Currently from what I've seen, and in my opinion, it doesn't seem logical to spend time creating folders and organizing your files within the File Center, and then turning around to use a wysiwyg image manager and having to resort to browsing all your images in a flat and unorganized way.
So why not utilize the database from within an image manager when using a wysiwyg editor? (similar to when you currently insert an image content type or an image for an article's basis information)
Do others agree with my thinking or am I alone in what I think would be ideal?
My suggestions for an enhanced wysiwyg image manager would be:
- use the File Center's backend capability, not the "~/content/images" filesystem, when browsing
- very easy to use for end-users/publishers who are unfamiliar with html image terminology
- attempt to blend together the great/clean/modern looks of phpwcms and TinyMCE/etc
- remove tasks that the File Center already provides, so as to not duplicate things, and to also help make the image manager interface look cleaner/simpler, for example remove these tasks: upload image, delete image, create folder, rename/move image
- if desired, people could later add Advanced features via extra tabs at the top, for example: image maps, thumbnails/popups, image editor
....but the idea is that most users wouldn't need to use this advanced stuff for most of their image needs so don't put it out in front to confuse them.
I realize that FCKEditor and some of the possible image managers out there incorporate some of the above features, but unless I am mistaken, none of them seamlessly combine the best features out there with the uniqueness of phpwcms. Please, I honestly do not intend for this topic to become a war of words on which wysiwyg editor is better, or what image manager is better.....I am just offering some initial thoughts on possibly utilizing the file center database features of phpwcms for an image manager, whatever "xyz" image manager that may be.
I have thought about this and created a few visual ideas:
Example 1a
Example 1b
Example 1c
Note - these are concept images only that I created using The GIMP (aka Photoshop). I have not written any code for this yet. I am well aware of the "User-groups and advanced user/groups access rights" topic and the frustration that it has caused, so it is not my intention to post example images and then produce nothing. I don't consider myself to be a true programmer, but unless anyone else volunteers to code this, I am very serious about spending time to build this. This would be a real challenge for me, but I think that I could do this (you good programmers can laugh at my comments, since you likely could create this waaay faster and far better than I ever could).
Nearly two years ago I spent time customizing an older version of the PHP Image Manager created by Wei Zhuo for a phpBB baby-CMS that I had built for our organization's internal use. Here is a current screenshot of what we still use.
So, I'm wondering if you think this would be a worthwhile idea, or not. If anyone else out there wants to build this, that's fine by me - if so please speak up. Otherwise, I'm guessing it will take me about one month (?) to create a working example of the above (other work and family obligations that are more important). It will be a matter of moulding existing code from things such as phpwcms's filebrowser.php & fileinfo.php, TinyMCE, and the current PHP Image Manager.....and then some. At the end of a month I will post what I have produced so far and provide all of the code.
Take care,
TomC