Hello, back on this task. I made some modifications to the MCEFileDialog.aspx (file explorer) and wanted to get your feedback. Here's a screen shot:
http://www.proactivedesign.net/_admin/upload-area/files/mojoportal/file-manager/file-manager-preview.gif

And here's the new .aspx file you could download: (it goes in the /dialog/ folder within mojo)
http://www.proactivedesign.net/_admin/upload-area/files/mojoportal/file-manager/MCEFileDialog.zip

What I've done:

1. Images are limited to a fixed width and height. Smaller images still display at their true size, but larger (say 900px) images only display at 450px for example. Makes previewing nicer I think. A lot of users are stupid and upload 300dpi images (sigh).
2. I also modified the interface a little and added some instructions.
3. For selecting a file I just list the path without the form field showing, seems cleaner.

Note: See how I have the "delete this file" link? That doesn't actually work right now....but maybe someone with programming knowledge could help here. I would think we could grab the file path at this preview point and then delete the file. I confirmation box would be nice (are you sure you want to delete). This would at least allow file deletion which I feel is critical.

Thoughts?

I guess my only mixed feeling is that if the user uploads a huge file and then visually it looks right sized it doesn't tell them there is a problem to use this file. Ultimately we do need smart automatic image resizing. My original thought was that they would see it was too big and needed to be resized before using it in a web page.

Well, the fact that the dialog page is in .NET code makes this not that difficult to implement.

Its just a matter of deciding what the resizing logic should be. Do we just make a config setting for max width and max height and then constrain within those while keeping the aspect ratio the same. Do we discard the full size file or let them max out their disk space quota etc. Seems like we would not want to keep it since they could then use it defeating our purpose.

Best,

Joe

Just a rainy day option but: in TinyMCE you could write out the javascript dynamically. This means on a settings page you could simple have a few open text boxes with all the option in it (hr,spell,code,help,table,etc).... that way people could customize what buttons show up from within mojo. Or even contain the entire MinyMCE javascript block in a textarea on a settings page, that way admins could tinker with all the various settings. Then just write that out in the areas where Tiny needs to load.

But obviously Joe has a lot on his plate!! Probably bigger fish to fry.

You can add your own style templates and use them in TinyMCE the same as in FCKeditor. What you can't do is add toolbar items for things like font size colors etc whereas in FCKeditor you could override this by the custom config file and add those items to the toolbar. For a CMS its a bad idea though because you will then have your users creating hard coded styles in your content that are not subject to skinning. To have a skinnable site where the style changes complately by changing the skin you must use only css and no hard coded styles. The hard coded styles that your users enter into the system will still be there and may look awful a year from now when you design a new skin and those hard coded styles don't match the skin.

Style templates allow you to define css classes that your users can apply from the style dropdown in the editor. Then if you later make a new skin you can change the style rules accordingly in the new skin for the same css classes.

To build a UI for customizing the TinyMCE would be a big job to figure out how to validate that approopriate settings are made else users can easily cause a javascript errors and break the editor completely.

The CKeditor looks like it has a config file but not the same as FCKeditor, not much in there and no clue how to configure it because there is no documentation about it. As soon as I learn how I will be removing the unwanted toolbar items from that editor as well. For now I consider it an experimental editor.

Best,

Joe