Improving TXP Image Management

squaredeye · 2006-05-09 12:59:40

guiguibonbon,

I once felt how you do here, though I have shifted. I had a “wet” blanket thrown on me :) like you just did.

I think we as developer/designers need to raise the bar. If you are going to charge $30,000 for a site, then you can get some custom php work done to get a plugin that does what you are asking for or even hack the core. However, most of us aren’t able to go after work that big (atleast I’m not there), so it may be something you can begin to communicate to your clients that they need someone on staff to be trained. You may offer a piece of that training as part of the package, or offer it as an hourly rate? YOu may offer a manual with your installation that spells it out.

Consider blogger. Its as easy as it gets, and still people ask the questions you have stated above. At some level, people need to get geeky.

Multiple thumbs : yep. I agree. Wholeheartedly. I like the idea of being able to create as many as three different percentages, but then what if someone wants one that is horizontal and one that’s vertical instead? Maybe you would be willing to create a mockup image that would help us go through some of the ideas and thoughts around those needs?

Image upload: Sounds great, but what happens if you want to upload 20? 2? etc. If you’ve read the thread, you’ve found that those are questions that have come up. Perhaps you could help us brainstorm here?

Thanks for volunteering.
I add you to the list.

:)

Matthew

guiguibonbon · 2006-05-09 14:13:52

haha. Well actually I do usually charge for a little trainig, and sometimes it suffices. But sometimes they just forget after a few days. No, hours. A manual? Never thought about that, not too bad an idea actually. But my point is, such things shouldn’t even have to happen. WordPress shows it can be straight forward, and as you mentioned, Blogger does even more. Why does it have to be so hard with our beloved txp? Why are there 4 ways of inserting images ? Yes four : xhtml – textile – txp:image and usually txp:ump_image. And sometimes even more. I would like textile to manage most of the usual needs concerning images.

The third point i mentionned has been discussed already, and I see some good starting points. Like that small plug-in which adds an ajax-window on top of the textbox. But I’d rather go with something lightboxy. The thing I’d like to add here, is assigning images to articles. Think how much that would improve navigation. So, basically, you’d have a mini-ump_img_popper on the write page -with added simple upload function, and a more complex image-organizer in the image tab. About it, I think the image-organizer submitted above does too many things for the average user. Keep it as a small additional plug-in, I’d say. Being able to choose catA+catB+catD but not catC seems a bit over-the-top, simply allowing only to see images from on particular category would usualy be enough I think. and two columns would be better.

On the multiple uploads, well, I think that is sort of a dream. The gmail sollution is already an enhancement, that could be considered. I can give you a screenshot if you don’t have an account. Uploading zips could be sort of a way. But only for many many images, and that would raise the upload-time too much i guess.

Multiple thumbs : very plainly, a new little list of options, either in the “extensions” tab, or in the “admin>preferences” if it’s a patch, where you get the same options as now to create a thumb (w+h+crop), only you’d have it three times (for three sizes) and it’d be set once and for all.

Last edited by guiguibonbon (2006-05-09 14:14:28)

squaredeye · 2006-05-09 14:35:14

guiguibonbon,
- per user stuff, perhaps you and I could email about that more?
- we’ve talked about trying to have image links like : textile, xhtml, etc controlled by the developer: ie: if staffwriter then show only “textile”, etc. In fact that gets into “rights and permissions” and the workgroup thereof.

- an image mockup will prove much more helpful if you are willing to put one together for these ideas :)

Thanks for your help.

Matthew

mrdale · 2006-05-09 15:52:38

I’ve never had any problems explaining bas_img_select to clients. They understand it right away, and happily add images to articles. I try to reduce the possibilities for most clients so that they just edit articles and add images.

Seems to work.

guiguibonbon · 2006-05-09 16:25:06

agreed but it doesn’t automaticaly link to the original image – let alone to a popup with the image. + does’nt alow automatic caption. + gives some sort of thing (we would call it a tag) they’ve never seen before.

For the thumbsizes, quickly made this simple thing

guiguibonbon · 2006-05-09 16:35:59

ma_smith wrote:

guiguibonbon,
we’ve talked about trying to have image links like : textile, xhtml, etc controlled by the developer: ie: if staffwriter then show only “textile”, etc. In fact that gets into “rights and permissions” and the workgroup thereof.

That’s just a way to be sure it will never get done, innit ;) + seems to me like a lot of things to control, for just an esthetical/useability improvement. Ok, now, let’s imagine I do get to developp this textile-add-on. What would you all think about such a feature; ie : a textilish syntax for inserting images (with diff thumbnail sizes, possible link to large img, possible custom alt, possible automatic alt, possible caption, possible styling/positioning).

wet · 2006-05-09 16:51:29

guiguibonbon wrote:

I would like textile to manage most of the usual needs concerning images.

In fact I started a discussion concerning that (and a bit more) a while ago. Would you mind sharing your ideas here?

Last edited by wet (2006-05-09 16:51:55)

squaredeye · 2006-05-09 16:59:04

ggbb,
Great image :)
How would you suggest the image tab would reflect those sizes? In other words, how would a person know that they had three thumbs available to them? How would a user or developer choose them? If you would be willing to think through a bunch of “ifs” that would be helpful for the proposed proposal (lol).

THx,

M

Edit: Go for designing the textile work : check with WET, he’s an encumbant in these things, been here awhile. Also, I disagree with you about the “that’s just the way to not get things done”. Please remember that some of us have been at this (the work of it) awhile now, and we could use your thoughts, ideas, and even help, but there are bigger issues in movement here, and like anything good, it takes time. You may have a specific way of seeing things, but remember that thinking broad and laterally will create an environment that is flexible for many and not just for few. For what its worth.

Last edited by ma_smith (2006-05-09 17:24:05)

guiguibonbon · 2006-05-09 18:03:38

yes, obviously, and I have great respect for developpers, and all the community. It’s only that, as appears form the dev blog, the rights and permissions workgroup is already doing all sorts of complex things, and you know, just telling them “hey guys, do this too”, for something that, too me, isn’t all that important, would just not be be the best thing to do. Especially since here, on the counterpart, many seem available and willing. But maybe I’m wronga about the rights and permissions workgroup, in which case i’m sorry for not having looked at it any further.

jameslomax · 2006-05-10 14:45:37

OK, well this is getting a bit technical for me. Just want to mention a few things:

Use-ability: some major work is going into this, and it really deserves some good use-ability design. Not to suit all the coders and technical developers here but for users, like myself :-)

There’s still the option of having an ‘image insert’ panel as part of the default article page, something like bas_img_selector but more developed. In-depth navigation could be left for a separate tabbed page, as has already been built. In practice, you don’t often need to navigate your entire image collection – this is important. Insert-image and ‘browse-all-of-them’ are, in reality, two different needs.
If this project is for the needs of image-heavy sites, photographers etc, like myself, then an admin page insert panel is just as important as the text area.

SVN developments will probably happen eventually, and maybe within six months this new code will be part of the txp core – great! However, if there’s a plug in available now – which there is – it would be great if this is developed just a little more, especially for uploading.

Remember – that single column design is a no-no :-)

Last edited by jameslomax (2006-05-10 14:58:48)

marios · 2006-05-10 22:46:29

Now , again, I didn’t read all the threads, (some of them, as they add up).

Once again I am stumbling on a very basic problem for TXP image handling from the practical side.

<h1> Short explanation: </h1>
When authoring on article pages, it is sometimes the case, that you don’t do this actually straight in from the TXP default textarea, but rather use a third party text-editor for that, since that’s the only way to productively author a page using custom html.
(That is for various reasons, not directly related to image-handling, mostly those are missing features like integrated spell check,problems with textile handling and validation, and missing integration features for third party applications that would allow you to author article pages on a more wider scope, etc.)

That might not be the case for the majority of the users, but still seems important enough to find it worthwhile to mention it here.

To make it short, let’s take a very simple basic example.
Let’s say, you write a technical article about how to set up a specific Networking device.
To deploy the workflow mentioned above, you would open your external editor, import some photos along, may be make some screen shots and collect some code snippets on the way.
Naturally, since I’m authoring right from the outside, the workflow for most users would be as follows: I’d rename my Images,let them go into a category folder (that could match the article title may be), upload them to the Server to the Images folder, and reference them right away from the editor, while I author along and once done cut and paste everything in the textarea and publish.
Problem there the ID renaming thing, because, the images could still be inserted automatically to the database until now through the plugin.
It just didn’t feel natural to me ,to go into the image handling feature and insert those after I have published my article.

So, to make it a little shorter, how difficult would it be, to let TXP recognize your image names right from the database( so you can have your custom file naming convention), and let it warn you in those cases it find’s double instances, and still have the e.g. t=thumb, l=large,parameter prepend option in the file name.
when you upload images to the server, there could still be some kind of auto rename feature for double instances, that could be presented to the User right after accessing the back-ends image tab along with a warning message, for example:

<strong>WARNING</strong>
TXP found double instances of file names for the same image files, what would you like to do, bla bla bla….

In the meanwhile TXP would still insert those instances in the database, but put a special flag on them or temporary alter their file name to something else maybe.

I’m not sure, if this excursion was a little to long for such a single matter, but I think it’s mostly those basic simple things that matter, instead of having zillions of features for image handling, that I doubt would ever be used by every User.

regards, marios

Last edited by marios (2006-05-10 22:48:05)

jameslomax · 2006-05-11 08:58:46

With regard to the more specific themes and ideas of this thread, as they pertain to the code currently being developed, the above from Marios (partly) highlights the following. The workflow problem where you have you go into the image tab, then upload an image, generate a thumbnail and save it in a cateogry, then return to the article page and find it again, to then insert in the article.

Basically, the two components of this – image management and article posting – are not integrated. The best interface support for image-based sites is to integrate these two components; my suggestion is a panel like bas_image_selector, but more developed.

You still need a comprehensive navigation page, but that’s not the whole solution to efficient workflow.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#157 2006-05-09 12:59:40

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#158 2006-05-09 14:13:52

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#159 2006-05-09 14:35:14

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#160 2006-05-09 15:52:38

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#161 2006-05-09 16:25:06

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#162 2006-05-09 16:35:59

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#163 2006-05-09 16:51:29

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#164 2006-05-09 16:59:04

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#165 2006-05-09 18:03:38

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#166 2006-05-10 14:45:37

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#167 2006-05-10 22:46:29

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

#168 2006-05-11 08:58:46

Re: Improving TXP Image Management

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