Symphony.

This is a concept of a feature I really like to see as an extension but I'm not skilled enough to realize it myself: it's all about inline image adding and uploading.

What's the idea

When writing entries in the Symphony backend I often like to be able to directly insert images into my text. There is no need for a file upload field as it exists now because I don't need the images in my XML. Instead they are just needed in the text. At the moment I would use my ftp program to upload the image keeping the URL in mind for inserting it directly into my textarea. As I need an external program this does not always work (as I do not always have access to a ftp client). So the question is: couldn't this be handled inline the admin interface?

What's the concept

Think of an extension that adds a new option to the section field editor when creating or editing textarea field. This option should consist of two elements: a checkbox ("Allow inline image adding and uploading") and a select box (with a list of paths avaiable on the server). When the checkbox is activated a special image pane should be added to the connected textarea while editing an entry of this section. This pane should slide out on click and present a list of all images in the specified folder with the ability to preview each file. Furthermore there should be an option to directly upload new images to that folder. Either with a click on the preview or by dragging it into the textarea the image should be added to the current position. Doing that the inline image adding process should repect my text-formatter setting: if I'm using Markdown it should use Markdown syntax, if it's Textile it should respect that syntax, if I do not have any text-formatter specified it should use plain HTML.

If anybody likes this idea and has the skills to code this as an extension it would be really great!

I love that idea! In Symphony 1.7 i helped me out by using WYMEditor. But it is gone so far in Symphony 2.

One thing on our agenda is a UI improvement for select boxes to make them tolerate large numbers of options (searchability, pagination? - I'm not sure yet) so that section links can be replaced by select box fields. This UI component could also be used for upload fields, making your idea possible. I've long wanted the ability to upload or select an existing file, and I think this should be in the core.

One interesting nugget I've discovered is that thumbnail previews are possible for local yet-to-be-uploaded files as well.