Image management is in my view still the one area where DNN falls down as a content publishing tool. We can upload images, but all image processing and preparation has to be carried out off-line prior to upload.

The area of concern is that people who do have sufficient skills to publish and edit text, have usually not got the skills needed to size and compress images as required. The result is that clients have to be trained up in this otherwise menial task and even with training, the likelihood is very high that users will forget or not bother with it. Images out of proportion to content, or resized only by dragged handles, and also unsuitable formats such as bmp... all of these are the typical result.

This has led to the situation where individual module developers create their own unique upload and resize tools. The blog is one example of this.

An additional motivator for this is that the web is moving along fast; people are getting used to being able to add text and upload images to websites without having to worry about technical details or use external applications. MySpace, Flickr, eBay.... and pretty much every forum tool... they all take care of the technical bits for the smoothest user experience.

The ideal scenario for DNN would be that image processing and management take place within the tool where the images are ultimately used... and that is within the WYSIWYG editor.

FCK and FTB go part way toward dealing with this by providing image upload, file management, and image layout tools. The functionality missing is resizing, re-sampling, and/or converting.

I've noted that Ghost River Associates have a small image upload module (I've just purchased it for 2 bucks on Snowcovered). They provide the source, encourage it's use in modules, and allow royalty-free distribution. The module conveniently resizes and renames images upon upload.

My suggestion is to look into incorporating this tool into the FCK editor provider. It's the one function that would complete the suite and make this the only editor, and DNN the only open-source portal, that can accomplish this all within one WYSIWYG view.

The module is here:
http://www.snowcovered.com/Snowcovered2/Default.aspx?r=f3872a49d1&tabid=242&PackageID=4588

And the Ghost River homepage is here:
http://www.ghostriver.com/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

Perhaps Shawn can even talk them into letting the project have it.. they seem very friendly to deal with

Regards,
Rob

I agree. It is on our roadmap, I think that we will need somebody working only into this to create a good default image gallery.

The good point is that the image galleries can be plugged to the provider like adons.... so if someone is interested, there could be a good market for just image galleries. Host users can set the current image gallery in the web.config

A re-size on upload tool would be HUGE! If the user could choose to Re-size on upload it would be even better. At times you want the large image to link too, but most often they upload a giant image, then resize it in the editor thinking they have made the image smaller.

IMHO this would be the second most important enhancment available to DNN users in a long time. Tie this into the more granular user control we now have (the most important enhancement) and we would really have a very powerful file/image management tool.