How Chrome users can scrub Yahoo logo off Flickr
October 15th, 2009 | 
Author: Those of you who hate the recent arrival of Yahoo’s logo on Flickr now have an easy way to erase it–and get a number of useful features–as long as you’re using an edgy version of Chrome.
Fittr Flickr lets you click ‘EXIF’ to expand a box below the image to show photo details.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)
Chrome extensions let people customize the browser’s behavior, and the Fittr Flickr extension from Gmail programmer Dan Pupius whips Yahoo’s photo-sharing site into shape. Some people use extensions for using Delicious bookmarks, banishing ads, and filling out forms, but this is my favorite Chrome extension so far.
The Yahoo logo is ugly but not too bothersome in my eyes. Instead, what I like best about Fittr Flickr is its keyboard navigation options. Once the extension is installed, you can type “?” to see the options, but the two I now use a lot are “.” and “,” to navigate forward and backward through a person’s photostream. Typing “s” will star a photo as a favorite, and in a nice Google touch harkening to the vi text editor, “/” will put your cursor in the search field.
To use Chrome extensions, though, you must be using the developer preview version of the browser, since extensions are something of a work in progress. (Click to download for Windows or Mac OS X.) I’ve had to restart Chrome sometimes to enable the last two extensions I tried out.
Another nice feature for pixel-peepers such as myself is the addition of an EXIF button below the photo that reveals camera, lens, and exposure details without navigating away from the photo. Nearby are direct links to the small, medium, and large version of the photos.
There are some other nice tidbits, too, involving viewing photos against a black background, comments, and other matters.
Yahoo has to make Flickr appeal to a large swath of people, most of whom probably don’t care about these options. But for me, they unlock some of Flickr’s potential.
Firefox users who want similar technology can try Dustin Diaz’s Quickr Flickr script, which requires the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox to be installed before the script can be added. Greasemonkey fans also can use a number of scripts that will un-Yahoo the logo.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10375399-264.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
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