Fine-Tuning Wordpress 2.5’s Hack Job of an “Upload Media” Feature

Posted April 12th, 2008 by annie

Ooh, ahh…Wordpress 2.5 has a new gallery feature!  Too bad that doesn’t really help us folks who could care less about it and just want an easy way to upload one image.  IT TAKES TOO MANY STEPS! Maybe it’s just my setup, but this is how it works for me in both Safari and Firefox…

1. Click Add an Image button
2. Upload Image
3. Fill out Title, Caption, Description
4. Click on “None” button for Link URL; realize the button doesn’t work.  Delete the URL from the Link URL input box to manually make it “None”.  Then remember that it won’t get saved anyways!
5. Press “Save All Changes”…or don’t.  It does nothing for you.
6. Go to the Gallery tab.
7. Click “Show” on your picture.
8. Change the Link URL field AGAIN (thank goodness the “None” button works now!)
9. Change Size to “Full size” (I went into Photoshop already to make this image the size I want…please don’t try to change it for me kthanks)
10. Click “Insert into Post”.  Finally.

Are you kidding me?  TEN steps to upload an image and add it to your post?  Why don’t you just give me all the posting options in the upload tab once I’ve uploaded the picture?

So, I’m not good enough to totally rework this disaster of a feature but I can at least change some of the default values so it’s a little less of a pain.  For me, I almost always want the image to link to “none” and the image to be full size.  So I changed these defaults in wp-admin/includes/media.php:

Move the radio button from ‘medium’ to ‘full’

lines 470-472:
" : '' ) . "<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]' id='image-size-medium-$post->ID' value='medium' />
<label for='image-size-medium-$post->ID'>" . __('Medium') . "</label>
<input type='radio' name='attachments[$post->ID][image-size]' id='image-size-full-$post->ID' value='full' checked='checked' />

Change the defaults from ‘medium’ to ‘full’ (for good measure)

line 51:
function get_image_send_to_editor($id, $alt, $title, $align, $url='', $rel = false, $size='full') {

line 512:
$size = 'full';

Change the Link URL default value from the file URL to none

line 552:
<input type='text' name='attachments[$post->ID][url]' value='' /><br />

I really wish I didn’t have to go to the Gallery tab at all. Maybe the option to add the image to your post (without going to the Gallery tab) is supposed to work, but it doesn’t. So at least these fixes cut down a couple of those steps for me. Wordpress, please fix this soon!

 

UPDATE: It looks like if I do upload 2+ images at once, the full options (including the “Insert into Post” button) show up right after uploading without having to go into the gallery tab.  I also see the “Crunching…” along with the progress bar, which I don’t usually see with a single upload.  Too bad I usually just want to upload one image.  

Also, my Firefox 3 (beta 5) shuts down whenever I try to use the upload media tool.

 

Posted in software, website | 5 Comments »

Keeping Your Extensions (err, Addons) with Firefox 3

Posted April 8th, 2008 by annie

One of the biggest things keeping me from trying out Firefox 3 Beta was the lack of support by my addons…but I bit the bullet and did it anyways. I heard about this LifeHacker article today and this Nightly Tester Tools addon that lets you make (most of) your extensions compatible with Firefox 3. Basically it adds a “Make all compatible” button to your addons window:

Look at all those sad exclamation points! :( Just click on “Make all compatible” and say OK to this message:

Then restart Firefox and it’ll bring you back to the Addons window where you can see your updated extensions:

Oh snap! Look at all those happy extensions! So of course, do this at your own risk, it could mess up Firefox, etc. etc. I’ve found it to be well worth it though! A word to the wise though: you should probably wait to make your old Themes compatible…trust me, it’s not pretty.

So, what extensions do I use, you ask? Let me list a few of my favorites…

• Adblock Plus - if you haven’t heard of this before, ouch.
• BugMeNot - puts a BugMeNot option in the menu when you right-click on a username/password field which populates them with any available u/p combinations
• del.icio.us - puts a button in the browser menu so you can quickly add a page to del.icio.us
• Download Statusbar - shows progress of your downloads
• Firebug - must have for web design!
• Greasemonkey - customize sites/pages with js scripts
• Link Alert - shows small icon on link hover to show the type of link it is (new window, pdf, js, ppt, etc)
• MeasureIt - lets you draw a rectangle overlay in the browser and says how many pixels wide/high it is (handy for web design)
• Stylish - customize sites/pages with css scripts
• View Source Chart - boxed, color-coded version of a page’s source code

What are you favorite addons? :

Update: I forgot about the awesome PicLens because I just have it on my work computer.  But it’ll change how you view pictures online!

Posted in internet, software | 2 Comments »

Praise the Lord! Firefox 3’s Bookmark Drag-and-Drop Works!

Posted April 6th, 2008 by annie

One of my biggest Firefox pet peeves over the years has been how it handles dragging a boomark to the Bookmarks Toolbar on a Mac (apparently this doesn’t happen on Windows).  Here’s a screenshot of how it’s been up through FF2.0:

This tooltip that shows up when you drag the favicon down to the toolbar could be helpful I guess…the first time.  But the problem is that tooltip blocks all the space under it on the toolbar, so you can’t actually add the bookmark to any folders you have underneath it.  Unless you’re super quick and get to it before the tooltip comes up.  There are ways around it (put the bookmark somewhere else and move it afterwards), but it’s still really annoying.  I looked into how to fix it a while ago and found this work-around, but it removes ALL tooltips in your browser.

Anyways, it’s something I’ve begrudgingly learned to live with.  Until now!  The beta version of Firefox 3 (3.0b5) finally lets you add a bookmark to the middle of your Bookmarks Toolbar!  So instead of instructing people how to add a bookmark, it has a new tooltip about the current webpage’s identity information, but you can still add a bookmark under it:

After a second of hovering over the tooltip, the folder the favicon is over will expand so you can drop the favicon into the folder.  And after 6 or 7 seconds the tooltip disappears altogether.  AND sometimes when you drag it doesn’t even show the tooltip at all.  Thank goodness!

So what’s that identity information message?  A webpage’s favicon is more separate from the web address as a button (in FF2 it’s in the URL box)…and if you click on the favicon it will open a box telling more about the “identity information”:

If you’re on a secure website (starting with “https”), that’s where it will give the identity information:

The “More Information” takes you to the Security tab of the Page Info box.  I guess that’s a nice feature, but I doubt I’ll use it.

So color me excited about this in Firefox 3.  Yeah, it’s probably the least exciting new feature about FF3 but this has been too annoying for too long.  Any other FF3ers out there?  What’s your favorite part about it?

Posted in internet, software | 2 Comments »