Symphony.

When you edit an article that has a Mediathek field, is there a way to restrict the images shown when in the open panel view only to those relating to the current article and not every single entry in the section Mediathek is connected to?

I seem to remember that at some point but I can’t remember how it’s done.

One I figure this out my next move is to adding image thumbnails to the caption.

Why would you restrict the opened panel to the selected images only?

Not to the selected images. OK, I’m not explaining this well… How about this:

I create a new article for a blog and upload 10 new images via Mediathek. However, I decide I only want 5 of them so I deselect the others. If, for some reason, I decide later I want those images again I have to select them from a long list of Mediathek uploads from however many articles.

In some cases it might be easier just to have it only show Mediathek entries that were uploaded for that specific article, selected or otherwise.

Ah, I see.

There is no such function in the current version of Mediathek. And I have to say that this really seems to be an edge case. I know that the long list Mediathek is showing may become quite useless if you are browsing lots of images, but I’m not sure if there is a need for a “recently added” mode (feel free to convince me otherwise).

I suppose a use case would be where a single Images section (e.g. Caption text and Image upload) is shared between many other sections (News Items, Articles, Profiles, Features). If each of these latter sections has a Mediathek pointing to Images as the central pool for all images, the shared content would seem odd.

Could there be a checkbox in the Mediathek configuration so that avaialable entries in the Mediathek “pool” are only those attached to this entry, and not any other entries?

My example would be two very different sections (Articles and Galleries, for example) sharing the same Images section. When choosing images to go into an Article I wouldn’t want to see images that are in Galleries, nor would I want to be able to select images from other Article entries. But when assigning images to a Gallery I’d probably want to see all Image entries that are assigned to other Gallery entries, but not assigned to Articles.

Not sure if I’m explaining that properly…

If each of these latter sections has a Mediathek pointing to Images as the central pool for all images, the shared content would seem odd.

If this is the case, wouldn’t it be better to point these Mediathek instances to multiple image sections?

Could there be a checkbox in the Mediathek configuration so that avaialable entries in the Mediathek “pool” are only those attached to this entry, and not any other entries?

Well, those are the items currently selected. If you upload new images these are not “attached” to this particular article in any way: All you do is upload an image via an inline frame.

If you need to be able to filter your image section you could add a tag list or select box and filter the Mediathek output by a certain value of these fields.

Is this the option you are looking for?

It’s passable, but I was looking for a more client-friendly one.

The example I’d use is for sites that have sections where there are hundreds of images (if not more) that won’t be used cross-entry. One case of this would be a timeshare site I’ve built. Each entry has at least one image, most have 5–10 or more. The images aren’t used across the entries because each entry is a new timeshare and thus must have it’s own images.

As it stands now, if my client deselects a few images and then wishes to add them back later they have to scan through hundreds of images to find the ones they want. Now, I know there’s the search functionality but I have yet been able to impress upon my client the importance of labeling their images properly.

If instead of this default behavior only images that were uploaded in relation to a specific article were shown they could turn them off and on at will without having to worry about sorting through hundreds of images.

What might be a best-case for users would be a check-box that they could check which would limit images to those that are either selected or were uploaded in relation to the current article. This would allow for cross-article referencing of images but also provide my client with a simple way to restrict it only to the images they are most likely to want.

If instead of this default behavior only images that were uploaded in relation to a specific article were shown they could turn them off and on at will without having to worry about sorting through hundreds of images.

The problem is – to keep things logical and data consistent – this information should be stored in the related section and not in the section which used Mediathek. So this sounds like something like the core section associations used for the select box link field. I’ve experimented with these once but I think they were saving relations “the other way around”.

What kind of interface would you imagine for this behaviour?

Mostly what I’m worried about is my users. I don’t mind jumping through hoops to make it work on the back end but for my users I want it to be as transparent as possible.

To that end I can see two options:

1. I have to select a checkbox on the Mediathek field or add a field to the section Mediathek is referencing that will remember the default article and thus will automatically filter the images so only those uploaded to a specific article are shown.
2. The user can tick a checkbox or click a button on the Mediathek field that would restrict images to those currently selected and those that were uploaded to this article originally.

The second would probably be best from a user’s perspective but might cause more work for you I’m afraid. Either would solve the initial problem.