Improving TXP Image Management

Jeremie · 2006-03-13 01:04:09

hakjoon wrote:

I wrote up some potential syntax for more robust image tags. I tried to get almost everything upm_image has and most of the attributes from article_custom.

I’ve added a recursive attribute to the image_index tag.

hakjoon · 2006-03-13 03:15:24

I moved the sorting attributes and the restriction attributes (author, captioned) to image_index since it seemed like the tag that made more sense to have those options since the other tags take more controlled input lists.

image_index seemed like the one that would make the most sense to deal with query results.

squaredeye · 2006-03-13 03:22:17

Hak,
What about a section attribute? And a global section attribute?
This is helpful if someone is using sections for authors for instance?
Using this, perhaps they could incorporate txp:if_different?

Just a question? Maybe its not as helpful as I think it is?

hakjoon · 2006-03-13 04:12:06

I honestly just couldn’t think of how it would be used, so it’s more an issue of my lack of imagination then anything else.

Logoleptic · 2006-03-13 10:03:07

When it comes to image management for a CMS, you have to look at the ImageManager 2.0 plugin for WordPress. It almost contains more concentrated coolness than my mind can fathom.

Here’s some screen captures from the demo movie, showing the slick local-to-remote interaction and a hint of the editing features (click for large):

squaredeye · 2006-03-13 12:33:12

Logoleptic,

Thanks. that’s good stuff. I am sure that Hakjoon willl be taking a look at this as will Bastian. In the meantime I will paste into the WIKI. It looks like a lot of good stuff.

Thx
Matthew

maarten · 2006-03-13 18:09:56

Good ideas so far but I’d like to enter the discussion with responding to Matthews initial questions:

I use photos in my

personal blog in the following manner:

no plugins for uploading
the bas image selector for inserting into the write tab
for galleries/sets of my own photos I use Flickr (including the vdh plugin), for article images I use the standard image tab

client sites in the following manner
N.A. yet

These are what I think are limitations in the current TXP system of handling/posting images

chaos when having more than 50 images in your image tab i.e. no possibility to get organized
no search option
no enhanced article image inserting for end users (but hey the plugin mentioned is nice)

I would like to see the following functionality

upload from write tab would be nice but is not really essential I think. Users should be aware that they need to organize their images properly. Come to think of it, maybe it’s even better to leave this separate or have the option to turn this off.
implimentation of the kind of functionality found in Bas Image Selector with a better way a thumbnail is shown. I’m not too fond at the mouseover thing.

I would like to help think through the implications of such functionality in this way

cheerleading squad. No, that wouldn’t make your day ;-)
round of drinks for people who develop

Maarten

squaredeye · 2006-03-14 00:25:46

Sweet ! Maarten’s buying drinks. Hak, since I can’t develop worth a crap, I’ll do a little jig for one from you.
Thanks Maarten, Good stuff.

Matthew

Bloke · 2006-03-15 01:25:41

My turn!

I use photos in my: personal blog in the following manner:

glx_admin_image for auto-thumbnail generation
bas_image_selector for inserting into article body/article image from the write tab
(soon) a photoblog with categorized/searchable images and (hopefully) a “related images” feature if I can figure it out… perhaps I’ll wait for the dust to settle in this thread before I go too far with that one :-)

client sites in the following manner

rss_thumbpop (with a few custom fixes/mods, as described in my posts in the rss_thumbpop thread ); most notably for using a custom field to hold a comma-separated list of image (sub)categories that I want displayed as a gallery in a particular article. An example: I take photos of the bands on my record label at gigs and display them as a gallery in an article on an “events” page that shows what each gig was like
Thumbs and images for a paypal-style shop with image rollovers (1 product = 1 article, custom fields = product attributes like price,size,colour etc)
Thumbs and full-size images for different-sized desktop backdrops/album artwork/poster download
Article images for “news”-type sites. E.g. the standard concept of one or two right-floated images per article, like on bbc.co.uk/cnn.com etc.

(of course, both 2 and 3 have required some extra php code inside forms, and javascript)

These are what I think are limitations in the current TXP system of handling/posting images

The rigmarole that Jeremie highlighted. It’s fine for me because I’m a coder/organisation geek/standards advocate/content-style separation junkie (all that stuff is what drew me to txp) but when I try to explain how to add an image to an article, my business partner gives me this blank stare like I asked him the radius of Saturn. He loses interest if it takes more than 3 clicks to accomplish anything, if it isn’t all done on one screen (he uses IE, the fool!) and if it doesn’t work WYSIWYG like Frontpage. Now we all know the code abortion that Frontpage leaves behind, but I’d love to see some sort of happy medium interface between today’s txp and a more visual approach with the excellent ideas that bas/hakjoon/ma_smith/jeremie et al have put in the wiki.
No search option / filtering / (sub)category handling. I have 150+ images right now in one of my sites and it’s getting awkward already. And each time I’ve finished editing an image, it dumps me back on page 1 of the list, I have to scroll to the bottom to get to the “next” button, which keeps moving down as the image thumbs are being loaded into the page. The saving grace is that once I’m on page 2 I can fairly easily edit the last digit in the address bar to jump to whichever page I like to save scrolling to the bottom of each page to get back to where I was.
(contentious one this): The fact that the images are renamed to numbers. Not very Google-imagebot friendly, nor very descriptive when used as background images in, say, stylesheets (hmm, was /images/35.jpg the left or right-half of my rollover button?)
No mass-image-upload facility into a category

I would like to see the following functionality

Support for an uber-stylable image version of the txp:article tag, as described in the wiki
As well as title=, which tends to just display on hover, the ability to display a (stylable) caption for each image if required, probably from the text in the title= field
Support for reading the additional meta/EXIF data/file size/assigned category (or category tree)
A simpler way to add one (or more) images to an article (inline in the body or as an article-image; though again, trying to explain the difference between these two types of image to the unWeb is interesting…) and have them stylable in a “I don’t know what CSS is” kind of way. Like someone said earlier, if I could define some style classes that set, say, float:left/right and margins then give them nice semantic names for my users to pick from, it’d be great.
txp:related_images (sometime later, eh! 8o)

I would like to help think through the implications of such functionality in this way

Swap/comment on screenshots/ideas with brighter people than me
Put my user hat on, pretending I know less than I do about the web and see if the proposed interfaces are both reasonably intuitive for n00bs and flexible enough to grow with experience for us power-hungry developers
Provide Virtual Motivational Music (Theme from Rocky/Walk This Way/Spanish Flea… I’m humming one now for you)

hakjoon · 2006-03-15 03:56:04

Bloke and maarten thanks for joining the fun. Really good stuff.

Specially on the functionality of the images tab which I think currently can be very unwieldy with many images and has not been heavily address yet in this discussion.

A couple questions for clarification.

As well as title=, which tends to just display on hover, the ability to display a (stylable) caption for each image if required, probably from the text in the title= field

Do you see this as something that could be accomplished if the image tag was configurable via a form? It seems that this should be doable with CSS and Javascript without it being hardwired in the image tag.

Support for reading the additional meta/EXIF data/file size/assigned category (or category tree)

I don’t completely understand this. Do you mean reading the exif data on upload/import or using that data when displaying the images?

squaredeye · 2006-03-15 05:33:46

Hak,
I agree with you on the title stuff as that can be handled in the same way permlink titles are handled/can be handled now:

<code>
<a href=”<txp:permlink />” title=“whatever you want here><txp:proposed image tags /></a>
</code>

Oh and Bloke, I prefer the Rocky tune as it really hits home when you live in Philadelphia. SHould go well with maarten’s beverages.

Per the image tab:
I have been using plain black’s WEBGUI product as of late on some work I do at …well, work. I don’t really prefer it as it ignores standards altogether, but I do like the way it handles images/assets/files which is to let you have multiple folders inside the image upload. For our purposes, I think that uploaded to a folder that automatically assigns the image to a category (image cat) for you? Something like that could be useful.

One thing I keep thinking about also, and should add to the wiki, is the possibility of the following:

Having a third image size besides full and thumb. The possibilities with this are huge. (think original size, display size, thumbnail) or (display size, second display size, thumbnail)

Getting the thumbnails into a separate folder so that one could more easily integrate fun script driven apps like simple viewer

hakjoon · 2006-03-15 13:27:12

ma_smith wrote:
Having a third image size besides full and thumb. The possibilities with this are huge. (think original size, display size, thumbnail) or (display size, second display size, thumbnail)

I was thinking about this too. Ez-publish automagically creates 3 image sizes by default small, medium, and large which can be configured by the user. You can also create other size classes if you need them. then when you insert an image you can specify which of the sizes you want to use. T

hat was some of the reasoning behind the custom_size and custom_height attributes that I put in for txp:thumbnail That would allow you to create arbitrarily sized thumbnails. That seemed ultimately more flexible that pre-defined sizes, and it wouldn’t take up space if you didn’t use the feature (the thumb would be generated on the fly and cached for future usage). Although it seems that being able to define special size keywords could be useful in this case too. After all headline is an easier size to remember then 480 or something like that.

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#49 2006-03-13 01:04:09

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#50 2006-03-13 03:15:24

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#51 2006-03-13 03:22:17

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#52 2006-03-13 04:12:06

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#53 2006-03-13 10:03:07

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#54 2006-03-13 12:33:12

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#55 2006-03-13 18:09:56

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#56 2006-03-14 00:25:46

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#57 2006-03-15 01:25:41

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#58 2006-03-15 03:56:04

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#59 2006-03-15 05:33:46

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#60 2006-03-15 13:27:12

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

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