fine-uploader
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FineUploader
Enhanced Showcase page and code snippets for FineUploader
Hello,
I am going to start by telling a story:) When I was looking for a good, quality, and reliable way to upload images from the browsers I examined a few options. One of them was free jquery uploader, another was a commercial uploader for about half the price of the FineUploader, and then there was FineUploader. At first I looked at what other websites were using, and some of them utilized a free option customized in their own way, so I looked into it and it looked promising. The documentation was there, the demos were there, and the github page was there. What steered me away from the free version was the feeling of lack of support and lack of maintenance on the github page with the latest source updates being made 6-9 months ago. So I decided to pass. The other commercial version looked promising too, the demos looked attractive, the documentation was there, the price looked a lot more attractable too. I almost went with this other commercial option, but what made me halt my decision was FineUploader's documenation pages. They were very detailed, and I could tell that people who wrote it, really knew what they were talking about it, it was as if I wrote it myself, for myself. So I said ok..and went to look at the demos page for FineUploader and my second feeling, was the same as first, that of a disappointment, the question that came up to my mind right away was "Why hasn't this page been much more "juicy"?" By juicy I mean something along the lines of http://www.jssor.com/demos/index.html This is a different product, but the folks who wrote it, really showed things off of what you can do with their product. Almost every option is showcased, with pretty layout, pretty pictures, everything just looking like a really polished up demo of some apple class product. So this got me "Wowed":) I guess I maybe more of visual guy, and I really want to see things work and looking polished up before deciding whether to go with something or not..but IMO this what really sells the product. One could read a description about a Ferrari, or one can go see one, I betcha the latter one will sell one on it. Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that documentation is not important, it very much is, and it already got a WOW factor to it for the FineUploader, but what really lacking now is a demo, or should I say a Showcase page.
So I was going to suggest that FineUploader be perhaps put in context with some other product so people can see things working together because that's how most would probably envision the end result looking like. More concretely I can envision FineUploader be put in context together with an image gallery, with a nicely styled progress bar. Or with a video preview gallery, where video files get uploaded, and possibly short clips get previewed. Or with a file uploader gallery where files get uploaded and you get a little preview or image icon of a file that was uploaded.
Also more code examples with a side by side demo. Something like here: http://tellibus.com/fineuploader/fine-uploader-with-jquery-wrapper-demo.html and here http://tellibus.com/fineuploader/fine-uploader-basic-demo.html. I, personally, as a developer, find it a lot more easier to look at the demos with code because I can quickly build & test things from different snippets without having to comb through pages of documentation (even if it's excellent like FineUploader's) Code examples are also a partial documentation in a way because one tell right away what a product can do just by looking at the code without ever needing to read the documentation. So, the more code examples with demos, the better. Maybe there can be a showcase page along with a bunch of small demo pages with code snippets. On a conservative side, code snippets alone are worth a thousand words.
Hopefully doing some of the above suggestion will help boost the sales and showcase the true feature rich and excellent core API that FineUploader has developed:)
Sincerely, Mike
Hi Mike, and thanks for your comments. You are correct that Fine Uploader's UI is not as flashy as it could be, but if you compare us to some of the other libraries, the difference in quality and support is pretty clear.
Let's take dropzone.js for example, developed by Matias Meno. Now, dropzone has a pretty flashy UI, and a super nice looking website, but the feature set and support is laughable. Also, Enyo is a bit out of his element as he is clearly lacking sufficient web and JavaScript knowledge to handle this type of library. Another competitor - jQuery File Upload, which has a great feature set, though not as comprehensive as Fine Uploader, and absolutely zero support or library evolution. No one can touch Fine Uploader's feature set, code quality, or support. And I hope that users see this and use Fine Uploader as a result.
The original demos you have linked to were provided by a friend of the library, and were once used as the demo page. But the demos you have linked to are quite old and I have since moved on and updated the site quite a bit, as you can see. The code examples are not missing, in fact, I have more of them. Take a look at http://fineuploader.com/demos (notice the "view code" link at the bottom of each demo). We even have a gallery view template packaged with the library that is demonstrated on this very page in two places. I used to have more demos, but then users complained that the demos were too hard to navigate. I use to have more complex demos, and users complained that the demos were too complex. So, I decided to pare down the demos to a set of simple but common use cases. There are a few others to be found in the integration examples repo. There is also a standalone repo that demonstrates integration with another library I wrote, frame-grab, that shows how to generate video previews and upload specific video frames.
We do have some work in progress to attract more customers and make Fine Uploader more appealing. You should see this happen during July, so stay tuned!
:+1: Features :+1: Support :+1: Library Stability :+1: Library Evolution And :100: just for you Ray!
Hi Ray, thank you for your reply. I absolutely agree with you that the code quality, documentation quality, and support quality is very crisp with FineUploader. I am very proud of having to work with it:) I was not aware that the demos were old, they very well might be, you would know better:) I just wanted to provide an example of the demos that I would personally expect to see, as these types of demos with code/functionality side by side tend to be the best. I did see the code link at the demos page. At the time I wrote this there was no demo for basic..so I guess that's why I wanted to see more demos. (p.s. that demo of that flashy image gallery might have primed me also;) It's really weird that some users would ask for less demos, I as a developer, would never ask for less demos or complain that they are too complex. Why would anybody ever do that? Demos are on take what you need basis, it's not like one tries to cram demos in the developer's head. The more examples the better, saves time on reading documentation right? When I develop I might copy/paste code snippets from this and that demo and put things together pretty fast, I find this pretty convenient to work like that. With all honesty, I am having a thought now that those users might have been bogus and tried to intentionally undermine FineUploader's sales/reputation. While a flashy demo is subjective, a plain vanilla is going to look plain vanilla to everyone. It's nice to hear that you have something in the works, I'm looking forward to it:) Honestly, putting up good demos and polishing them up can be quite exhausting and tiring work, it would probably feel like that last 10% of the way, which are the hardest. But they have to be there. As I already suggested, maybe trying to put FineUploader in context with image gallery, video gallery, and file gallery would be good. More updated code demos like the ones composed by a friend would be super nice. I am having a picture come up in my head now of a chest of jewels that's being unfortunately closed with only a few jewels shown on the top. I want to see it all so I can look no further from the start.
Thank you, Mike
Thanks for your input Mike. You've given me something to think about, and i will use the case you have opened to document any changes/additions we should make to the demo page. Perhaps i can take some additional time to reexamine the demos. Stay tuned as I'll update as i put together a plan and some more ideas. On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 10:47 PM MikeSmith01 [email protected] wrote:
Hi Ray, thank you for your reply. I absolutely agree with you that the code quality, documentation quality, and support quality is very crisp with FineUploader. I am very proud of having to work with it:) I was not aware that the demos were old, they very well might be, you would know better:) I just wanted to provide an example of the demos that I would personally expect to see, as these types of demos with code/functionality side by side tend to be the best. I did see the code link at the demos page. At the time I wrote this there was no demo for basic..so I guess that's why I wanted to see more demos. (p.s. that demo of that flashy image gallery might have primed me also;) It's really weird that some users would ask for less demos, I as a developer, would never ask for less demos or complain that they are too complex. Why would anybody ever do that? Demos are on take what you need basis, it's not like one tries to cram demos in the developer's head. The more examples the better, saves time on reading documentation right? When I develop I might copy/paste code snippets from this and that demo and put things together pretty fast, I find this pretty convenient to work like that. With all honesty, I am having a thought now that those users might have been bogus and tried to intentionally undermine FineUploader's sales/reputation. While a flashy demo is subjective, a plain vanilla is going to look plain vanilla to everyone. It's nice to hear that you have something in the works, I'm looking forward to it:) Honestly, putting up good demos and polishing them up can be quite exhausting and tiring work, it would probably feel like that last 10% of the way, which are the hardest. But they have to be there. As I already suggested, maybe trying to put FineUploader in context with image gallery, video gallery, and file gallery would be good. More updated code demos like the ones composed by a friend would be super nice. I am having a picture come up in my head now of a chest of jewels that's being unfortunately closed with only a few jewels shown on the top. I want to see it all so I can look no further from the start.
Thank you, Mike
— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/FineUploader/fine-uploader/issues/1434#issuecomment-118223634 .
Hi Ray, I am glad I could provide valuable input. I am sure you will think up of something good for the demos:)
Regards, Mike
For the love of god, can someone please step in and help update fineuploader.com?!
In addition to better demos, I'd like to:
- remove jQuery and bootstrap
- update the look
- improve page load times