(sorry for the re-edits, but something is going spazzy with the fonts here)
This is the biggest issue facing DNN from the perspective of all my clients. I've been posting about it for over two years all over the various DNN-related forums and I've been harassing developers left and right about providing this functionality. I'll have another go here now that the point is gaining some momentum.
Image management absolutely has to reside in one place, rather than be dealt with differently and inadequately by every module. The current situation whereby each and every developer has to implement yet another variation on adding or inserting images has led to the silliness of having to document 5-6 different methods of "How to add an image to your site"... which is what I am currently having to do. It's unbelievably dumb in the eyes of my end-users, especially when every other popular site they use, from eBay to Myspace, already does it all automatically.
I'll copy in some of my points from a recent post elsewhere:
What is present in the FTB/FCK editor is:
- Uploading images
- Creating folders
- Browsing and selecting thumbnailed images
- Setting basic image formatting such as Position/alignment/links/titles
And what is missing is:
- Resizing images on upload.
- Displaying dynamically resized images within the editor's output.
- Auto-linking the dynamic images to the full size original
- Deleting, copying, moving and renaming images (displayed as dynamically-generated thumbnails) and folders by non-admins
I can only see two ways to deal with it:
- Wait for the FCK team to add this to the editor and then make it work with DNN.
- Make a special image management tool/control/provider and slip it into FCK as Mauricio has already partly done with his thumbnail browser.
Number one is the ideal, but isn't happening any time soon (it's been three years already).
Number 2 is only a workaround, but it is the next best solution, because it would provide standard functionality in one place for use by all modules.
There are so many pre-built asp gadgets around the web these days that I'm convinced most of this is probably already available elsewhere. There's even an addon for the simplistic HTML-Area that does it and is available for most of the usual PHP portals.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/imgmngedt
PHP Image Manager, Image Editor for HTMLArea. Manager - cached thumbnails (JPEG, PNG, GIF depending on GD), filmstrip view, delete, create folders (if permitting), uploads. Editor - Resize, Crop, Rotate, Save as
That's what DNN needs, but it requires buy-in from the top to get it happening.
/end rant
Rob