Thread

Moderator’s note: Moved to General.

Hi guys,

I’m really interested as to what other peoples thoughts are about this because in my opinion it’s EE’s biggest downfall.. and i’m quite disappointed that a better solution hasn’t really been developed for adding images to blog/channel entries (for EE2).

The way i did it before was to use ImageSizer plugin on a nGen File + FF Matrix custom field, so that way it was clean and simple for my clients to add images to the bottom of their entries. The plugin would resize / crop the images to thumbnails and allow me to apply a Lightbox style JS to them so the user could click the thumbs to view large versions.

Good, but what if they wanted an image within the textarea of the entry? Better to use a WYSIWYG so they don’t just see HTML image tags everywhere. There’s TinyMCE, which is ok for simple stuff (text formatting etc) but when it comes to adding images with image manager it’s too slow and complicated for my clients. And on top of that they need to create thumbs and link them to larger versions…

Now i’m moving over to EE2.0 because i think they’ll find the general interface much more pleasant and easier to use. The new file manager looks and works great.. but we still have the same problem with adding images. And now as FF Matrix is yet to be ported to EE2.0… it seems there’s currently no solution. Yes there’s a ‘File’ custom field type… but they’re limited to only one unless I manually create additional File fields for them. - I don’t understand the point of this. Why couldn’t something like FF Matrix be already built in to EE2.0?

Then there’s the Gallery Module issue. I understand EE wanting to keep it integrated with weblog/channels… but as the method of adding / editing / managing images is so lacking, how is this going to work? Admittedly i haven’t properly looked into this yet, but initially i can’t see how this will work..

In my opinion all these things are pretty big needs of a blog / cms which im pretty sure others like Wordpress provide out of the box. Why not EE? I’m really surprised it hasn’t been refined for EE2.0.

I’d like to hear Elislab and everyone elses thoughts on this..
Also what does everyone else do for this area of their websites? And how do your clients get on with it?

Agreed and Very disappointing that even with the new file manager in place (which is great) users have to struggle with ‘reading around’ the EE tags and actually doing something with these files.
So, the way I see it, we still need some form of WYSIWYG (try this TinyMCE or wygwam)...even though developers hate how it inserts extra html tags. After all, sites are built for the users…for now, I feel, we got a good upload/management tool but content entry still suffers and is a bit behind the times.
So there are solutions (time taxing and 3rd party), just a shame they are not ‘out of the box’ and really make the file manager feel not as ‘integrated’.

Glad to hear someone else shares the same view as me!

I really like wygwam over TinyMCE, especially how easy it is to create / edit ‘themes’. But there was something about it that i didn’t like.. it may have been the extra html tag thing - does it add tags to everything? I can’t quite remember!

I found TinyMCE a real pain to customise and get the buttons / functions i wanted. On top of that my client couldn’t get on with the image / file manager at all.

So this is slightly annoying as I obviously want to be using EE2.0 now with the lovely new interface and features. I think my client will love it… and i think they will find the new file manager a pleasure to use. But it feels all worthless as it’s not very well integrated with content entry at all… and on top of that there’s no alternative WYSISYG we can use yet.

The other thing is, when a WYSIWYG editor is ported to EE2.. is EE’s filemanager likely to be integrated with it? 

I like how you can currently click the image button in a new entry and it launches file manager where you can upload / select your image. Infact, all the formatting buttons are super neat. It would be perfect if the text area just rendered it all properly.

So close, yet so far!

Would be great to have some comments from you Ellilab folk!

Speaking of, I’d love to see batch uploads and multi-file insert!

.. there’s no alternative WYSISYG we can use yet.

Just FYI: http://newism.com.au/blog/post/100/nsm-tinymce-expressionengine-2-wysiwyg-custom-field/

good post

personally, I think I’ll be waiting until the 2.0 is out of public beta to add tiny mce

hacking the core kinda freaks me out

mmm.. me too. It does give us some WYSIWIG functionality though i suppose. Just doesn’t help with adding images etc.

Isn’t the fieldframe extension part of EE 2 now?

yes, but I don’t think it’s in the current beta build without a bit of core hacking

The Custom Field API is absolutely in EE 2.0 PB, no hacking needed.

Isn’t the fieldframe extension part of EE 2 now?

And that solves the issue by…needing less 3rd party plugins to make our own gallery?

Putting gallery into weblogs is a great idea just not at the cost of loosing important features such as batch upload, watermark and auto re-size…which is really what makes it a gallery.

maybe I was confused

.. there’s no alternative WYSISYG we can use yet.

Just FYI: http://newism.com.au/blog/post/100/nsm-tinymce-expressionengine-2-wysiwyg-custom-field/

the above article mentioned something about needing to hack the core to install the tinymce addon alpha

Just to be clear this is an early Alpha version of NSM TinyMCE and should only be installed by experienced ExpressionEngine developers / designers. The version number reflects the stability of EE2 Beta 1 not the addon code quality or implemented features. Some core hacking is required if you are using Build 20091207 or 20091211 but it’s minimal (make sure you read the README).

but I guess that’s an addon and not a custom field?

I was talking about FF Matrix which allows the user to add “rows” - so as many images / files as they want in an entry.

Currently we only have “File” available to us which allows adding only one image / file… which i think is pretty limiting.

I don’t understand why FF Matrix, or the concept of it wasn’t brought in as part of the new Custom Field API.. ?

I was talking about FF Matrix which allows the user to add “rows” - so as many images / files as they want in an entry.

Currently we only have “File” available to us which allows adding only one image / file… which i think is pretty limiting.

I don’t understand why FF Matrix, or the concept of it wasn’t brought in as part of the new Custom Field API.. ?

Guess I was operating with wrong info. The fieldframe api has been built into 2.0. But the other elements such as matrix will still need to be ported as mentioned in this article:

http://eeinsider.com/blog/expressionengine-2-week-interview-with-brandon-kelly/

“I’m aiming to have Matrix and the rest of FieldFrame’s bundled fieldtypes ready for EE 2 on day one.”

When day one happens I suppose is a mystery at this point.

Reading this thread it’s still not clear to me:

The Gallery Module is not available in EE 2.0 PB, but will it be available again as soon as EE 2.0 is released?