Hello

Its been a fantastic summer,in fact the best summer ever for me .I'vve learnt so much from so many people in such a short span of time,it dwarfs everything my University has taught me till now.Really

I sure hope i've done justice for the faith the J! team had in me.I will continue to work with them and hope to make J! better than ever.A very special mention here,a must  Deborah she's the best.Absolutely best :)

My project is complete,its pretty neat although not all that eyecandy it delivers!.With time i will take it to another level.

Here is the consolidated list of features availabes in this Beta :

• 1)Resizing
  
• 2)Rotate(90 || 180 || 270)
  
• 3)Flip(V and H)
  
• Effects are:
  
• 4)Grayscale
  
• 5)Sepia
  
• 6)Mean Removal
  
• 8)Edge Detect
  
• 9)Drop Shadow
  
• 10)Blur
  
• 11)Emboss
  
• 12)Invert
  
• 11)Clolrize in RGB(Using sliders)
  
• 12)Brightness
  
• 13)Contrast
  
• 14)Smoothness
  
• 16)Thumbnailing System
  
• 17)Watermarking system
  
• 19)Ability to save images by specifying the save quality(jpeg) only
  
• 20)File renaming.

I certainly hope to add more to this :) and soon too.
Of course ther are a few bugs,and yes yes the CSS needs some work too.

• Installation :

Just replace all of the files in

/joomla/adminstrator/components/com_media with the files from above package.

Make sure PHP-GD is enabled and in case you are dealing with large images(you really need to most of the times!),do increase the POSTSIZE  in your PHP.ini

Supported browsers:

• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari
  
• Google Chrome

Minor Issues:

• Of course ther are a few bugs,and yes yes the CSS needs some work too.
• The crop button.
• The properties edit (aka rename/thumnail menu) need some work.

Major issues:

• Not compatible with IE.
• And image nto displayed in Opera.

Here is the package:

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2008-joomla/downloads/list
 

Here is a Preview :)

Hello everybody :)

As always ,been quite a while.It was just like a couple of days ago all this started and before it even sinks into you, its almost over.Sniff !

The last few days have been really and i mean really productive.I'm so excited about my project now ,cause trust me ,it really blows my mind.Over the next few days,i'll be finishing up and when I'm done, J! Media Manage will rock your world.

I'm not hyping it up or anything,but really it looks fantastic to me.I don't wanna show you guys the whole thing right now,but i'll give you clues(You can spoil your surprise from the SVN though LOL)

Moving on from my last post ,several issues that were really bugging me around have been ASSASINATED !!(he he)

    1.The view of the editor was a primary issue,its come out great.

          (modal boxes,accordion,sliders,etc etc. *Hail Mootools*)

     2.Added new functions:

• Emboss
  
• Pencil Shade
  
• Blur
  
• Mean Removal
  
• Sepia
  

      3.Effects can be applied multiple times :)

      4.And most important,we now support UNDO & REDO

I've implemet all of these currently using mootools 1.11.I'm still working on porting it into 1.2,however the whole MM has to be revamped in order to work with mootools 1.2 .I have jsut that in mind :)

He he until then

Chao :)

 Hmm, . . . . 

He he I know what you are thinking J! Studio?

Well I think it sounds  just great :)

• So what is J! Studio ?

      J! Studio is a standalone component,that I intend to call from within the Media Manager .Well,thats the main idea ,but it can       be called from elsewhere as well.

• Why as a separate component ?

      The media manager is already as such sort of clogged up. Trying to add functionalities into it with would make things pretty       hard for me.So I thought that I rather implement is as a separate component . Besides ,it allows me to integrate it into                 something else  other than the media manager.Maybe it can be put inside the WYSIWYG editors.

• What can J! Studio do ?

      First off the editor works like a charm,as of now it supports the following:

1)Resizing

2)Flip(horizontal/vertical)

3)Rotate(90/180/270)

4)Grey Scaling.

• What features are expected in the near future ?

      Very soon I shall update with a host of new features and special effects including cropping. Also work is going on to                   implement the J! Studio from within a modal box using AJAX. Right now it is within an iframe in the Media Manager,but not         for long.

• Bugs as of now ?

      There are quite a few bugs as of now,they are:

1)Image is not dynamically updated after the edit is applied.

2)The effects can be applied only once . That is once an image is select ,the edit can be done only once. The editor breaks down when its tried twice due to invalid parameters passed.

• Any browser issues ?

      No, as of now the editor works perfectly fine within all the Grade A browsers. However problems might arise after it is imported into a modalbox.

I shall keep you updated , until then .. . . :)

  Hello Everybody

• 150 * 150 pixels 
• same format as Original
• same name os original but prefixed with "tn_"

 Its been quite sometime since I blogged,with my semester finals going on its been a crazy month.It will be crazy for the next few days too. During this time my progress with the project has been quite slow,but I'm caught up within the system where we have exams in our exams are in the Summer(lol).I have to fight it out ;-)

However in the past few weeks, I have been able to work in bits and pieces and the Joomla! Watermarking system is almost complete. Here is an overview of it :

The Watermarking system:

• The Watermark image must be uploaded into the Images folder.(Via Media Manager or ftp)
• This image must be a .png image.
• The system has been integrated such that the user can select the image to be Watermarked in the Thumbnail View of the Media Manager in the checkbox and then click on the Watermark button(Exactly the same procedure used to delete a file)
• The image will be Watermarked and overwritten.
• A default ratio has been set(w.r.t to watermark and image)
• The Watermark image will be made Transparent.

Allowing the user to negotiate the watermarking options i.e

Let user specify:

• Transparency
• Ratio of the Watermark
• Location 
• Specify output file format

and a few more are viable options.

BUT,personally I feel that packing all of this into the MM makes things very complicated(for the user).I feel that a general,simpler system would do better.So that is exactly what I have incorporated so far.

However I would like to know what people would want,so kindly let me know through comments here please.

Ugh !! My exams !!

Until next time ;)

First Look !

After thinking for quite sometime,thats the best name I could come up with.I realy couldn't think of a single fancy name to what I'm doing.He He

To be honest ,I've been coding a lot of different things from quite some time.But I've never been organised with it.It has just been quite hapazard( a lot actually !),but I sure hope to change things from now on.Cause we all know that this is the BIG  scene.I've been thinking . .  and I've realised that it is really hard to put up all the work I do in a write up.So well,I'm going to put everything I do in a video.Pretty cool! Eh ?

I started my work,by first ripping apart the existing Media Manager.The way it has been  programmed ,never seizes to AMAZE me.But then everything in Joomla! is meant to be that way.

The first thing that I did is,implement a function , that makes a check and outputs the PHP GD INFO.This is most essential because most of what will follow will mainly depend upon this.I shall not elaborate upon how I did it.But maybe some other time.

Next,in line was one of the most important additions to the Media Manager,"Custom Image Generator".This took quite a while actually,but I have finally  (a lot of head scratching!) got it to work.It might look a little familiar to some of you .I'm going to demonstrate that in this video.

Having been much of a J! 1.x.x developer until recently,I found myself in a litle bit of what i would like to call sticky situation.Although i have developed a few Joomla! modules,my GSoC by far has to be the single most significant and biggest.And there ain't no way ,that i'm gonna screw this up.So i thought i should start preparing myself ,get ready to start coding.After asking quite a few insiders (mentors that is )I think I  found the perfect guide to start my 1.5 development initiation.  Mastering Joomla ! 1.5 by James Kennard is the ideal book to start J! development.I was pretty sure that this was what I needed, and desperately and soon !!  Just about when I was going to order a copy of the book,Wilco made an announcement that all Joomla! GSoC -2008 students would get a free copy of the book,thanks to Packt Publishing.Phew! a few hours late,I would have ended up wit two copies.Yes ,all GSoCers get a book from Google,but here at Joomla! we get two. One from Google and the other from J!.Yup we're lucky.

I would really like to thank Wilco for making this happen.I'm very sure that all of us are going to enjoy the book.

And I just got my book yesterday !!(I still haven't got the Google Surprise book!), I was the first one get the book.Maybe because,Packt Publishing have a major facility here in India at Mumbai.

Anyways Cheers  Guys !!

I've attached a photo of the book here.
 

This book is totally,what all J! developers need.And that is why we're getting them.

Nakul Ganesh S is pursuing his Bachelors Degree in Information Science Engineering at the National Institute Of Engineering in Mysore, India. He is proficient in C, C++, Javascript, and Ajax. Nakul has built Web sites for over six years with several years of PHP and MySQL experience. Joomla! is his "flagship" OSCMS and he has contributed the Amazon Widgit and Save Tube extensions. As a FOSS enthusiast, Nakul helps lead Obscura, a college open source group and hopes his participation in GSoC will help spread the spirit of open source in India.

Mentor: Deborah Susan Clarkson is from the San Francisco Bay area and is a creative type who holds BA Art and MA Multimedia degrees. Deborah's thesis project "3D Immersive Environment Using Stereoscopic HD Video" and her positive and helpful attitude uniquely qualify her as a mentor for this project. Deborah often performs pro bono Web development for nonprofits and fell in love with Joomla! when she discovered it. Her background in scripting languages has made working with Joomla! a natural fit.

I believe Web 2.0 really began with the WYSIWYG editor! Yeah, with the power to edit articles,documents and posts ,entire websites.Basically to put it in a sentence WYSIWIG editor has made the net more Dynamic than ever.And i'm going to take this one step ahead.I sure hope so

Images truly speak more than words.Imagine the capabilities if we could edit photos online,and that too within Joomla!.Well okay yeah,i agree this is not an entirely new thing;we've always been able to edit photos.But what  is new about this ? You may ask.

Let me break it upto you this way,i will give a simple breakup presentation  of what it is now with Images in Joomla! and what wil be there this spring ;)Managing Media (Photos) in Joomla! now :

Images can be uploaded via http upload or ftp ,and can be put in articles through the WYSIWYG editor ;

It can be resized (but lossy)

It can be given a border.

It can be linked. And of course can be aligned.

Hmm,i think thats about it !!

I just wanna list out some of the shortcomings ,right bout here

Its not always that you are going to put your Photo right off your Camera.Its probably larger than a Meg.Well,so what do you do then ?.........Haven't you all wondered if you could easily *Crop* of parts of an image whil editing an artilce without having to edit it and to upload it again.Besides you would need some software to do it too !!

Imagine this, you have to write an article right away and you're at your Granny's place which has a very old( I mean really old) box with just enough connectivity.Well as you've probably guessed you have no editing software there.Thats where this new component will come in handy.

If you're a linux user you probably will edit it in GIMP and upload it.But,i'm guessing here that not a lot of everyday common people are gonna be on Linux.From what i know there isn't a *GOOD* and *FREE* image editor,unless you already have one or are cash loaded to buy one or you're a leecher using a pirated one ;-)

It won't matter anymore,at least for Joomla! users this spring,I'm gonna put the Photo Editor BIGGIES outta business.

LOL!! I know !!

Nevertheless ,here are the things i can promise by the end of Summer ;-)

An Image Editor !

• Which can resize image wil very little or least loss.
• Crop parts of Images.
• Add Watermark.
• Write Captions/Titles on the Image.
• Add coll effects (Sepia,Greyscaling,etc)
• Copy and Merge Images.
• Convert from one format to the other.
• Get Photo Data.
• Yes,of course there are a lot more.(I'll update ASAP)
• I mean a lot more.

And all of this without even having to close the browser.This componenet will certainly not be just for the Admin,but or the Users too,giving them more control over the articles that they will publish.

Alongside this I will also be implementing a very new feature into Joomla! A browser based Flash Processor.I'm going to post more on this,sometime soon.Glad to keep you guys in Suspense :-)

Nakul Gan

 PS:I'm very new to blogging