This is second post in a series of blog posts related to my DrupalCon Prague session called " Let's fix file and media handling once and for all ". In the first article I invited community to complete a survey .
In my first post I asked you to complete the survey about Drupal media. Response was great, as more than 200 members of our great community responded. One thing I was most interested in were most desired features and how successfully we handle those in various media solutions. Importance of each feature was between 1 (not important at all) to 5 (I can't live without it). I calculated average score and sorted them based on it. This are 10 most important ones (complete results can be downloaded below):
- Embed media in WYSIWYG - 4.24
- Re-use of media - 4.23
- Site-wide media library - 3.98
- Ensuring accessibility (alt/title tags, captions, subtitles, transcriptions, ...) - 3.96
- Organize media in folders/categories - 3.85
- Seamless integration with remote media (FTP, HTTP, YouTube, Flickr, ...) - 3.73
- Search in media (in context of library and/or attach/usage workflow) - 3.71
- Advanced formatting options/abilities (view modes, advanced file formatters, ...) - 3.67
- Add/edit metadata on file level (fieldable files) - 3.66
- Upload multiple files in one step - 3.65
The list didn't surprise me at all. I expected a bit different order, but the selection was in accordance with my expectations. There is, however, something that I find very interesting; at least 80% of this features are successfully implemented in Media/File entity , Scald and Asset . It seems like we have pretty powerful solutions, but we still complain about media handling being broken in Drupal. I am wondering why....
I am perfectly aware that features are not the single important thing. There is documentation, ease of use, content creator experience, development momentum etc. I certainly have my opinion about that, but I'd like to hear yours. Please leave comment below or tweet me ...