Multistep image upload in 2.7: yuck

You’ve complained about this in several threads, but you still have not really explained exactly what you’re talking about. Uploading images in WordPress is trivially easy to do and work with, and it’s fast as heck. So… where’s the problem?

And yes, in 2.7 it’s quite fast and friendly. But then I really don’t see any problems with in 2.6 either.

Here’s a screencast of me uploading some images on my own blog, which is currently running the latest 2.7 SVN version:
http://www.screencast.com/t/oV91oxZlW

Well, normally when I upload several like that, I use a Gallery or put all of them in the post as I write it (eventually inserting them from the Gallery tab at the top).

However, an attachment’s post parent is *always* the ID of the post where you inserted them. That’s how the gallery functionality works.

gadlen: Worst demonstration ever.

First, note that I was demonstrating the use of the thing, not the speed at which it could be used.

Second, you uploaded one picture and wrote a quick post. Big whoop. You also have no caption on your image, no gallery functionality, and you only uploaded one image. I uploaded 4 images, could have stuck the gallery in (but I didn’t), and those 4 images each got their own post which get special handling by my theme’s image.php file.

Your way only seemed faster, because you did perhaps a quarter of the stuff that I did.

Furthermore, your “post” was essentially useless as well. Do you really knock off your blog posts in a matter of minutes? Do you not have any readers or something? It usually takes me half an hour to an hour to compose a good post. But maybe that’s because I actually care about what I say.

Feel free to stick with 2.3 if you like it better. Most people prefer the new functionality, so it’s not going back to the old less-functional way.

Otto, your comment seems to have a tone of nasty sarcasm. I don’t understand your anger. I’m really trying to make WordPress better.

I’m never angry. Sarcastic, perhaps. Text is not a perfect medium, keep that in mind.

You said that uploading in 2.7 was “fast as heck” and I had previously disagreed, saying it was “slow and cumbersome”. Therefore I demonstrated the speed. I don’t understand why you would fault me for demonstrating the very thing I said I was going to demonstrate.

It is fast as heck, and my video proved that. But your video did not demonstrate speed of uploading at all, you demonstrated *multitasking*, which is something else entirely.

I haven’t been able to get captions to work properly on my own blog theme. Which is I suppose my own problem. Though I haven’t seen it used much on other blogs. The majority of the photos on your own blog don’t use captions (4 of the 6 since June).

My own blog is perhaps not the best example, as I don’t write much on it, as you may have noticed. And what I do on there tends to be experimental. More of a playground than a useful site for anything. However, I do tend to use captions when appropriate.

However, most professional sites on the internet do have captions on their photos. Any news site like CNN, for example. And getting them to work is just a matter of adding some styling to your theme, really.

Such functionality could be worked into any image upload system. While I’m still not convinced the current version of the gallery functionality built into WordPress is a good idea, that is a topic for another discussion.

No, not really. The gallery has quite a few behind-the-scenes functionality that would not work nearly as well in a plugin arrangement.

I can make another screencast where I upload 4 images instead of one but the results will be the same. I can’t see how you’re arguing that WP2.7 image upload is faster than WP2.3.

Look closer. You’ll notice that I selected and uploaded all those 4 images at once, with only one selection of images. That could have just as easily been a hundred pictures. With the old uploader system, you had to select and upload them one at a time.

Much quicker to select your shots, hit upload, and then go make a sandwich while waiting on the network to send them over.

In those 38 wasted seconds, I typed my post.
38 seconds is a loooong time to wait for nothing every time you write a post with images.

You’re arguing for my very next point, was that you cannot write a meaningful post in 38 seconds.

And if your blog is any indication, then so do you the majority of the time. The majority of the time your posts are just about the same length as the demonstration I gave… a few sentences and an image or link.

My blog is actually not a meaningful indication, however, there is no post of substance on it that took less than 20 minutes to compose. Some of the shorter ones were tests, such as the Talk Like a Pirate day one, where I was testing translation plugins I had installed and was working with at the time.

The whole purpose of my commenting here is to hopefully make writing WordPress posts easier and faster. I’m not here to argue for the sake of arguing.

You could have certainly fooled me, because every argument you make is specious, flawed, unreasonable, and occasionally downright silly.

I mean, you’re arguing that 38 seconds split between a few tasks is a long time to wait. Are you freakin’ kidding me? Seriously? Because that’s one of the stupidest arguments I’ve ever seen.

It almost always takes me longer to FIND the photo I want in the post than it does to upload it. I mean, how impatient can you get?

So I’ll ask this one last time: how can WordPress image uploading be made faster?

My suggestion for you would be to switch to a plugin to do that sort of thing, or stop using WordPress.

However, there are certainly ways that it could be sped up.

The modal windows and multiple steps required to upload images that were introduced in 2.5 take up a lot of user time. Can this be remedied? Who might I work with to improve this situation?

WordPress is open source. Change the code yourself if you want it changed. Nobody is stopping you. If your changes are for the better, then you’re free to submit them and they might make it into WordPress. If not, then they won’t.

But that’s the beauty of open source software. Don’t like it? Then fix it yourself.

In the meantime, I’m inclined to ignore anybody who makes complaints about the FREE software that they got for FREE and are using for FREE. If you want to improve it, then improve it. But useless complaining doesn’t make changes happen.

It’s not going to be in 2.7. WordPress 2.7 is in feature freeze, nothing is going to change about it from this point.

Also: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
Pick one. There’s a few.

Now, in 2.7, the Media section does have a separate uploader, outside of the post context. You could easily pop that open in a new tab or something.

In the long run, there was a “Media” panel on the Post screen in some of the early alphas after the crazyhorse migration. It never got fleshed out, and so was eliminated. However it might make a comeback for 2.8, and I could see it having an AJAX quick-uploader widget in it, as well as selection of photos for direct insertion into the post. But it won’t have the functionality of features of the modal dialog, and it probably won’t support captions, galleries, all the good stuff.

It seems that you’re not reading my comments carefully.

Oh, no, I read them all right. And I stand by every word in my reply.

So I’ll ask again… who might I work with to improve this situation?

Errr.. WordPress is open-source. You work on it by yourself, or with others, or in any way you want to. Just do it.

I’m not currently developing for WordPress. I was considering doing so but I didn’t know where to start or who to start with to get in the loop.

There must be some kind of fundamental disconnect here that I’m not quite grasping.

What “loop” are you talking about? There is no “loop”. There’s the bug tracker and the mailing lists… That’s about it, really. Code up your idea, contribute it. Simple.

You don’t need any sort of introduction. You don’t need any sort of guiding hand or way into some mythical “loop”. You just do it. Join in the discussions, join in the bug tracker, write and contribute patches to the code. That’s all there is to it, there’s no tricks to it.

All of this is in the documentation: http://codex.wordpress.org/Contributing_to_WordPress

Ok, how about 2.8?

No way to tell, unless somebody contributes it, eh?

I’m a bit put-out that you called my suggestion of this feature “specious, flawed, unreasonable, and occasionally downright silly”.

Too bad. I calls ’em like I sees ’em, and I can’t help it if you find that somehow offensive. Your ideas seem extremely silly to me, personally, and you seem to act as if we somehow owe you something because you use the same piece of free software that we all do.

Just because somebody writes code does not mean they have to cater to your requests when you use that code, nor does it mean that they have to agree with you. Free software is free. Get it?

While Jasondunn’s suggestion received a very positive response.

Jasondunn does not seem to think that the world owes him anything.