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Site design images
Born out of the way I currently present my themes. We have an “Images” tab in the “Content” area and my belief is that this should only contain images which are part of the content i.e. are called into articles or image galleries.
What about having a second image tab, with a different name such a “Design Images” or “Site Images” placed under the “Presentation” tab that has it’s own folder, tables etc. so that we can keep content and design images completely separate as they should be?
It would also keep them out of reach of users who don’t have the correct permissions to go to the “Presentation” tab and I can’t see any “backward-compatibility” problems.
Before someone suggest that this could be done as a plug-in, which I would welcome, it is a basic tenet of Textpattern that it keeps content and presentation separate yet, strictly speaking, it doesn’t so methinks this separation should be made core.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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#2 2010-09-18 10:36:10
- redbot
- Plugin Author
- Registered: 2006-02-14
- Posts: 1,410
Re: Site design images
thebombsite wrote:
…What about having a second image tab….
Hi,
I agree “design images” should not be reachable from users but why add more complexity to the interface when you could just ftp them and solve the problem?
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Re: Site design images
Hi Stuart,
…It would also keep them out of reach of users…
Not that I disagree with your train of thought but as of txp 4.2+ images have authors. This prevents them from being edited/replaced/deleted by people without permissions. I can see the problem with background images/sprites/etc which could be hidden from site authors and save designers a lot of anxiety from their clients who might demand unreasonable/unaesthetic changes to the layout images.
Yiannis
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NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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Re: Site design images
Redbot – Well that’s what I do now but essentially it is bypassing Txp which is meant to be my site’s management system but it isn’t managing ALL of my site, at least not all of the presentation side of my site.
As for complexity, what complexity? It’s an extra tab in “Presentation”. As for the extra tab itself, it does not need any of the complexity of the current “Images” tab, for example it would not require categories, captions, dates(probably), tags(probably), author(probably) or thumbnails. Very simple.
Some users could argue that using FTP is more complex which is why many sites have design images mixed in with content images in the current tab.
Yiannis – the accessibility thing was more of an added benefit rather than an objective. The main reasoning is to keep content and presentation separate so that Txp actually does what it says on the tin.
Last edited by thebombsite (2010-09-18 11:02:11)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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Re: Site design images
I currently keep all my design-specific images out of the system completely, as I also do for any css, so it’s not an issue for me. But if textpattern is offering an inbuilt css option within the presentation group, it probably should also have an inbuilt ‘style only’ images in that group too.
But how would you stop people getting confused by now having two image repositories?
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Re: Site design images
But how would you stop people getting confused by now having two image repositories?
maybe one way might be to have folders in folder so we can still have
- images
- presentation
- content
the presentation images could be filtered out unless one has specific rights. Not quite what you suggested but it can nevertheless become a happy medium. The txp interface of the presentation images could appear in both the presentation and the content tabs.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
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#7 2010-09-18 14:27:57
- masa
- Member
- From: Asturias, Spain
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,091
Re: Site design images
colak wrote:
the presentation images could be filtered out unless one has specific rights.
I like the idea of hiding, but instead of having a separate repository wouldn’t it be simpler if you could hide images based on their category?
Create a category e.g. site design and set that to be hidden from specific user levels.
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Re: Site design images
I think everyone is missing the point here by trying to come up with ideas about how to hide theme images or ftp’ing them etc.
The point is that they simply shouldn’t be in the current images tab AT ALL. It’s a content tab and theme images are not content.
The fact that if they were in “Presentation” it could restrict certain users from seeing or being able to edit them is just a good side-effect but it isn’t the objective.
We keep harping on about how well Txp separates content from presentation but actually this is one area where it fails.
Last edited by thebombsite (2010-09-18 15:52:58)
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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#9 2010-09-18 16:02:06
- masa
- Member
- From: Asturias, Spain
- Registered: 2005-11-25
- Posts: 1,091
Re: Site design images
Stuart,
I wouldn’t mind at all if they were kept in Presentation – it would be the cleanest and most logical solution.
I’m just wondering what’s easier to implement.
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Re: Site design images
If we choose to be thus dogmatic about the separation of concerns, we’d also need a tab for behaviour, somehow similar to the files tab and home to all things javascript. (or .htc).
Is this really helpful, aside from the “purity” aspect?
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Re: Site design images
No, though we do have a plug-in for javascript Robert. I’m quite happy doing the FTP thing but that’s because I know how.
Stuart
In a Time of Universal Deceit
Telling the Truth is Revolutionary.
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#12 2010-09-18 17:51:38
- els
- Moderator
- From: The Netherlands
- Registered: 2004-06-06
- Posts: 7,458
Re: Site design images
thebombsite wrote:
The point is that they simply shouldn’t be in the current images tab AT ALL.
I agree. But I see no problem in having to FTP them, end users won’t likely have to worry about this, right? I see more cons than pros in using a second images tab, but I do think that in the default install there shouldn’t be any site design images in the images tab.
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