New York city Drupal camp happened last weekend in United Nations HQ and there was, among numerous other things, Media sprint going on. Organizers did their best to bring some of the most active Drupal Media contributors on-site. We are very happy and thankful that they made this possible, as we managed to achieve some very important steps forward.
Photo by: Jovan Matic
Plans for Drupal 8
Main part of our efforts at the camp was roadmap for Media in Drupal 8 as part of which we achieved few very important conclusions:
- Storage components: there are still different opinions about the storage part (AKA "File entity" approach vs. "Media entity" approach - for more info check https://groups.drupal.org/node/384813). We decided that this is fine. We will continue to work on both solutions, while trying to find as many sticking points as possible and share as much code as possible. Entire ecosystem will be split into several sub-components in order for this to be possible.
- Decoupled components architecture: as already mentioned we're dividing Media ecosystem into smaller pieces, which will be easier to develop and maintain. We will make sure to make every component as generally usable as possible. This will allow us to use them with both storage solutions and also, when applicable, in more general contexts (not necessary related to media itself). "Full featured" media solutions will still exist, but will mostly provide glue that will make individual components able to work together.
- Media browser/selector/creator: this part of the system will be responsible for browsing media collections, picking and/or creating individual or multiple media items. It will be used in different contexts as fields (entity reference, file, image, ...), WYSIWYG, global, etc. This component will not be related to media by it's nature. It should be possible to use it also in other similar use-cases (browsing and picking nodes for an entity reference field for example). Existing tools/systems should be used where possible (Views for entity browsing, existing field widgets for entity creation, ...).
- WYSIWYG integration: core now supports image embeds by default, but we still want to be able to embed other types of media. WYSIWYG entity embed framework will be responsible for that. It will be able to embed any entity using techniques that were already tested in D7. Entity-specific solutions that we know from D7 world (node_embed, ...) will become obsolete as a result of that.
- Display configuration: we will create two levels of display configuration. Field formatter level will provide more basic functionality, while ensuring simpler interface for site builders and administrators. This approach is expected to be used on simpler sites. Media/File entity render will, on the other hand, provide more powerful display configuration system with more complexity. Both storage solutions will share some parts of display configuration components, but it will not be possible to re-use everything.
- 3Rd party providers: both storage solutions will need own 3Rd party integrations due to fundamental differences in storage implementation.
Next events/sprints
- Sprint at DrupalCamp Alpe-Adria (May 17th - 20th)
- Week-long sprint at DrupalCon Austin (June 1st - 7th)
- Week-long sprint at DrupalCOn Amsterdam (September 28th - October 4th)
- Week-long sprint at BADCamp (approx. October 21st - 26th)
Getting involved
In order for Media to really rock in D8 we need a lot of help (by this I mean A LOT!). Are you personally interested in media on Drupal or you run a Drupal company/shop and have to deal with funky media problems and desperately need a powerful and extensible solution for that? Are you able to dedicate some of your (or one or your employees) time to achieve that goal?
We need you! No matter which skills you have! We need help with back-end and front-end development. We also need design/UX skills to create good editorial experience. Are you not a coder, but have good ideas? We need those!
You can reach us on #drupal-media or on groups.drupal.org/media. There will be weekly "scrums" held in Google Hangout onAir every Tuesday at 3:30PM GMT (follow groups.drupal.org/media for announcements).
We need your user stories
There are as many possible media use-cases as there are Drupal websites. In order to be able to design the system in a way that will work for most possible situations we need your feedback - your user stories. Please take few minutes to think about your past project that dealt with Media and try to remember interesting problems that you'be been facing. Then use our form and send them our way in a form of a user story.
Google Summer of Code 2014
We have two quite strong media related project proposals for this year's Summer of code. We are hoping for both of them to be accepted. We will be able to publish more informations about that in the second part of April.
Please help Aaron Winborn
Aaron is a long time Drupal contributor, author of many media-related modules and a great and inspiring person. He is fighting ALS and he needs our help. Please consider contributing to his fund to help them make his and his families life just a little bit easier. Thank you!
We would like to thank camp organizers one more time. They prepared an unforgettable event for us. We would definitely not be able to achieve this progress without their support!
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Comments
Thanks!
Thank you for the update! Since there are people and scenarios still calling after much discussion for both storage solutions, it seems like a good idea to proceed with both and take this opportunity to further decouple where possible.
I hope that somewhere down down the line, a Drupal 8 install profile will emerge that will provide out of the box a polished and easy to use blog with media solution like Wordpress (but better!).
Christopher Pelham
Director
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing)
http://www.crsny.org
CRS (Center for Remembering & Sharing) is an arts & healing center located just south of Union Square in Manhattan.
Good
Hello,
This update is very good. The picture of the team is very nice :=)
It is, right? :)
It is, right? :)
Janez Urevc - software engineer @ Examiner.com - @slashrsm - janezurevc.name
Agree
Good team
great
I want to update ASAP
User Stories
I've now built with Drupal 6 and 7, started building a few sites shortly after D6 came out. I'm greatly looking forward to D8 primarily b/c of the awesome handling of the layout between desktop and mobile.
On Media, I've use audio and images. I've played around with video, but at my church (main website work), we've got to get audio caught up before can spend time on video side of things.
Anyway, as for the Drupal usage:
Drupal 6
I really really loved using the Audio module.
The primary reason I liked using that module for audio files is it's integration with getid3. I've done a little programming in other areas, but not in Drupal, php, etc. I don't have time to learn the code behind everything, at least at this point in my life. So I have to depend upon other modules people build. And the Audio module ceased being supported as of Drupal 7, sadly.
Drupal 7
When I moved to Drupal 7 for many benefits, such as (from a site maintenance perspective) Drupal 7 handling of module updates - FAR better to work with than D6, I had to try using different modules.
None of those modules have the same benefit, that I've found, of working well with getid3. Some of them work better in some circumstances than others.
There is one module I'm currently using on our front page as a sort of pop-up media player where the user can play/pause/skip/etc just like a normal media player, and I'm really loving that. And unfortunately at the moment, I am totally forgetting what module that is. I'll try to make a point to look later when I'm home and figure that one out again.
I use a couple of other modules for allowing audio playback of sermon files in a couple of other locations.
I'm fine with using different modules, but it'd be great to be able to use one module, or at least have things have a more similar/consistent appearance in different scenarios, but that's not really a big deal.
The biggest thing I'd like to be able to see is importing a file, and whether that be audio, video, image, or other media types (PDF, DOC, etc), to have the module pull in file properties / meta data.
Some examples I'd like to be able to pull in:
1. So the audio file has properties: Title, Artist, etc I'd like to maybe create custom field mappings in a user interface within Drupal that allows for me to pick from possible getid3 pulled fields and map them to fields in a given content type. Then once I upload a file under the given content type, the getid3 module/tool would be used to pull in those fields, and place where desired.
2. If the file is a Doc/PDF file (and maybe this is getting too specific, so ignore if need be), pull in the PDF/Doc, index or read (optional) contents, to give options of just importing the content to a new node or else creating a file to be attached to a node, at the user's discretion.
3. On images, it would be nice to pull in file properties / tagged values if possible, and to have some built-in / automatic method of giving options as soon as adding as to how we want it displayed... gallery/slideshow/embedded/etc... but not sure if that's something you'd handle in one place. Currently, I'd use different modules for different methods.
4. Another point on images.. historically, from a user perspective, it's not always easy to set up the correct "preview" and "full-size" image sizes, for instance. I mean some of it has made sense, but trying to make one piece work a certain way, and then get the modules to see what was done there, and use it, has been wanting (at least seems that way to me). So, perhaps if there were a standard way of a built-in / top-level calculation of how to get preview size images from the original files or else a way to just flat store 2 or more copies of each image, which I imagine would not be ideal for sites with loads of images.
Sorry if my comment seems disjointed. I thought I'd try to quickly toss in some ideas with the hope that I can offer at least one user's perspective.
Thank you for your feedback.
Thank you for your feedback. We really appreciate it!
It would be great if you could "convert" your comment to few user stories and submit it via our form: http://www.drupalmedia.org/initiative/submit-user-story
This will help us to keep feature requests organized in one place.
Janez Urevc - software engineer @ Examiner.com - @slashrsm - janezurevc.name
Oops - will try to do soon
Oops - will try to do soon. Will be at least late this evening or else tomorrow evening at earliest. Thanks for the link.
NP. Thank you!
NP. Thank you!
Janez Urevc - software engineer @ Examiner.com - @slashrsm - janezurevc.name
Drupal 8 Excellent
I hope drupal 8 will be a great turn in development...........Thank to all