Symphony.

Okay, I fixed the mentioned bugs in the development branch.

No, deselecting and deleting are two different actions:

My fault, it’s just that the description of that option (‘This will add a Remove button to the interface’) seems a bit confusing to me. That’s why I thought it was about deleting entries.

I also noticed a strange behiavour that occurs when your create an entry using the Subsection Manager:

1. Create an entry and save it
2. Click on “Browse”
3. De-select it by clicking on the (x) button
4. Click on “Browse”
5. Try to select the newly created item

If I am right, you should not be able to select that item as you would expect to. Correct?

One more question: is it possible to treat the list of selected entries as an accordion?

Currently, if you have an entry which is expanded and you want to inline-edit another one, you have to click on the latter twice in order to make it expanded.

(Hoping that my Itanglish is clear enough…)

Edit: Mhhh, it’s strange. Actually it is an accordion, but sometimes clicking on an entry doesn’t trigger anything.

Two other strange behaviours:

1. Click on an entry in order to edit it
2. Deselect the entry by clicking on the (x) button

The caption is removed, but the dark box with all the details stays in place, thus allowing you to keep editing the entry. Shouldn’t it be removed as well?

The second is that sometimes after some interaction with the Subsection Manager interface, the Create new button doesn’t work anymore. I still don’t know how to reproduce that anyway, as it seems to happen randomly.

If I am right, you should not be able to select that item as you would expect to. Correct?

As far as I understand: No.

Concerning the accordion: It’s not an accordion. There is only one open drawer allowed at once (this is due to some performance issues as all edit drawers are iframes and due to the fact that the interface would become quite chaotic). But there is one exception: The create new panel will always stay open until it is closed or saved.

The second is that sometimes after some interaction with the Subsection Manager interface, the Create new doesn’t work anymore. I still don’t know how to reproduce that, anyway, as it seems to happen randomly

Are you working on a clean install or an updated one? This is either a problem with cached JavaScript or an old bug is popping up again. Do you have more details?

Nils, what I would really like with the subsection manager, is the select feature to work completely indepedent of the drag feature.

For a lot of clients, I need is a media/content manager that can manage content in the post. This extension seems perfect, but I would only like them to drag the image/file into the text area, not to select items.

Right now, these two functions are so coupled, they would have to select the item they want to include first before they can drag it into the textarea (which I find hard to explain why).

Is there an easy way to fix this, or would it require you to rewrite the entire extension?

As far as I understand: No

What I mean is that you won’t be able to select that item anymore. I think it’s a bug because it only happens when you follow the above procedure.

Concerning the accordion: It’s not an accordion. There is only one open drawer allowed at once (this is due to some performance issues as all edit drawers are iframes and due to the fact that the interface would become quite chaotic).

This is exactly how the accordion works: one open drawer at a time. However there seem to be a bug in the Subsection Manager, as sometimes it takes two clicks to open a new drawer.

Are you working on a clean install or an updated one? […] Do you have more details?

Clean install (Symphony 2.1). At first glance, it appears to happen as a consequence of other strange behaviours that I have already mentioned. I can’t find a logic, after some toying with the interface it just stops working… I’m currently using Chromium 5.0.375.125.

Right now, these two functions are so coupled, they would have to select the item they want to include first before they can drag it into the textarea (which I find hard to explain why).

This is one of the core concepts that is important for the data sorce handling. If you are looking for a list of entries from another section that can be dragged to textareas this extension is not really made for your purpose. But you could use the extension as a base for your own implementation. Nevertheless you would not need Stage then.

Simone, could you please post these bugs on GitHub? And yes you’re right the item should still be selectable.

This is one of the core concepts that is important for the data sorce handling.

I realise that.

Right now I feel the field itself is a bit ambiguous, as the selecting and the dragging really are two seperate functions, combined into one extension.

To illustrate, I find it very hard to name the field. One part of me wants to call it image, the other part wants to call it library. Both of which do not cover it all.

If I miss something, please let me know!

Think of where the field is coming from: Mediathek, which means media center or media library. It’s a full inline section manager which aims to attach a certain number of entries to the entry. Dragging and dropping is just a bonus feature to simplify text and subsection data interaction.

It seems to me that you are looking for a “entry dropper” which is associated with another section. This could be easily added to a prepopulated selectbox.

Simone, could you please post these bugs on GitHub?

Done! Sorry, I’d like to be more precise about the nature of those bugs but some of them are very hard to reproduce. Also, the JavaScript console is not helping..

Mediathek, which means media center or media library.

Exactly. I do however feel this does not make my point less valid. If I wanted to manage the media inside my textarea, this should be the extension of my choice, I think.

Dragging and dropping is just a bonus feature to simplify text and subsection data interaction.

I realise that, and I welcome the extra feature. Really. I would just love to be able to use mediathek/subsection manager as a real manager, not as a selectbox that can create new ones.

Maybe I’m beeing a bit harsh, and that is absolutely not my intention. I really love this extension, and I appreciate the immense amounts of time you have spent on it already.

Don’t worry, that’s just fine. There is one misunderstanding though: the target of this extension is not a textarea. It targets a list or — as you say correctly — a selectbox. This extension is not meant to be a media selection widget like most WYSIWYG editors offer.

Connecting the item list data and the textarea information is your job in the XSL. That’s why you need to select the items before being able to drop them. I think this concept makes sense in the Symphony context.

Things may change over time. But this is the concept for version 1.0.

Connecting the item list data and the textarea information is your job in the XSL. That’s why you need to select the items before being able to drop them. I think this concept makes sense in the Symphony context.

That’s what I thought when I first installed mediathek. However, most of the times, it does not work that way. If a client has dropped something into a textarea, then it’s in the textarea (if that makes sense).

Also, since the field itself will already contain a valid image tag, there is no need to grab the rest of the data from the datasource. The field itself already contains all the data.

That beeing said, the extension does indeed mainly target the select box right now. However, it does target the textarea aswell, and I those can exist peacefully next to eachother..

the target of this extension is not a textarea. It targets a list or — as you say correctly — a selectbox.

Shouldn’t the main focus be to manage the content, and use it however you want (be it textarea, selectbox or anything else)?

The Subsection Manager does not focus on images as Mediathek did. So if you just have a subsection with a title and an upload field, you are right that the target might be a textarea if you want to display the images inline. But if you’d like to add meta imformation about the photographer and the licence or if you are adding the images as a gallery your needs are completly different. What if you are managing participants of a conference, literature or authors with this field?

The Subsection Manager always targets the content, but here you define your content as a textarea. The Subsection Manager offers so many usecases that your definition is only true for your simple setup. So I’m not saying that the connection to a textarea should not be improved (it should but in a later version), I’m just saying that conceptually the Subsection Manager is a UI for a selectbox and as such acts independently.

The drop feature is an additional feature which introduces the first connection between Subsection Manager and textareas. It’s missing a lot of features like custom drop texts and advanced text-formatter support. Building these features enhances the core functionality of this field as it moves the focus from selectboxes to textareas. It’s an additional layer that needs to be well thought and well done.

I guess this is something for version 1.1. You have to know that I was thinking about removing the dropping feature in 1.0 completely to keep the focus of the field consistent.

Connecting the item list data and the textarea information is your job in the XSL.

One thing I would say is that this is something the Subsection Manager could make a little easier. With the default drag and drop I have to do some fancy XSLT-fu work to customize the dropped output. If it’s an image it’s not too difficult but if it’s something else?

I think we’ve had this discussion before… ;)

One option I thought might work was to use links that would refer to a field and an entry ID. Between the two of those it’d be extremely easy to pull in whatever data I wanted. and manipulate easily.