Monday, May 20, 2013

Set as wallpaper, web image sharing, ancestral navigation in Picasa Mobile 3.5.0

We just published a new version of Picasa Mobile, 3.5.0, which adds the following new features: setting photos as wallpaper, ancestral navigation and more web photo sharing option.
We also fixed a bug occurring sometimes when deleting the last photo in an album, in full-screen mode.

Setting photos as wallpaper

You can set any photo as your Android devices' wallpaper, including your online photos, your local photos, your contacts' photos, as well as any photos displayed in the Search section.
The option is available from the full-screen mode, as illustrated below:


Please note that Android will crop your photo slightly, to allow for the "slide" effect when moving from one home screen to the next.


Ancestral navigation

Ancestral navigation is just a fancy term for the "Up" button introduced starting with Android 3.0.
When pressing the "Up" button (see highlighted in blue below, in top-left), the app will go to the previous screen in the screen hierarchy.


More web photo sharing options

Picasa Mobile 3.5.1 adds the "Share image" option, complementing the existing "Email image" option.
You can access this option either from the thumbnail view, by long-pressing on a thumbnail, or from the full screen view, by using the options menu.




Set as album cover - not available in Google's Picasa Web API
We also tried to implement "set photo as album cover" - unfortunately this operation is not available in Google's Picasa Web API. Hopefully, they will make it available at a later time.
More details on this issue at the address below:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/google-picasa-data-api/DhWZYUGfa2w

Bug fixes

We also fixed a bug occurring from time to time when deleting the last photo in a web album, in full screen mode.



Sunday, May 5, 2013

Moving photos out of Instant Upload album

There seems to be an issue on Google's side preventing users from moving photos that reside immediately under the "Instant Uploads" albums.

Until Google fixes this issue, the is a simple workaround: when tapping on the Instant Uploads album, choose "Subfolders" from the "Show" prompt:



Then, locate the correct date-based sub-album and move the photo from there.


For those technically inclined, I posted the detailed explanation of the issue on Google Picasa Web Albums API group: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/Google-Picasa-Data-API/NRue29DnL6s .
Hopefully, someone from Google will take a look at it.