Checkout the new BBCode4Flickr App for iPhone and iPad as announced here:
New and better way to post Flickr photos from your iPhone or iPad
With many people switching to Flickr and many of them struggling in one way or another to post photos with their iOS devices, I knew there had to be a better way... And I've come up with one that seems to work for me, your mileage may vary. This is likely to be a longish post, so you may want to stop reading now if:
- You don't have an iOS device.
- You don't use Flickr.
- You don't post photos to the forum from your iOS device or Flickr.
- You are happy with your current method of posting from your iOS device.
- You are adverse to installing "random" software on your iOS device based on a recommendation of some idiot on the internet.
Why is this needed? First, there is no direct way to do this from the Flickr app. Second, on the iPhone the mobile Flickr website doesn't support BBCode, getting to the full website is difficult and if you do, it isn't easy to use. On the iPad, you get the full website, but I find it difficult to copy the BBCode (Lee says he can use the "Select All" button, but I haven't found it). Finally, the BBCode generated by the website needs tweaking; at a minimum you should insert a new line to get the text under the photo, but many also don't like that the photo title and user name are included.
So, I set out to find a way to address all of the above.
After a bit of digging, I found a pretty neat free app that works on both iPhones and iPads call Workflow. For those familiar with Automator on macOS, it's pretty much the same thing for iOS; it allows you to automate simple (or not so simple) tasks into a single tap. In the app you create workflows that can be started from the app, the Today Widget, an Apple Watch or another app's Action button (i.e. the Share button in the Flickr app). Using this, I created an Action workflow that works with the Flickr app and Safari. To use it you navigate the Flickr app (or Flickr website in Safari) to a photo page, press the share button, select "Run Workflow" and start my "FlickrBBCode" workflow. The workflow gets the URL of the current photo, sends a request to Flickr to get more info about the photo, generates the BBCode text that will display the photo (with a link back to the photo's Flickr page) and places this text in the clipboard. You can then switch back to the forum in Safari and paste the text into your post, done and done!
OK... good luck.....
Oh, you want more details?
Disclaimer: I have no idea if any of the following will work for anyone but me. Attempt this at your own risk. If you have problems, I will do my best to help you resolve them. No promises of success...
First the "Reader's Digest" version of the setup (more details will follow with screenshots):
- Install the iOS app Workflow
- Install my workflow FlickrBBCode
- Enable the "Run Workflow" action under Flickr's share/action button
Once the app is installed you can install my workflow by tapping on the FlickrBBCode link. This will take you to a screen where you tap "Get Workflow". FlickrBBCode is now installed.
The next thing to do is to enable the "Run Workflow" action. This can be done in most any app, Safari will do. Find and tap the Action button (the square with an arrow pointing up out of it), on an iPhone it is at the bottom of the page, on an iPad it is on the top (go figure
). Swipe the last row of icons right to find and tap the "More" button. Find the "Run Workflow" item and toggle it to on/1/green. Done.
That's it! Now you are ready to start posting!
Start the Flickr app and find the photo you want to post. Tap the Share button in the lower right (curved arrow pointing right). This shows the Sharing panel where you can tap the "Run Workflow" button. And the tap the FlickrBBCode workflow.
Your clipboard now contains BBCode so you can switch to Safari (where you are composing your post on ISM), position the insertion point and paste!
The BBCode will look something like this:
Code: Select all
[url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/147400048@N06/33433955554][img]https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2874/33433955554_07196bd5b4_c.jpg[/img][/url]
TADA!!
I hope this is easy enough to follow and that someone finds it useful. I haven't used it much yet, just while testing and preparing the screenshots for this post (I'm actually writing this on my iMac
). But so far, so good! If I get good feedback I'll see about releasing it in the Workflow Gallery.If you have comments, questions or problems, please post them here, I'll try to answer them fairly quickly.
In the future I'd like to develop a real iOS app that would make this easier to install and use (yes, I have the skills). But there are many hurdles to doing that: time, Flickr Terms of Use and App Store approval, just to name a couple of small ones. Oh, did I mention I've never actually published an iOS app? It would probably be free, but I might put the $.99 price on it to help pad my stash!
Let me know your thoughts on that.If you've made it this far, thanks and good luck. Happy posting!
Edit: Oh, Lee or Paul, if you think this should be in another section, please move it (assuming that is possible).
