XenForo Media Gallery 2.0
Full content permission support for categories
Category permissions have been given an overhaul in XFMG 2.0. Instead of configuring each category’s view and add permissions separately, the system uses the full content permission framework (like nodes) so you can revoke or add all media gallery permissions on a per category basis, to groups or individual users, while supporting permission inheritance and tools to analyze effective permissions.
Category drag and drop sorting
As we have done in some other areas of the admin control panel (including nodes and resource categories) you can now sort categories with drag and drop. This of course is fully nestable therefore allowing you to move categories up and down in order or to entirely new parents, etc.
Albums in categories
The most popular suggestion since we launched XFMG is to be able to create
albums within categories. Previously there was a clear distinction between personal user albums and categories. We still have personal albums (though they can be globally switched off) and these still have similar privacy options to before, but it is now also possible to create "album categories".
This actually means we now have three distinct category types: "Media items only", "Container only" and "Albums only". The "Container only" type is not actually new, but it is now an explicit category type rather than relying on removing permissions to implicitly make it such, and container categories will display all albums / media items from any child categories. The "Albums only" category type will allow users to create albums in a category. These albums are a little bit more simple in terms of privacy settings; they will inherit the same permissions as the category they are created in. If a user requires private albums or wishes to share their albums with specific users then they should continue to use personal albums for this.
Batch update media / albums
We've added a similar system to "Batch update users" and "Batch update threads" which allows you to search for and perform batch operations on media items or threads. The first beta will only include basic search constraints and actions but additional actions will be added as time goes on.
Audio uploads
As we've already got image uploads, video uploads and the ability to embed media from other sites, the next logical step felt like to add support for uploading audio too, and this was another popular suggestion.
Similar to video uploads, we first check if the uploaded audio file is encoded in a supported format (MP3, naturally) and if it is, it will be uploaded without issue. If the file is not MP3 encoded then the file will either be rejected or, if you have FFmpeg enabled, then it can be transcoded to the correct format. Once uploaded and added to the gallery, we use the existing VideoJS library that we use for videos to play the audio. With FFmpeg enabled, we even attempt to pull out any album artwork embedded in the file to use as a thumbnail.
Option to force transcoding of videos
Keeping with the subject of FFmpeg features, you may have noticed if you allow video uploads that if a video requires transcoding, then often the resulting file is still of a reasonable quality, but with a much smaller file size. However, if a video does not require transcoding (as most don't, as often videos are already encoded with H.264 and AAC/MP3) then it's uploaded without any sort of compression. To handle videos more consistently there is now an option to force all uploaded videos to be transcoded which although takes time does result in smaller file sizes.
Simplified "Add media" UI
Although XFMG has generally received a fairly large makeover overall, the "Add media" UI has been particularly simplified. Rather than before, you will pick your category or album first (similar to the global forum chooser / resource manager category chooser) and then be taken to a button or two which can be used to either upload or embed the media:
There's no longer an array of different tabs to choose if you wish to upload different media types, you just choose the file to upload and as long as it is an allowed type, the type of media being uploaded is inferred from that.
Updated [GALLERY] BB code embed
As well as the BB code now supporting both media items and albums, the design of it has been much simplified:
An embedded album
An embedded audio upload with album art displayed
There are also improvements with how the embedded media is loaded. No longer do we load the items in with an AJAX request after page load but instead we load the data directly in the BB code system, but making use of XF2's new embed metadata system as a cache so that we can store the media and album IDs in the post, then do as few as queries as possible to load all of the data for the page (generally a maximum of an additional 1-2 queries per page).
New media comments support
Another popular suggestion is to better surface media items and albums which contain new comments. To facilitate this we've added read marking data to media/album comments and the "New media comments" page will show the latest media/albums which have new comments.
New image manipulation UI
There isn't any new features here per se - you already could filp, rotate and crop images - but in XFMG 2.0 we've given it a dedicated page and added some new tools so the process is entirely WYSIWYG and you can make multiple changes. The interface looks something like this on an image which has been rotated, flipped and about to be cropped!
We've also made sure that all of this can be used on touch devices too!
Image notes
This is a new incarnation of the existing user tagging system from XFMG 1.x. As well as still allowing you to draw a section around an image and "tag" a user in that square on the image, we now have a new option which allows you to write text-based notes on an image. As with the image manipulation features, all of this will work on touch devices too. You simply active the "Add notes" button, draw around a section on the image and you can either "Tag a user" or "Write a note":
Once saved, a faint outline will appear on the image and hovering over that will display a tooltip with either the details of the user you have tagged or the note you have written:
Widgets
Last, but not least, all of the existing blocks from XFMG 1.x have been converted to widgets which you can place anywhere. These are mostly the same in functionality, but we do have a "Album slider" widget which can display a list of new or random albums.
