Image handling requests

Hi there Layingback.

As discussed before at the mothership I would love to see this news/blog module having the same kind of image handling system as all the free blog providers has where you may upload images while resizing them on the fly and placing them wherever you like on the text page.

This would also allow to mark them and then insert url linking on them using the link button.

I think this is an important issue to make full use of this great module as both news and blog platforms and it will allow the user much more creativity when posting.

I don't know if I should put more requests on to the same thread or post it as another request, but the use of a captcha code would be great too when allowing members and unregistered users to post and comment as you otherwise will end up with lots of spamming.

Firstly: Welcome.

Pro_News currently resizes uploaded images (all 2 of them ) to (default sizes of) 800px, 400px and 200px, plus icon of 100px wide. With a bit of intelligent assignment, these would produce any requested size < 800px by simply defining a size and letting user's browser do final resize (from next largest image). Also lets user change their mind with no change to the upload required.

I had been thinking along same lines as you probably were, that Pro_News needs to place inline images through upload and the DF template system. This lies somewhere between hard and impossible! New thought - following your post on DragonflyCMS - is to make upload and placement separate functions. Upload would basically be as now, except there would be some function to keep uploading another. Somewhat like attaching files to forum posts currently.

To actually place the images I'm now thinking of using new BBCodes! [img=3-300] for example would place the 3rd image uploaded at that location sized to be 300px wide. Not to hard to do, either as development in BBCode, nor too hard for the user in Pro_News article Submit Article. And this method still preserves the current Pro_News uploaded image methods (to hamper attacks).

Nice aspect of this approach is that it is fully compatible with current image handling. Images 1 & 2 (and 3 & 4 in future) could be handled via predefined template as now, but additional images could be placed inline. Allowing ease of use for newbies and/or simple posts, and complete customization for more important/complex cases.

Plus typical Pro_News config options could restrict this custom image option to Admins Only, certain Sections, etc., etc. Whatever suits the site admin.

Captcha could be added readily enough, but honestly I've not had such a request before, and in my experience any spam attacks I've had have been by humans not bots so captchas would not help.

I am not sure how this woul look when it is done Layingback, but my concern is that to make people use the blog feature on a website, then they need to recognise the system as beeing familiar to what they are used to from before.

If imges should be placed inline using BBcode - would it then be easy to link this images to url's opening a new browser window and such?

Would the image quality remain the same or could you end up with images that looks fuzzy? What about file size?

I am not saying it is a bad idea, but I think these things needs a second thought if you are not sure this will not be a problem?

If imges should be placed inline using BBcode - would it then be easy to link this images to url's opening a new browser window and such?

Not sure why you need linking, as the image is locally uploaded not pulled from another site.

I would presume that any image less than 800px would be linked to the 800px version for a pop-up.

But check the imgurl BBCode button (lower left button on here) to see what you can do with BBCode. This was built for me by MickieMouse/EHP Designs and designed for coppermine images back before the photo album stuff in Pro_News. It lets you hook to an image *and* link to a larger image, etc., for pop-up in 1 go. Could probably do same for this new function, and perhaps preset link to 800px version so that it could be overwritten or left. At least that would be an option.

New browser window or not would be same as today, if you include the http:// p[art it gets a new window, omit the site part and it opens in same.

... they need to recognise the system as beeing familiar to what they are used to from before

Maybe a valid point, but we're coming from "it's not possible" currently in any DF module, so it may not be possible to get the same as you would in a totally written from scratch system.

Also this would have many other uses, many more, than just Blogs.

As to quality the 100, 200, 400 and 800px wide versions are all true resizes (GD or Imagick at admins choice). So the variations my not be that bad - plus admin can set all but the 100px one to whatever he/she wants for any given site. (Remember I've got to run on an unknown shared hosting plan in the general case, not a dedicated private server like Wordpress, etc., so I have to be careful on server load at any given instant.)

I think this idea is probably worthy of further exploration/development. Just I have a number of other more urgent tasks in front of me just at the moment ...

- layingback

Not sure why you need linking, as the image is locally uploaded not pulled from another site.

Oh, he he - what I meant was the possibility to have link from the image to an external url - as if the image was a banner for another website.
If you write an article about something you may want to illustrate with an image and then make it clickable to open external websites - sponsors, related articles elsewhere etc etc...

NOT talking about popping the image in a pop up or linking it's source from another site.

Example:

How is it going with this one Layingback?

Honestly I've not started on it yet. But almost finished clearing the backlog of other changes that were already in progress - new 3rd gen. footer, comment block (so you can see lead-in to latest comments without clicking through), etc.

I'm thinking I can use the batch upload script which I developed for Album Uploads (as an alternative to FTP). But not yet decided on whether to ask user to upload first, then assign/place as they go, place first and then upload, or - if possible - assign and browse ready for upload as you go then actually upload as batch at end. Latter would probably be most intuitive, but I'm not sure if my JavaScript skills will stretch that far

A small step accomplished.

Haven't worked on the main inclusion code as yet, but I have modified the BBCode Img command to accept [img width=# height=#] to allow on-the-fly resizing. Will upload the code soon: it is all of 3 lines - and 1 of those is for the help line!

Here's the link to the promised modified BBCode Img command to allow resizing on the fly.