Add your own buttons to Picasa, upload photos all over the Web
By Michael
Herf, Photos TeamIf you've ever wanted to make your
favorite software or website work with Google's Picasa software, there's a new
Picasa Button API
that lets you add your own buttons to the desktop interface.
The BlogThis! button in Picasa uses
these APIs.These buttons can send files to other
applications on your PC, --
this tutorial
(.zip) shows how to send files to Adobe Photoshop CS3 -- and they can also upload
photos and movies to websites of your choice.
I'm most excited about
our
Web Uploader
API. It uses a protocol we developed for posting photos to Blogger a couple years
ago, and it shows a web-based preview of what you're going to upload before you send it. Using
the web uploader, you can make user interfaces that feel more like sending an email and less
like "Wait an hour to upload..." Picasa can also resize files before sending, saving time.
There's some
sample PHP code
(.zip) to try out.
Also because these new buttons can be made
by anyone, it means that there's no job too small for a Picasa button. You could make a button
for your personal blog or for your major photo hosting service. See our
demo video, which features
Smugmug.
If you live near Mountain View, California, come out for
Thursday's
Youtube/Picasa
Hackathon. We'll be showing off examples of these APIs, and answering questions to
help you get started with them.
