Downloading albums to my Ubuntu box from Picasa Web Albums

[mhenriday]

I'm currently running four different browsers - Firefox 5.0b5, Chromium 14.0.788.0 (Developer Build 88472 Linux) Ubuntu 11.04, FF Nightly (7.0a1 (2011-06-09)), all updated via PPAs, and Opera 11.50 beta on 64-bit Ubuntu Natty on my laptop, which dual boots to 64-bit Win7 Pro, where I'm running corresponding browsers (FF 4.0.1 instead of 5.0b5, Google Chrome Canary instead of Chromium) as well. My problem is that on the Ubuntu side, I find myself unable to download albums from Picasa Web Albums to my HDD ; in the FF browsers I get a message (see first attachment) saying that «Firefox doesn't know how to open this address, because the protocol (picasa) isn't associated with any program». A search in the respective FF config files using «picasa» in the filter turns up the information copied to the second attachment, but alas, this wasn't of much help to me. Neither was the «Local State» file under ~/.config/chromium (see the third attachment) ; as can be seen there, the value of «picasa» is set to «false» under «protocol handler» → «excluded schemes», but when I click the download button in Picasa Web Albums on Chromium, nothing happens at all - the same result, by the way, as I get when I perform this action in Opera. I have no problems downloading individual photos, only albums. I don't remember encountering this problem on, say, FF 3.6.18pre on (64-bit) Ubuntu Maverick. The problem doesn't seem to be hardware-related, as I experience no difficulty downloading albums from Picasa Web Albums on any of the corresponding browsers on Win7. Any ideas as to how the downloading function might be made to work on the Ubuntu side as well ?...

Henri  

[Dan Stormont]

Henri,

  I had no problems with it. Which version of the Picasa application do you have installed in ubuntu?  I used the latest download (Picasa 3) from http://picasa.google.com/linux/.  Is your Picasa app installed in /usr/bin/picasa?  (It should be the default when you install Picasa.)  Reinstalling Picasa will probably take care of the problem.

[mhenriday]

On Saturday, June 11, 2011 5:16:31 AM UTC+2, Dan Stormont wrote:

Henri,

  I had no problems with it. Which version of the Picasa application do you have installed in ubuntu?  I used the latest download (Picasa 3) from http://picasa.google.com/linux/.  Is your Picasa app installed in /usr/bin/picasa?  (It should be the default when you install Picasa.)  Reinstalling Picasa will probably take care of the problem.

Sorry for not making this explicit, Dan ! I'm running Picasa 3.8 via Wine ; definitely do not want to be forced to go back to 3.0 !...

Henri

[Dan Stormont]

OK, I didn't try that. Wine may be screwing things up.  I am pretty sure the browsers are not finding the executable in the default path.

I guess I'll have to play with that a bit more!

[mhenriday]

On Saturday, June 11, 2011 11:32:37 AM UTC+2, Dan Stormont wrote:

OK, I didn't try that. Wine may be screwing things up.  I am pretty sure the browsers are not finding the executable in the default path.

I guess I'll have to play with that a bit more!

Grateful for your help !...

Henri

[Dan Stormont]

Henri,

   As I suspected, the issue is because you have to explicitly install Picasa 3.8 with Wine. (Thanks for clarifying that, it made a lot more sense!)  The screenshot you sent me showed FF looking in /usr/bin/picasa for the Picasa application, but with the Wine install, the correct executable will be in your virtual C: drive (on my computer it has the path /home/dan/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3/).  There are several ways you could deal with this - the easiest would probably be to install a Windows version of the browser you want to access Picasa with using the Wine Program Loader.  You could also change the path for the Picasa association in your browser to the location of the .exe file in your wine directory.  You may even be able to redirect the path in the /usr/lib directory, but having not tried that, it may not invoke Wine when you do.  Hope this helps!

[mhenriday]

On Sunday, June 12, 2011 1:51:20 AM UTC+2, Dan Stormont wrote:

Henri,

   As I suspected, the issue is because you have to explicitly install Picasa 3.8 with Wine. (Thanks for clarifying that, it made a lot more sense!)  The screenshot you sent me showed FF looking in /usr/bin/picasa for the Picasa application, but with the Wine install, the correct executable will be in your virtual C: drive (on my computer it has the path /home/dan/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Google/Picasa3/).  There are several ways you could deal with this - the easiest would probably be to install a Windows version of the browser you want to access Picasa with using the Wine Program Loader.  You could also change the path for the Picasa association in your browser to the location of the .exe file in your wine directory.  You may even be able to redirect the path in the /usr/lib directory, but having not tried that, it may not invoke Wine when you do.  Hope this helps!

Thanks, Dan, for your speedy reply ! The puzzling thing is that I have both 3.0 and 3.8 (the latter, of course, via my own Wine installation) installed on my box, just as I did when running FF 3.6.x on Ubuntu 10.10, but in the latter case, as I mentioned above, I don't recall encountering this problem. It should also be noted that if I run «/usr/bin/picasa» (see screenshot) it opens to «Picasa Version 3.0.0 (Build 57.4402, 0) for Linux», but if I access my web album from there and then try to download an album to my HDD, I still get the same error message (of which a sreenshot is provided in my first post above) as I do when accessing from Picasa 3.8 ! Be that as it may, the command that opens Picasa 3.8 on my box is the following : «env WINEPREFIX="/home/mhenriday/.wine" wine C:\\windows\\command\\start.exe /Unix /home/mhenriday/.wine/dosdevices/c:/users/Public/Start-meny/Program/Picasa\ 3/Picasa\ 3.lnk». Do you think it would be worth trying replacing «/usr/bin/picasa» with the above path (or selected portions of it) and if so, how would you recommend going about it ?...

Henri

[Dan Stormont]

Henri,

I actually have the same behavior on my computer - if I open Picasa with a browser in Ubuntu, it will open the 3.0 for Linux.  Don't know why you would have trouble saving the albums from 3.0, that is strange...  I'll play around a bit more and see if I can figure anything out.

[mhenriday]

Really appreciate your looking into this, Dan ! Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I generally don't open my Picasa Web Albums directly from a browser ; instead I choose which version of Picasa I want to run (generally speaking the 3.8 version as it offers so many more features than 3.0) and then click the web-albums button at the upper right to load my albums. But no matter how I access them - via Picasa 3.8, via 3.0, or via a browser or if I click on a link in an email message to access someone else's album, the problem which I describe above persists ; i e, I find myself unable to download an album to my HDD....

Henri

[mhenriday]

PS : Let me confirm that the command which loads Picasa 3.0 is, as one would assume, «/usr/bin/picasa». Despite this, I still get the «protocol (picasa)» isn't associated with this program» error message, when I attempt to download an album to my HDD from my Picasa Web Albums.... 

[Dan Stormont]

Thanks for the clarification, Henri.  I'll see what I can find out.

[need_help101]

i never downloaded picasa, but i use it

> definitely do *not* want to be forced to go back to 3.0 !...
>
> Henri

[mhenriday]

On Tuesday, June 14, 2011 8:20:58 PM UTC+2, need_help101 wrote:

i never downloaded picasa, but i use it

Well good for you, need_help101 !...

Henri
 

[mhenriday]

On Tuesday, June 14, 2011 7:23:10 PM UTC+2, Dan Stormont wrote:

Thanks for the clarification, Henri.  I'll see what I can find out.

Dan, I took the liberty of contacting Brian Rose at the Picasa team, who suggested using the «Import from Picasa Web Albums» button under «File» in Picasa itself. After loading Picasa 3.8 and follwoing this procedure, I was able to download albums from my Picasa Web Albums without any problem at all. Great ! However, as I pointed out to Brian (after first thanking him for the suggestion), it constitutes more of a workaround than a solution to the problem, for the following reasons :

1. While the above procedure does indeed permit me to importalbums from my own PWA, it cannot, as far as I know, be used to import an album someone else has sent me....
2. Even when importing from my own PWA, compared to opening the PWA and there selecting the album or albums to be imported, the above method has the disadvantage that one doesn't see the albums in question, but only their names, and no information is available as to how many images each album contains. One could certainly open one's PWA, investigate the contents of individual albums, and then switch back to Picasa and proceed to download (which is what I did when testing), but this is pretty cumbersome and not at all as user-friendly as using the GUI in Picasa Web Albums to download a desired album....

Brian has asked Picasa's test leader to take a look at the problem, so we should be able to hope for further developments....

Henri

[need_help101]

i was not being rude

[Patrick Shanahan]

* need_help101 <ash.rat...@gmail.com> [06-15-11 20:24]:

> i was not being rude
>

your opinion *only*!

Perception is *everything*

I am NOT being rude.
--
(paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711
http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member
Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org

[Dan Stormont]

Thanks for the followup, Henri - I wasn't having much luck.  You're right about it being a workaround, but that unfortunately is often the case with ubuntu and trying to use the latest version of an application.  Please let me know if you hear anything more - I'd be curious how they resolve it.

[mhenriday]

On Sunday, June 19, 2011 10:06:35 AM UTC+2, Dan Stormont wrote:

Thanks for the followup, Henri - I wasn't having much luck.  You're right about it being a workaround, but that unfortunately is often the case with ubuntu and trying to use the latest version of an application.  Please let me know if you hear anything more - I'd be curious how they resolve it.

Will certainly do, Dan - I hope to hear from them, as, while issue no 2 I mention above is not a big deal, issue no 1 (being unable to download albums someone else has sent me) definitely is. We shall have to wait and see what the experts at Picasa have to say - unfortunately, if understandably, desktop Linux does not seem to be a major priority for them, but this may be just the sort of bug that an engineer's soul can't resist trying to crunch !...

Henri