klog

Interesting. I just came across a small tutorial in Thai, showing how to install KFM. I had come across another previously in greek, but it’s exciting to see a non-european language version.

On the languages front, KFM is still spreading. There is a Persian translation, as well as Swedish. The Persian is particularly exciting because it’s the first right-to-left language in KFM. I’m not sure if it’s correct, as I don’t speak Persian and the translator hasn’t supplied corrections yet, but it’s exciting none-the-less.

I haven’t had the time recently to work on KFM, but Benjamin ter Kuile has been doing a sterling job creating a plugin framework, allowing external developers to eventually write plugins for their own KFM installations without needing to understand all of KFM. If you want to try his work, download a copy of KFM from SVN, and try some of his plugins, or build your own!.

That time of year again, kiddies! KFM 1.2 has been released. This is the last KFM version (apart from bug-fixes on the 1.2.x tree) which will have support for PHP4.

New Features

• a file selection clipboard.
• choice of icon-view or list-view.
• IIS is now basically supported.
• New language: Czech (thanks to Petr Kamenik).

Improvements

• Better SVN layout, so older versions (starting with this) can be bug-fixed, instead of requiring full upgrades.
• Default file permissions may be configured.
• CMS users may choose to return the file ID instead of the URI.
• Filename-shortening may be configured.
• Custom names for the ‘root’ directory.
• Image manipulation permissions may be turned off.
• Some objects were changed to use Singleton patterns (helps speed up KFM).

Bug Fixes

• lots… 306, 301, 298, 295, 284, 293, 291, 289, 287, 286, 283, 281, 285, 282, 277, 280, 272, 267

It’s not even been a month yet, but I think 1.1 is ready. 1.0 was the real test, and a load of bug fixes went into it on an almost daily rate until a week ago, when no more bugs were reported. I managed to squeeze in a number of the requested improvements, and KFM 1.1 is now ready for release.

I think the most important part of this current release is that SQLite PDO is now supported. This means that a person who does not have a MySQL or PostGres database as part of their hosting package might still be able to use KFM. This involved building a database abstraction layer abstraction layer (not a typo), so MDB2 can be used for the “normal” databases.

It was fun to solve the IE7 problem where normal JavaScript dialogs are considered to be “popups”. The way I solved it was to create a modal window which passes its value forward to a referred function. Those of you that are good JavaScript writers might be interested to read the source and see my solution - I’m damned proud of it!

There’s a lot of work to do to prepare KFM for the next big thing (changeable view types - icon view, details view, etc), and I’m “rearing at the bit” to get started on that!

Anyway, please download and try it!, and if you feel very happy that I’ve improved your customers’ online experiences, there is a handy PayPal button just below the big green Download button.