Star*Explorer Thread

Nikolai

Star*Explorer (S*E, formerly Smugmug Explorer) is a very small, fast, robust and efficient Windows application designed to facilitate certain smugmug-related activities, such as unlimited persistent image upload, download, customized gallery settings, reports, etc.
It has been created and is fully supported by a person who loves digital photography, smugmug, and, most importantly, has more than 30 years of hardcore programming experience behind his belt.

Star*Explorer is a commercial application with an industry-standard 30 days trial.

More here: http://www.starexplorer.com

Below is original first post:-)

---

I'm opening this thread to indicate the status of this project, accept the feedback, etc.

SmugmugExplorer is a win32 app (preferably windows XP) which should facilitate some routine tasks, such as upload the whole bunch of files, without getting into such limitations as 100Mb per upload, etc.

It's still in alpha, but I think it's already usable.

[EDIT: Star*Explorer has been successfully released in April 2005. Please check www.starexplorer.com for the latest version]

(for the non-tech people, here is programmers' lingo 101:

• alpha - it actually can work sometimes?
• beta - "beta" than nothing
• pre-release - me and my beer buddies can operate it just fine, what are you complaining about?
• gold - hm-m, maybe I should let my wife try it
• release - IPO, here I come!

)
I have already used it intensively to create many albums (eve bunch at a time:-) and upload thousands of images.
My colleagues at work (whom I lured into smugmug:-) are also about to start using it.
Anyway, here is the alpha (376 Kb, single exe in a zip):
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/SmugmugExplorer.a0.zip
Just download it, unzip it and launch it.
Forgot: you'd also need two ssl dlls (371 Kb, zip file with two dlls)
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/ssl_dlls.zip
Put them next to the executable.

You'd need to enter your account info to use it - I SWEAR I'm not sending it anywere. And it also stored in a heavily double encripted way, so unless you''re totally paranoid, your "password" password should be pretty safe with it.

If you want it to automatically connect everytime you open it, modify the launching shortcut and specify "/autoconnect=1" command line parameter.

If not - File - Connect, File - Get Albums, select the album, drag files/folders from your windows explorer and select Upload.

I will keep updating this thread as new versions and comments come.

Thank you very much, I hope you'll enjoy the ride:-)

Nikolai

Forgot two SSL DLLs...:-(
I already modified an original post, but then I deciede to mention it here, too, so you'd know something's been changed..

Forgot: you'd also need two ssl dlls (371 Kb, zip file with two dlls)
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/ssl_dlls.zip
Put them next to the executable.

damonff

Hey...

I think a lot of people here are Mac people...

~Damon

Nikolai

Hey Damon

damonff wrote:

Hey...

I think a lot of people here are Mac people...

~Damon

Then, I guess, they will not be interested in this little app of mine:-)
However, I did a little poll on dpreview STF - absolute majority were using XP, and one person was kind enough to provide me with an interesting stats from his (or his company's) server:

These represent 6 months of data and close to 100 000 people sample:

• Windows XP 91.60%
• Other Windows 7.70%
• Linux 0.50%
• Macintosh 0.20%

So, I guess, I'll take my chances:-)

Cheers!

damonff

Nikolai wrote:

Then, I guess, they will not be interested in this little app of mine:-)
However, I did a little poll on dpreview STF - absolute majority were using XP, and one person was kind enough to provide me with an interesting stats from his (or his company's) server:
So, I guess, I'll take my chances:-)

Cheers!

Those stats are overwhelming! I guess I'll lose out on your fab app Nikolai! Drat! If you have extra time, think of the Apple people...good luck with the changes in Smugmug. Your voice is welcome and hopefully you'll have some influence...

Nikolai

They are, aren't they!
When I saw them, I was stunned myself. If anything, it gave me a better sense what my potential audience would be..
In the mean time, please rest assured, Apple version will come. I mean, as soon as Steve manages to persuade Borland to make iDelphi - or Microsoft to make iVisualStudio..
Thank you, stay tuned!

onethumb

damonff wrote:

Hey...

I think a lot of people here are Mac people...

~Damon

Alas, I'm afraid our beloved Mac is in the minority.

Generally, they're assumed to have about 5% market share. On photo sharing sites, it's probably a little higher due to the artistic nature of Mac users. On smugmug, it's even higher because our elegant style resonates with Mac users.

But I'd say the highest it could possibly be is 20% of smugmug customers. That leaves the other 80% who would love his application.

(For the record, I use all major platforms on a daily basis. My main PC is running Windows XP, my main laptop is running Mac OS X, and my servers and testbeds all run Red Hat Linux. I feel strongly that the best tool for the job should be used, and different OSes are better for different things.)

Don

onethumb

Nikolai wrote:

I already modified an original post, but then I deciede to mention it here, too, so you'd know something's been changed..

Forgot: you'd also need two ssl dlls (371 Kb, zip file with two dlls)
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/ssl_dlls.zip
Put them next to the executable.

Hey Nikolai, this is great news!

If you have a page which I could link to, rather than direct downloads (which will change as the version changes), I'd love to add a link to the smugmug hacks page.

(We have a few other scripts and apps that need to be linked in, too, so I'd better hunt those authors down as well.)

Thanks,

Don

Nikolai

Great idea!

onethumb wrote:

Hey Nikolai, this is great news!

If you have a page which I could link to, rather than direct downloads (which will change as the version changes), I'd love to add a link to the smugmug hacks page.

(We have a few other scripts and apps that need to be linked in, too, so I'd better hunt those authors down as well.)

Thanks,

Don

I'll gladly do that! I'll find some HTML tool and create a "standard product" page. I'll notify you as soon as I'm done!
Thank you for the excellent suggestion!

Cheers!

Nikolai

Link is ready
http://nik.wyw.ru/products/smugmug_explorer/
CHANGED to: http://www.sklobovsky.com/community/smugmug

I forged it in Word, it certainly lacks "style", but hey, it works, and I can update it :-)

Thanks again!

Nikolai

OK, here are some first results
It was my long-past due task to upload my originals to my smugmug account. This task became especially "hot" when the site that used to host them before was recently shut down.

I started to upload them manually (via smugmug windows IE uploader), uploaded about 1,500 (old, 1mp and hence small) files from the year 2000 and get really tired.

Then I wrote this app.

And during the the last two days I uploaded *everything else* (originals, I mean, icluding November 2004:-). It only took me watching the progress from time to time and occasionally feed it with a new month worth of pictures - I stored them by year/month, so it was pretty easy action - select an album, drag one folder, hit upload . Each month was WAY beyond online uploader's current restrictions - usually more than 300 images and way more than 100Mb (all this year I was shooting 828:-).
I even created most of the albums "in ohe shot" (although createAlbum bug made me to go to the site and modify their settings manually - arrgh..)

Here are some stats from today and yesterday:

• 2004 12 galleries with 4988 photos. Dec 02, 2004
• 2003 12 galleries with 2229 photos. Dec 02, 2004
• 2002 12 galleries with 1962 photos. Dec 01, 2004
• 2001 12 galleries with 1741 photos. Dec 01, 2004

It's not much, I know, some people shoot 10K pictures a month. But still, total volume was about 12-13Gb. Now, try to upload that manually;-)
---
More to follow:-)
Cheers!

rutt

damonff wrote:

Hey...

I think a lot of people here are Mac people...

~Damon

Use my smugmug.py script. Once you install python, it works well on OS X and is great for massive uploads. I backup more than 50GB of stuff to smugmug.

damonff

rutt wrote:

Use my smugmug.py script. Once you install python, it works well on OS X and is great for massive uploads. I backup more than 50GB of stuff to smugmug.

Cool!

gubbs

Nikolai wrote:

I'm opening this thread to indicate the status of this project, accept the feedback, etc.

SmugmugExplorer is a win32 app (preferably windows XP) which should facilitate some routine tasks, such as upload the whole bunch of files, without getting into such limitations as 100Mb per upload, etc.

It's still in alpha, but I think it's already usable.
(for the non-tech people, here is programmers' lingo 101:

• alpha - it actually can work sometimes?
• beta - "beta" than nothing
• pre-release - me and my beer buddies can operate it just fine, what are you complaining about?
• gold - hm-m, maybe I should let my wife try it
• release - IPO, here I come!

)
I have already used it intensively to create many albums (eve bunch at a time:-) and upload thousands of images.
My colleagues at work (whom I lured into smugmug:-) are also about to start using it.
Anyway, here is the alpha (376 Kb, single exe in a zip):
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/SmugmugExplorer.a0.zip
Just download it, unzip it and launch it.
Forgot: you'd also need two ssl dlls (371 Kb, zip file with two dlls)
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/ssl_dlls.zip
Put them next to the executable.

You'd need to enter your account info to use it - I SWEAR I'm not sending it anywere. And it also stored in a heavily double encripted way, so unless you''re totally paranoid, your "password" password should be pretty safe with it.

If you want it to automatically connect everytime you open it, modify the launching shortcut and specify "/autoconnect=1" command line parameter.

If not - File - Connect, File - Get Albums, select the album, drag files/folders from your windows explorer and select Upload.

I will keep updating this thread as new versions and comments come.

Thank you very much, I hope you'll enjoy the ride:-)

Thanks Nikolai,


I'll give it a try!!!

Nikolai

Thank YOU!

gubbs wrote:

Thanks Nikolai,


I'll give it a try!!!

Let me know how it went!
And stay tuned - new version is coming.. I'm working on recursive upload now - you drop a folder on a "category/subcategory", it will parse the names of the folders and, if need be, create new albums for you, or will populate existing ones..
That is, of course, if Don manages to fix the createAlbum bug - otherwise new albums end up on a category level, but it would still be easier than creating a whole bunch of them manually:-)

luke_church

Way cool + some suggestions
Hey Nikolai,

Nice to see your work. Looking good

Nikolai wrote:

You'd need to enter your account info to use it - I SWEAR I'm not sending it anywere. And it also stored in a heavily double encripted way, so unless you''re totally paranoid, your "password" password should be pretty safe with it.

I am totally paranoid (!) [A little too much software security work]. Hence I'm interested, how is it stored and why double encrypted? [Some forms of double encryption are a lot easier to break than single encryption]. Generally speaking though I use disposable passwords for the likes of Smugmug, so I'm not that worried...

Is it in the Windows Crypto cache?

Generally I'm impressed this looks good, already I would probably use this in preference to the standard uploaders.

Some suggestions:

I would like to be able to detach the log viewer so that I can have it and the album structure open at the same time.

I think that there is a typo in the log generator:

Started Logging to polymorphix.smugum.com

and

Finished Logging to polymorphix.smugum.com

I would also like a dialog telling me connection had failed.

Otherwise looking very good. Keep up the good work

Many thanks,

Luke

Nikolai

Luke
Thank you very much for your kind words, comments and suggestions.

Typos is my eternal problem. ez 2 fix, tho..:-)

Double encription:
the configuration file is encripted with a pretty long meaningless password. The executable is then packed, which makes reading the EXE and trying to locate the potential string kinda non-trivial job. All in all, for what it was, I'd feel pretty safe.

UI: while I will try to keep "explorer" paradigm intact, there will be many more changes. Upload patch (where you can actually see and magage what are about to upload). multithreading, scheduling, etc. So log/terminal view will be more readable and usable.

Thanks again!

Nikolai

Sorry, changed the location

Nikolai wrote:

http://nik.wyw.ru/products/smugmug_explorer/

I forged it in Word, it certainly lacks "style", but hey, it works, and I can update it :-)

Thanks again!

http://www.sklobovsky.com/community/smugmug
Also modified the original post. Hope it's not too late:-)
Thank you!

onethumb

rutt wrote:

Use my smugmug.py script. Once you install python, it works well on OS X and is great for massive uploads. I backup more than 50GB of stuff to smugmug.

Rutt, do you have a webpage I can link to that will comment on and track changes to the script? I'd like to link it from smugmug's site...

Don

Ben

Nikolai wrote:

http://www.sklobovsky.com/community/smugmug
Also modified the original post. Hope it's not too late:-)
Thank you!

I emailed this to you personally as well, but I thought I would post it here in public.

This is my new favorite thing ever.

Fantastic job. This is really really really awesome. It has just become my default uploader. I know a lot of people are really going to be happy with this.

Baldy

Ben is not easily impressed and he's been bouncing off the walls here.

I watched him using it and will give it a spin myself later today. My impression is it's very powerful but takes a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

Overall, an incredibly promising start and boy are people clamoring for what it offers.

Thanks!
Baldy

Nikolai

Thanks, Ben!

Ben wrote:

I emailed this to you personally as well, but I thought I would post it here in public.

This is my new favorite thing ever.

Fantastic job. This is really really really awesome. It has just become my default uploader. I know a lot of people are really going to be happy with this.

I'm very glad you like it. But honestly - it's still an ugly duckling, I barely scratched the surface of what I wanted to do.. Wait till it grows to the whole swan;-) That is, of course, if Don's APIs allow me:-)

Cheers!

Nikolai

Baldy,

Baldy wrote:

Ben is not easily impressed and he's been bouncing off the walls here.

I watched him using it and will give it a spin myself later today. My impression is it's very powerful but takes a few minutes to figure out how to use it.

Overall, an incredibly promising start and boy are people clamoring for what it offers.

Thanks!
Baldy

Thank you, very nice to hear this!
As to the a tad cumbersome UI - it will all come together. I was trying to cover the basics first. Lots of things are simply not surfaced. Stay tuned!
And thank you once again, your guys' feedback is very inspirational!
Cheers!

Nikolai

Ben, Don, Baldy, anyone, help please!

Nikolai wrote:

http://www.sklobovsky.com/community/smugmug
Also modified the original post. Hope it's not too late:-)
Thank you!

it looks like the link only works from certain machines. Darn freeserververs (where my account is hosted), do not seem to allow the direct links, at least from some domains. Funny, I can see it ok from work, but from home (different ISP) I get 404..:-(

PLEASE update the link on your reference page to the following:
http://sklobovsky.nstemp.com/community/smugmug/
this guy seem to work from other places, too..

Sorry for the troubles...

PerezDesignGroup

Nikolai, this is absolutely and totally AMAZING!thumbthumb

I just set up a huge 283 photo upload in the range of approx 700mb's. I'll let you know how it goes.

If all goes well, this will be a god-send for all Firefox users.

Thanks, again.

Nikolai

Thanks!

PerezDesignGroup wrote:

Nikolai, this is absolutely and totally AMAZING!thumbthumb

I just set up a huge 283 photo upload in the range of approx 700mb's. I'll let you know how it goes.

If all goes well, this will be a god-send for all Firefox users.

Thanks, again.

.. and it will be getting better, I promise!:baldy
Cheers!

PerezDesignGroup

All files, except for 3 that were over 8mb's, uploaded fine. It took several hours but I successfully put 283 photos totaling 700mb+ up in one shot. The nice thing is it kept uploading even though those files were rejected. This is some very fine programming, Nikolai! Thank you.

Nikolai

Nice to hear!

PerezDesignGroup wrote:

All files, except for 3 that were over 8mb's, uploaded fine. It took several hours but I successfully put 283 photos totaling 700mb+ up in one shot. The nice thing is it kept uploading even though those files were rejected. This is some very fine programming, Nikolai! Thank you.

Again - new version will be better:-). Actually, it IS better, but I can't publish it yet - to many loose ends because of the new APIs wrapping..
Stay tuned!
Cheers!

Nikolai

New Version Uploaded: 0.0.0.14
Newest vesrion (396 Kb, single exe in a zip) can be downloaded from here:
http://nik.wyw.ru/download/smugmugexplorer/SmugmugExplorer_0_0_0_14.zip

Product home page updated:
http://sklobovsky.nstemp.com/community/smugmug/

What's new:

• Massive facelifting
• New or severely updated Account, Options, Album and (rather useful, IMHO) About (F1) dialogs
• Options now allow to control file extensions and sizes. I would not recommend to extend them, but if so is your desire - it's your bandwidth..:-)
• Create Album is now compatible with the latest createAlbum API, which actually works (yay, Don!). Taking into account you can set default settings and also use the "most recently used" ones, as well as you still can create multiple albums in one shot (obviously sharing the same settings), I think it's a pretty nice tool.

Caveats:

• New account settings storage (which is binary and encrypted) is incompatible with the first alpha. You would have to re-enter your settings again, sorry about that. But at least now you can also specify your subscription level:-)
• Although upload and upload via post API were recently updated to incorporate ByteCount and MD5Sum parameters, they don't seem to work all the way. Actually, only upload with a single ByteCount parameter works (thanks rutt!), everything else returns a format error. I notified Don, but so far upload methods in the app only work this way:
  upload - uses ByteCount, so you have some fiile checking (per rutt, this method actually works fine in his script and prevents incomplete uploads)
  upload via post - does not use any new parameters, so no checking is possible, but this method is still faster..

Nearest plans:

• Cache albums/categories locally so you don't have to connect each time
• Upload patch (so you can see, what are you actually uploading:-)
• Album editor - so you can not only create new album(s), but also modify existing one(s!!!! - guess why it's plural here;-)
• Some other very cool things...

Enjoy the new version!

onethumb

BTW, Nikolai, I highly recommend (per a previous conversation about encryption, etc) that you don't store the users login & password to disk in any form, including 'double encryption'.

Instead, use loginWithPassword once, and store the resulting UserID/PasswordHash and then use loginWithHash for all future logins. If/when it ever fails, then fallback to a dialog box prompting for username & password again (it will only fail if the user has changed their password on smugmug as a security precaution or something).

This provides for extra security in a couple of different ways.

Don

gus

Someone will put all of this wonderful stuff that i have 100% absolutely no comprehension of what-so-ever into a ' clicky button ' at the end ...wont they ?