Improved Image Field Module

I don't mean to be a total downer, but everything you're suggesting has been considered and either already implemented or chosen not to be implemented.

• Ajax upload is in imagefield 2.0, now in RC2.
• The ability to add a caption field has come up almost on a daily basis. We're not including it for the arguments listed above in others' responses.
• Drag and drop is in CCK 2.0 (Drupal 6 only sorry). Because there is a significant amount of effort getting that into Drupal 6 (hundreds of hours), there's really no desire by maintainers to implement a temporary solution for Drupal 5.
• The checkbox to delete an image will likely stick around, because if you want to change your mind after clicking the button, what can you do? The checkbox makes sense just as long as the preview is correctly not showing an image.

The only thing we don't have is the concept of a 'Primary image', which certainly could be useful. In D6 we can just drag to the top, but maybe a radio button is still in order.

If meta data is present (as it should be) then what is there should be offered up for use by the system. Caption, photographer, everything is stored in the exif.

I think Gallery2 is offering methods for using the exif, and there are a couple of modules for drupal mentioning exif, especially the module called...exif. I haven't tried it but it works with image nodes. I mention it here for completeness.

Thanks for reminding us about metadata :)

You also might want to look at image field gallery: http://drupal.org/project/imagefield_gallery

Cheers,

Bill

FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers

I don't think that your hard work was for nothing, especially for images in drupal.

I know that a lot of people don't think the way I do about images in drupal, and that the general thinking in drupal community is that instead of creating a new module, try to help improve the existing one, but I think images kind of escape a little bit from that concept.

The way I see it, images have so many ways of being used that drupal needs many different modules to handle images in a different way. But let me explain more clearly my thoughts.

Images can be used in many ways. It can be attached in a post, inline or as a unique illustration of the post, it can be used as icon, in list or not, it can be used as category illustrations, or as a simple attached file to any kind of content, it can be used as an image... part of a group of images, or galleries, and then group of images can be done as nodes or group of nodes... it all depend on how we build the website, how we want images to be displayed, and used, or re-used.

The main image modules are IMAGE and IMAGEFIELD. One uses images as nodes, the other uses images as a simple field (so as a file). but there is plenty of other modules that can be used on top of these two, like 'Upload Image', or 'imagefield_gallery', or even Views, to implement images the way you want. But I have to admit that when I develop a website, I often am frustated with images, either because it's sometimes very user NOT-friendly, or just because simple things like image galleries are a pain to create and configure or manage, and I often have to use some code because what I want to do just doesn't exist out here.

So IMHO, more modules about images, more options to handle images, more flexibility, more happy developers, and more happy clients and users. And I don't see why building a very custom module to handle images in drupal would be a bad idea. If I create a little website for a small company and they want the possibility to have users posting new image galleries, why can't I have, like forums, a simple module, that would do things out of the box nicely, but wouldn't be very hard to configure. And when I create a website for a big company, then I'll use some fancy group of modules to create the exact functionality I need for it.

And of course, I am not saying that we shouldn't try to improve existing modules ! I actually think that it should be one of our priority. But as some modules, like imagefield for example, are pretty effective already, and should just benefit from drupal 6 of a beter usability and UI, instead of adding more feature to this one, maybe we should work more on additional modules like the excellent imagefield_gallery.

So I don't think your work is a waste, and I'm really interested into testing it, because as images can be used in many ways by many peoples, maybe your module will be the exact answer for some :)
Could you post a version ofi t somewhere ? And is it D5 or 6 ?

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Hi all!!

In june I tried to follow the IRC mentioned above. During the discussion the decision was made to use SWFupload for uploading images and creating nodes for the files. I was wondering about the status of this project. Any progression made? Probably I've missed a lot of discussions about this during my vacation, so I want to catch up again.

I am planning to create a SWF upload module. The idea is that the module provides developers to add an upload field to their drupal forms which can be configured to what filetypes and how many files are accepted. Also the destination of the uploaded file should be configurable in the form element. The module replaces the form element with a SWF uploader (which can handle multiple file uploads).

I've got a lot of ideas about this, but probably I'm not alone and a lot of work is already done.

I've been reading through the way everyone handles / thinks of imagefield uploading and I realize something I came up with isn't up here. I'm not sure how applicable it is to the "outside world" but I'll give the description a shot and I can throw together a screencast if anyone wants to see it in action but...

I've made a context sensative node submission form that only handles images and sits inline with the content. "So what the hell does that mean?" Ok so, in our context (education) a user (student) needs to read through pages of instructional jargon, watch some tutorial videos on how to draw, submit their artwork, and then get a rubric based score ("feedback"). All of our courses are done in Drupal so our initial design was to make a page for the content, a "page" w/ a video, a link to the submission of their artwork (node/student-submission type of deal w/ imagefield), and then a link to a rubric (also custom). This didn't seem very effective...5 pages to handle one (simple) task? So, what we did is use collapse fieldsets to put them all in one page, Steps 1-5. Step 4 is the interesting one.

When you open step 4 there is an AJAX'ed image upload field w/ optional title that they can give their image. They select the file, type a title (optional) and then hit submit and it sends the file to the system and then loads it inline once it has been accepted (or gives an error if not). They can upload as many as they want in our example but there is almost no coding on the part of the person making the content. It is one function (of the form print _elms2_assignment_widget(); ?>) what's so special about this is that it looks at the taxonomy of the page the function is sitting on when determining what taxonomy to store the new image / assignment under. On 1st image of that tax-term it will automatically create the node for the user and start adding the files / images to it. Whenever the user returns to the page they will be shown their assignment in it's current state w/ the images previously submitted already inline w/ the content. They can delete inline as well as then add more.

I haven't cracked this out into it's own module that's ready for pub. consumption but does that sound like something anyone would be interested in? Context based adding of images / materials via inline widgets? Seems like this could easily be converted to an input format type of field instead of the current PHP but it is entire context based (any other user going to the same page will only submit and/or see their own images that they submitted per that tax. term). If this is of interest to anyone I can throw up a screencast if you'd like. If not, plz ignore ;)

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I'm not a programmer but I have read the discussion above about captions. I understand better the complexity. But, my little brain still doesn't get this: If images have title fields, why can't an additional check box be added right next to that title field that says "Use as caption?" and if yes, then code is executed to display it under the image, and no, it stays as "title" with its associated usages. I understand the "images are used for so many things" argument but if you analyze the requests for captions, there is consistency in what is requested. This could just be "core" and any other extrapolations are add-on's.

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