This issue STILL remains, so I am posting a new issue. When uploading an image, the media browser allows the user to attach a "Current Format" to the image. (one of link, preview, large, original) Where are these formats in the media UI? Are they editable? Why don't they correspond to image styles?

The media/file types configuration LOOKS like the area to adjust these formats, but the buttons offered there do not correspond to the formats in the media browser drop down. (see images attached)

Frankly, media is a hopeless mess! Why do we have image styles, file styles, file types, file formats, all different from one another? How are we getting closer to a simple wysiwyg interface that will allow USERS to easily upload images and files? It looks instead like even developers can't figure out what's going on. I've tied my wagon to the Media Module for months now, but we seem to be getting farther and farther away from a clean, simple interface.

CommentFileSizeAuthor
media_upload.jpg53.01 KBzoon_unit
file_display.jpg70.78 KBzoon_unit

Comments

devin carlson’s picture

devin carlson commented
Status: Active » Fixed

File types are the responsibility of the File Entity module. An administration interface for customizing file types does not currently exist. It is being worked on in #1260050: Provide administrative UI for adding/removing file types.

File types can correspond to image styles. A file type is simply a category; you can tag files as small, large, etc. You can then go to the file display page and configure how you want media with each tag to be displayed, ie. images that are "large" should be displayed with image style X and images that are "small" should be displayed with image style Y.

Configuring Media is a complex task because Media is trying to solve a complex problem (which is not to say that it can't be improved). For example, I currently use Media to serve media to some 70,000 company employees and hundreds of thousands of anonymous users. The "media" that is served is all in .swf format but has attached XML data and represents slideshows, videos and images. The media is uploaded via an internal "YouTube" style website and is hosted internally or on Amazon S3, depending on privacy concerns.

The fact that non-technical users can upload their files to our media website and then simply copy+paste the URL into the Media module to add, preview, manage, embed and format slideshows, images and videos that are hosted on two CDNs, in two languages, with complex markup and styling is amazing.

As with all things open source, enhancements to the Media module will only be made if you test patches, provide funding, contribute development resources, write documentation, etc.

zoon_unit’s picture

zoon_unit commented

Devin, I appreciate the thoughtful response and I apologize for my frustration, but this media issue has been a long standing Achilles heel for Drupal. Perhaps the community is trying to do too much? One reason Wordpress continues its dominance over Drupal in many arenas is because it solved the wysiwyg/upload issue YEARS ago.

Perhaps the Drupal community should prioritize a simple interface for uploading IMAGES since they are the most pervasive need. The current approach is almost indecipherable by all but the most savvy developers. That leaves out the other 99% of Drupal users.

It does seem that this is a solution by committee with no central vision and that we have a lot of confusing terminology and overlap of interface approaches. The fact that this solution is handled by a large number of different modules, with different developers, only makes the problem worse. I've been working with Drupal for six years now and we still don't have a viable wysiwyg interface! That's crazy.

I hope the Media dev team can discuss this issue next week in their IRC meeting. I want to love MEDIA, but I just can't! :-(

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.