Lickr Uses Flickr, Greasemonkey & Ajax

April 11th, 2005

Flickr is a popular photo image and photo hosting service. However, Flickr uses embedded Flash files as part of their interface. On every page, there will be a little delay while a new Flash file loads. Flash may not work on your older browser and may substantially slow page loading.

Lickr is a new tool which combines several useful features of Flickr, Greasemonkey, and Ajax. It basically removes the need for Flash. It runs within the web browser Firefox, stripping the Flash before the user can even see it, and replacing it with an equivalent interface in pure HTML and Javascript.

Flickr is for Firefox only and requires that you have Greasemonkey installed. Greasemonkey is an extension for Firefox that allows you to modify pages with “user scripts”. However, the author warns that in principle, using Greasemonkey and Lickr could harm your data. Please make sure you have backups of your photos.

So why doesnt Flickr use this?
The author says: This is a hack that works in just one browser, Firefox. Developing cross-platform DHTML is much harder and more painful. Flash has a lot of advantages over DHTML; it’s truly cross-platform, and can do much more special effects. If that works for Flickr, more power to them.

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