Module Visual Page Selector (commercial page picker module for ProcessWire)

[kongondo]

17 hours ago, mikhail said:

Though I can see already that I will need to make adjustments to how large you are showing the thumbnail images in listing view, in addition to the width of the additional column.

OK. Suggestions? However, I noticed that in Thumbs Grid view, if for some reason ProcessWire fails to properly create an image thumb 260px high, some crazy-wide images will be displayed. I ran into this in Media Manager which I am currently upgrading. I have made changes there and will do so in VPS as well.

17 hours ago, mikhail said:

There is also a bit of a weird UI thing happening with a line showing through the title field (Firefox, Win10) in the following non-listing view-

That is weird! I'll have a look. I don't have Win10 though... (blissfully stuck on Win7 )

[mikhail]

Suggestions?  Sure- here's my particular use-case which highlight the reasons why I would need to modify VPS's admin behavior-

I am using this for panoramic images that I create. So they are much wider than they are tall. This means that in thumbnail-list view the default preview images have very little height to them, making it more difficult to see what they are. I would need to at least double the present width in order to make the images easier to identify.

Also in "list view"- one can add columns to the right to include field data such as name, title etc. In my case, I use three columns of data- the image "TITLE" ( short unique ID's ~10 char), a relatively short (~20 char) category, and a proper NAME (~70+ char). When I include these fields, the added columns are presently evenly spaced. Resulting in a much wider column than necessary for the TITLE, a wider column than is necessary for the CATEGORY, and a column that is too small for the NAME (causing it to wrap). Perhaps a way to designate percentage widths for these columns would be a great addition?
 

[mikhail]

Regarding the odd UI "bug" I showed. I am using the UIKit Admin style. Perhaps that might be the source of it?

[kongondo]

55 minutes ago, mikhail said:

default preview images have very little height to them, making it more difficult to see what they are. I would need to at least double the present width in order to make the images easier to identify.

Going forward, I have been thinking for adding the 'resize' slider like in ProcessWire's image field so that the user can select their default preview size.

55 minutes ago, mikhail said:

Perhaps a way to designate percentage widths for these columns would be a great addition?

I wanted to implement this in the last version but ran out of time. I would like to incorporate the input for the percentage widths right within or next to the respective column definitions (in the asmSelect). I'll have a think, thanks

50 minutes ago, mikhail said:

Regarding the odd UI "bug" I showed. I am using the UIKit Admin style. Perhaps that might be the source of it?

I use the same theme, although I test in all themes. I'll test some more, starting with FF.

 

[d'Hinnisdaël]

Great fan of the module! However, I haven't yet gotten it to work for non-superusers. The modal for selecting pages aborts with an error »ProcessWire: Unrecognized path« and »The process returned no content.«

Now I guess it has to do with them not having the required permissions to access the root Admin page, but is there another way to allow editors to use the module?

[d'Hinnisdaël]

Me again. Sorry for wasting your time ?Everything is working as expected now.

I overlooked the vps permission and only now found it — after stumbling through this support thread.

[kongondo]

2 hours ago, d'Hinnisdaël said:

Great fan of the module!

Glad you like it ?

2 hours ago, d'Hinnisdaël said:

Everything is working as expected now.

Good to hear you got it sorted.

2 hours ago, d'Hinnisdaël said:

after stumbling through this support thread.

Not so great on my part then ?. It seems I should be more clear that this thread exists ?.  Docs are also here. They do mention the vps permission in the very first chapter.

[Macrura]

Hi @kongondo, Hope all is well!

Running into a couple of glitches here with VPS, and these were discovered in a meeting yesterday, more or less watching the client/users interacting with the field and having to sort of 'apologize' for the complexity and/or the peculiarities of the field.

To sum up the current issues:

(1)

It seems that when adding an item to the field, there is some sort of ajax save going on (?) - this is contrary to a standard page field where the stored value of the field is not modified until the page is saved. The issue here is that the frontend is possibly updating to reflect that saved state of the field, prior to the user having a chance to save the page. 

An example use case illustrating why this is a problem would be say if your field is being used for selecting slides for a slider. The user may want to add slides, remove others, reorder the slides, possibly edit the slides all prior to wanting these changes to be reflected in the front end. With the current behavior, the newly added items appear on the front end prior to the user saving the page, and they found this to be unexpected behavior.

(2)

Users are still confused about the process of adding items from the lister.

One issue is that they don't know when/if an item is selected, as there appears to be no indicator of that at the row level, so they would select something, then inadvertently unselect it in a vain attempt to get some visual feedback that the item they want is selected; Once they have an item selected, they need to scroll to the top of the modal window, and hit the plus button to get the item to add to the field. Not sure how else this could be handled but it is something they also have to remember rather than it being intuitive.

(3) the process of removing items is also a 2 step process – they have to trash the item, then hit the remove button; this is fine, and as long as i add instructions on the top of the field it should be ok; But maybe there should be some visual feedback once they have 1 or more items selected for trashing that they now need to click the X button to actually remove them – saving the page with those items marked for trash (which would be the images field behavior) does not seem to remove them, so this inconsistency between similar looking fields is also causing confusion among the users.

Currently I don't know of any better way than this field to allow these users to select items (such as images, videos, or other image driven content). The ability for them to use a lister to select items is great, and once you get used to the steps, it's basically fine, though some small tweaks that might address some of the current concerns could be nice polish for this.

But currently the fact that items are pushed to the front end without users saving is the biggest issue that I need to resolve for this particular project/scenario..

[kongondo]

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

there is some sort of ajax save going on

That's correct. We use Ajax to avoid reloading the page (and potentially losing other unsaved work on the page).

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

The issue here is that the frontend is possibly updating to reflect that saved state of the field

Yes, it does.

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

With the current behavior, the newly added items appear on the front end prior to the user saving the page, and they found this to be unexpected behavior.

I'll have a think.  It would have to be configurable (in the field's settings) in order to preserve backward compatibility.  This means the default behaviour will be the current behaviour.

 

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

they don't know when/if an item is selected, as there appears to be no indicator of that at the row level, so they would select something

There are two visual indicators. One, the background of the selected (table) row is highlighted (light grey). The total number of items selected are shown at the top of the results. Maybe the light grey background is too subtle? Which Admin Theme are you using? 

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

Once they have an item selected, they need to scroll to the top of the modal window, and hit the plus button to get the item to add to the field

I got this feedback RE Media Manager as well. The only solution I could think of was floating add and remove buttons. I haven't gotten round to coding one yet.

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

saving the page with those items marked for trash (which would be the images field behavior) does not seem to remove them,

Yes, you are right, marking items for removal alone will not remove them.

1 hour ago, Macrura said:

so this inconsistency between similar looking fields is also causing confusion among the users.

I get your point, but I am not sure how to deal with this one. I don't want to change the behaviour now and break backward compatibility. I'll have a think whether to make this configurable as well, i.e. current behaviour (2-step process) versus "marked/selected image will be deleted on save";

[Macrura]

is there any way to add an attribute to the items that are added by ajax save so i can do a check on the front end, and that would solve that.. not sure, just thinking out loud.. Maybe i need to hook somehow..

This is using AdminThemeUIKit; i will check again to see if the background changes on this one.

[kongondo]

7 minutes ago, Macrura said:

This is using AdminThemeUIKit;

That's what I am using as well. I remember going back and forth with the background colour and settled for the grey to "fit the surroundings".

9 minutes ago, Macrura said:

is there any way to add an attribute to the items that are added by ajax save so i can do a check on the front end, and that would solve that.. not sure, just thinking out loud.. Maybe i need to hook somehow..

No there isn't and it still wouldn't work since the details are saved in the database like any other Pagefield. Reloading the page will just load what's already in the database. Making this configurable is the way to go. You would still see the added items in the inputfield, but if you reloaded the page without saving, the changes would be lost. How soon do you need this?

[Macrura]

no huge rush, configurable sounds cool.. thanks!

[kongondo]

5 hours ago, Macrura said:

no huge rush, configurable sounds cool.. thanks!

OK, we have #1 configurable and working fine (Ajax Save Yes/No). The page is added to the inputfield but not saved to the field. Such pages can be re-positioned, edited, etc, just like the other saved pages. In the frontend, they do not show up since they are not saved to the field yet. On save, the pages are added to the field. If the page is manually reloaded without saving, these pages are not saved to the field. The only snafu is that when the pages are added to the modal, in case one is not using "Close Modal On Add Page", there is no visual indication (the light grey background on table rows or if using Thumbs View, the greenish border) that the pages are in the field, which sort of makes sense because they are not yet saved to the field. However, I think they should be presented as if they are in the field. I'm not sure how to resolve this atm. Thoughts? 

Thanks. 

[Macrura]

4 hours ago, kongondo said:

The only snafu is that when the pages are added to the modal, in case one is not using "Close Modal On Add Page", there is no visual indication (the light grey background on table rows or if using Thumbs View, the greenish border) that the pages are in the field, which sort of makes sense because they are not yet saved to the field. However, I think they should be presented as if they are in the field. I'm not sure how to resolve this atm.

sounds tricky... not sure about that;  don't want to make it too hard for you, so hopefully this doesn't present issues... I do see the underlying snafus with the modal being a separate process which needs to communicate with the page and the field specifically to display status of the items in the lister... but i don't know enough about how that's working;

in the case of these users that i'm working with, they are flexible enough that if i explain how something works, they can handle some small amount of quirkiness here and there, so i can just let them know that the list won't really reflect which items are already in the field...

[kongondo]

Visual Page Selector version 006  (released (18/02/2019)

Happy to announce that the latest release of Visual Page Selector is now available for Download/Purchase.

Thanks to suggestions by @Macrura, this version includes a number of improvements one of which will require clients to relearn one thing (sorry).

Changelog

1. Ajax vs Manual Save: You can now choose whether pages added to inputfield should be immediately saved to the pagefield (via Ajax) [the default behaviour] versus have them added in a sort of "pending state". If the latter, pages will be added to the inputfield (for visual purposes) but will not be saved to the pagefield until the page you are editing is manually saved. In the modal, visually, the pages are presented as if they are in the field (i.e. similar to pages saved in the field). In the inputfield, a pending page behaves like other pages saved in the field; they can be reordered, edited, etc. This feature has several advantages including the fact that changes can be made to the page without immediately being reflected in the frontend. Please note that reloading the page being edited without saving will discard pending pages!  The setting is in the Input Tab  (Modal Settings) when editing the field.
2. Trash Icon: VPS Inputfield (Thumbs View) now behaves like a PW image field in relation to deleting pages in the page field. To delete an image from a PW image field, the process simply involves marking an image for deletion by clicking on its trash icon and saving the page. Previously, VPS (Thumbs View) has required two steps (in multi-page fields); first to mark an image for deletion by clicking on its trash icon and finally clicking on the remove icon (x). In single page fields, there was no icon altogether. It required clicking on the remove icon (x). Hence, these similar actions behaved differently from each other and from PW image fields (which VPS in Thumbs View seeks to emulate and enhance). With this update, VPS now behaves similar to PW image fields across the board. To remove pages from a pagefield using VPS, simply click on their trash icons and save the page. We have removed the remove icon (x). Unfortunately clients will have to be re-taught about this change but I think the benefits outweigh the inconvenience. 
3. Modal Lister View: We've improved the visibility of pages selected for adding to a VPS inputfield. The light grey background did not provide enough contrast. We've gone for a light red (pink?). 

Edited February 18, 2019 by kongondo

[Macrura]

wow awesome, thanks a million! Will get this downloaded and installed and let these particular users know, they will be happy!

Edit:  So how do i get this, i can't seem to find my order number, or the email receipt i was sent.. Also, i think my subscription expired?

[kongondo]

On 2/18/2019 at 5:46 PM, Macrura said:

So how do i get this, i can't seem to find my order number,

Please check your PM.

On 2/18/2019 at 5:46 PM, Macrura said:

i think my subscription expired?

In that case, you'll need to renew it here using the details I've sent you.

Thanks.

[Macrura]

Can't trash items in version 6 –  click trash on the item, save and it stays put.

[kongondo]

49 minutes ago, Macrura said:

Can't trash items in version 6 –  click trash on the item, save and it stays put.

That's very strange. It works here. PW version, PHP version?

[Macrura]

PHP 7.1.26
PW 3.0.124

 

[kongondo]

@Macrura

As you can see, it works here:

 

Does your version look like mine above? It needs JavaScript to work. I have a feeling your browser is serving the cached JavaScript files rather than the updated ones. Please clear your browser cache and/or test in incognito. Thanks.

Edited February 22, 2019 by kongondo

[Macrura]

thanks, ok yes that was it, i force reloaded the page  (not in modal) and was able to uncache the js.

[kongondo]

14 minutes ago, Macrura said:

thanks, ok yes that was it, i force reloaded the page  (not in modal) and was able to uncache the js.

??

[dynweb]

Very strange display issue here...

Images display correctly in list view...

... but some images fail in thumbnail view:

Any ideas?

[kongondo]

15 minutes ago, dynweb said:

Any ideas?

My mistake sorry. It is definitely related to this identical issue reported for Media Manager ?. I'll sort it out ASAP.

Thanks for reporting.