Cropping tool, draw tool, new thumbnail mode, EXIF previews and other image-related features are added to the new Upload Suite.
We are continuing adding Java/ActiveX uploader features to HTML5 uploader. New version released yesterday is one more step into this direction. Most of new features are related to image manipulations. Let's highlight them.
Cropping tool
Now HTML5 uploader includes a built-in cropping tool. As soon as you turn it on, a user may click a Crop icon on the image toolbar and open the image editor. Depending on the uploader settings, the crop frame may have a fixed aspect ratio or allow a freeform crop. If necessary, you may fix the orientation. The cropping boundaries may be obtained (and even set!) though JavaScript. Also, they are sent along with files in case if you need to give your users an opportunity to undo it.
Cropping tool online demo
If you already work with the image editor in Java/ActiveX, you will find the API very familiar - you can even easily transfer it with copy-paste!
New Thumbnail Fit Mode - Crop
This feature was not available in Java/ActiveX uploader, but people asked us about it - an ability to automate the cropping process. The most common scenario is when you want to display square thumbnail, similar to iPhone's camera roll. So if you want to display thumbnails like this:
you should just configure a converter for a new thumbnail mode and desired width/height.
Square thumbnails online demo
Drawing tool
Image editor can be used not only for cropping, but also for a simple drawing. For example, this tool may be useful if your users upload photos of cars and they need to hide license plates. Or they want to put simple annotations on an image. Like this:
Another interesting use case is a screenshot uploading. One of great new features is an ability to insert an image from a clipboard (works only in Chrome though). So your user may take a screenshot with Alt+PrtScr and insert to the uploader with Ctrl+V. After that the user may crop this screenshot and draw something there. No need to save a temporary file with a screenshot on a users machine, the upload may be started right from your help desk system!
Drawing tool online demo
EXIF previews
If your users upload large photos, I believe they are not happy when they add photos to the upload list and thumbnails are generated very slowly. We were tired from it as well. In the previous version we added an ability to parse file's EXIF metadata to extract the image width and height without loading the entire image (to make min/max image widht/height restrictions working faster). So we asked ourselves - why not to use the same approach to get preview images from EXIF?
As a result, the preview generation speed extremely increased. Take a look yourself! For example, open a basic demo and load some photos from your smartphone or a camera. After that, turn off the exif preview feature by executing this line in the developer's console:
$au.imageUploaderFlash("ctl00_content_Uploader1").enableExifPreview(false)
Add the same photos there and you will understand what a relief your users will feel when you update the uploader!
A lot of other fixes and improvements
In addition to these features we have made a number of other improvements and fixes - e.g. made it compatible with Mootools and Prototype.js, fixed a problem when width and height determined incorrectly for certain images, added a solution for a problem with non-ASCII file names and many more. Check out the change log for a full list.
Enjoy with the new version and if you find any problems with it, don't hesitate to contact our support team. Meanwhile we are starting a new sprint and the main feature of the next version will be Amazon S3 support. Stay tuned!