs API keys and authentication system; one might not think this is noteworthy, but the authentication system can be confusing at times. Its useful to have a reference for it.
Chapter 4 is a whirlwind, whistle-stop tour of the PHP language that manages to avoid topic creep. It wont reveal the idiosyncrasies of PHP, but thats not the purpose: the purpose is to enable one to use PHP as it is used in the book, and this chapter does a very good job of that.
Chapter 5 begins the hands-on experimentation with the Flickr API. Throughout this chapter (and the rest of the book), one can find two main headings for each subtopic: Try It Out: and How It Works. This is a surprisingly great structure for learning how to do things with the Flickr API by diving into a bit of code first and following up with a thorough explanation of how that code worked (in English!).
Chapter 5 covers working with photos, Chapter 6 delves into photo sets, Chapter 7 talks about tags, and Chapter 8 looks at working with syndication feeds. These four chapters are the heart of working with the Flickr API in this book, and cover subjects from retrieving photos for a portfolio to adding tags while uploading a photo.
Chapter 8 is the weakest chapter of the book, although it could also be one of the most useful chapters if you dont necessarily take advantage of the whole book. Chapter 8 doesnt have the same type of examples as Chapters 57, but it does demonstrate how to create an e-mail from a feed from Flickr. I call this the weakest chapter because the example script could have been built without relying on a Flickr feed; it probably would have been faster and more in line with the rest of the book if the authors had made the feed themselves. However, this Chapter is personally one of the more important chapters to me: the authors show code for example feeds that one could make oneself with what one has learned with the past seven chapters. But, dont let my complaint be a detractor from buying this book: the book has so many strong points that its easy to overlook this flaw.
Chapter 9, the last in the book, covers groups on Flickr and how one might create a website for a group (Chasr for groups, if you will). The chapter fits in with the other chapters in its level of thoroughness and taking advantage of what has been discussed in previous chapters.
In conclusion
Overall, this book is exceptional at starting almost anyone with Flickr and PHP. The authors are understandable, the book is easy on the eyes, and the code is solid; the online resources are also a big plus. If youre interested in building your own application with Flickr, then picking up this book is a good first step to having fun with Flickr.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: January 10th, 2007
Finally, after many weeks of delay, Chasr 1.3 is now available for download. Notes on this release:
- Huge change in how themes are made. Be sure to read the documentation and if you have any questions contact me.
- Lots of general code improvements.
Im looking for people who want to translate Chasr into their native language; Im particularly interested in someone to check my Spanish localization and for someone to localize English as spoken in the United Kingdom. Im expecting to release Chasr with localizations as early as March, so if youd like your language to be one of the first to be released with Chasr, contact me and well make sure your language is included.
- Categories
- Comments: No Comments
- Date and time: January 9th, 2007
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
