Improving the Attachment Manager
 

First off I want to say that I believe the "Attachment Manager" window will be a huge improvement. I can tell a lot of work has gone into it. With a bit more help it can be considered a great new feature.

I see the same "Attachment Manager" is being used for forum posts and album/social group uploads. I can only assume it will be used (at least once) in the CMS and probably often for modifications* addons & widgets as well* correct?

Because the "Attachment Manager" has been completely changed in VB4 I expected to see more discussion here. :confused:

I'll try to get the ball rolling and hopefully we can put together a lot of constructive feedback to fine tune the "Attachment Manager" into something that is more intuitive and functional for everyone.

Here are a few of my initial ideas & suggestions:

• Hide attachments already uploaded. Direct people to click on folder links to view existing attachments. Have the UI focus on uploading new attachments* since that is how it will be used 99% of the time.
• Don't hide the "Allowed Filetypes" under help. Let's write a proper help file for the "Help" button and also have a prominent link to the "Allowed Filetypes".
• Dislay max allowed files somewhere as prominent as "Allowed Filetypes". This is important because the number of max allowed files will most likely be different for albums vs. posts.
• Since thumbnails are being used (even for non photo files) perhaps making the "Attachment Manager" fullscreen would be better.
• A "Close Window" link would be good. As far as I can tell* that's all the "insert Attachments" button does. However* at this point the attachments have already been added to the post.
• Call it a "File Manager" now. The phrases are being interchaged too much. Sometimes "attachments"* sometimes "assets". Let's just call them files everywhere and make this the "File Manager".
• The word "browse" should be somewhere....in particular instead of "select files" now.
• I think we should be able to get from the "Manage Attachments" button in a post to the actual Windows file open dialog in one less click. Right now you have to click: 1. "Manage Attachments"* 2. "Add files"* 3. "Select Files". Since most people will be using this interface to upload new files* I hope the default behavior of the UI can skip step 2 and prompt users to immediately open a browse for files dialog.
• The current use of "Select All" and the individual X's (that can potentially delete all the files) is confusing. Perhaps the "Select All" boxes should be linked to a menu driven control that would be more self-explanatory.
• Make the "Attachment Manager" options relevant to where it is being called from. For example if its being called to upload Album photos* all non photo files should be hidden from the lists of existing attachments and also excluded in the list of files displayed in the Windows file open dialog box.

Like I said above* this is just a start. I'm not a member of the beta team* so I'd like to see as much public discussion about the new "Attachment Manager" as possible. I'm currently working on a busy forum that already has over 1.5 million attachments. So* I guess you could say I have a vested interest in making sure the new VB4 "Attachment Manager" is as functional and user-friendly as possible. ;)

Thanks*
James