klog

Today, I released KFM 1.0, a web-based file manager powered by php/ajax with mysql/postgresql/sqlite.

This is an important release for me, as it marks the completion of the original feature-set that I had in mind when I first started the project - match and exceed FCKeditor’s default file manager, and provide extras such as multiple file upload and tags.

I was considering giving this a rest for a while before starting on version 2, which will have a lot more “desktop” tricks in it - different view modes, live streaming of videos, vector graphics, plugins - but I feel energised right now, so may just get to work on it.

ohloh considers this project to be worth about $889,277, and you get it for free, so please download it, try it, and comment about it.

download it at the KFM website

New Features

• New language: Romanian (thanks to Andrei Suscov)
• Return thumbnails to the opener (35, 142)
• Tag engine (12, 13, 143), allowing files to be categorised, and searched by category.
• Client-side syntax highlighted text editing (125, 126) using CodePress.
• Rename multiple files (103). This allows you to select a group of files, and rename them all to a common format.

Improvements

• Multi-line captions (89)
• ImageMagick used where possible (152, 111), allowing huge images to be edited without PHP running out of memory.
• KFM will return either a normal URL (155), or a URL which allows the get.php script to be used to retrieve the file. The advantage to using get.php is that in the future, we will be able to apply authentication, so only authorised users can read a file. This also allows thumbnails to be built on-the-fly.
• The database tables can use a specified prefix now (129).
• Double-click can be configured to either send the file back to the opener (FCKeditor, your CMS, etc), or to open the file directly (120).
• config.php split into two files, allowing easier upgrades (146).
• when moving through files with the arrow keys, the selected file will always be visible (110).
• KFM can now be used to manage multiple sites through one instance (154).
• A metrics logger has been added (134). This will allow us to know what versions of KFM are in use, and whether it is safe to deprecate certain features if need be.
• Comments can now be extracted from .gif files to be used as captions (88).
• Documentation written on how to transfer a KFM archive from one machine to another (161).
• Many bug fixes (159, 97, 156, 149, 68, 157, 147, 148, 144, 102, 145, 118, 140, 141, 98, 139, 135, 150, 151, 165, 167, 164, 162, 160, 113, 163).
• Some ideas were rejected (112, 21, 131, 19, 18).

As usual, this release has been helped along by the many testers in the forum, testers who have contacted me by email, and all of the translators.

Very large thanks to Benjamin Ter Kuile, who has been very actively hacking away at the KFM code and produced such gems as the CodePress integration.

demo, download (828k .tbz2, 1.1M .zip)

New Features

• New Languages
  • Bulgarian, thanks to Tondy (tondy.com)
• Unzip zipped files (84). This allows users to zip up multiple files offline, upload them as one file, and unzip once they are uploaded.
• Multiple Databases (127, 122). We now support PostGreSQL, MySQL and SQLite.

Improvements

• Files may be located anywhere on the system at all. They do not need to be within a web-readable area (33)
• bugfixes (117, 100)
• Long directory names are now truncated, using the same method as long filenames (80)
• Directories with many files are now displayed quicker (106)
• Download From Url has been combined with File Upload (108)
• KFM has been tested and is known to work on PHP4.3+ and PHP5.1+

As usual, this release has been helped along by the many testers in the forum, testers who have contacted me by email, and all of the translators.

Development for version 0.7 was sponsored by the infinitely glorious web development company, Webworks.ie. We’re really quite good.