GSoC 2009/Projects/Picasa plugin for Canola/Report1

Picasa plugin for Canola - GSoC 2009 Project - Report 1
This is my first report on the GSoC project. Since my proposal was accepted I started to use Canola, study the source code, to understand the way it works. For the development of the plugin I have started with a simple skeleton that was connecting to the Picasa API and was retrieving the name of the albums. During the last 2 weeks I've developed this skeleton. As for now it is able to display the online albums( screenshot [1]). To do this I have studied the Youtube plugin and used similar code to display album's properties. The delete and new albums option are also implemented ( those were coded during the Danish Weekend:D [2]) The code that displays the thumbs of the pictures in each album is working but some improvements should be made[3] The thumbs are loaded from Picasa, they are not generated from the actual picture on the device, but the thumbnailer will be used to crop them. I will use the download manager to get the thumbs and the pictures from the server. Also, an option to set the account username / password was added in the settings menu.

During the next 2 weeks, I will continue to develop the interface, add some of the other options( set album properties, upload pictures, .. ). I will try to integrate the plugin with Photocast, to automatically add user's albums. Photocast is already able to display Picasa albums from RSS feeds, so I only need to add the urls in the database.

That's all for now!Please send me any suggestions or comments! Thank you!

[1]http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1391/screenshotcanola.png [2]http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/3545/screenshotcanola2.png [3]http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1371/screenshotcanola1.png