[Commons-l] Commons Commander

[Magnus Manske]

Dear Wikimedia, MediaWiki, and Media-on-Wikis-interested,

with the Paris multimedia meeting looming ahead, I finally got around
to write some software I planned to do for some time, but never could
muster quite enough incentive for. It is a JavaScript (JQuery)-based
file management tool for Commons (and all MediaWiki installations,
technically). It runs on the toolserver in its current form, but could
be reshaped into a MediaWiki extension without too much fuss. I have
dubbed it "Commons Commander", in remembrance of the Norton Commander,
a quite useful file-management tool at the time.

For the impatient, a demo link:
http://toolserver.org/~magnus/commcomm/index.html?category=Pictures%20of%20the%20day%20%282009%29

Caveat: This is "alpha" stage, neither bug-free not feature-complete.
I tested it successfully on Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4, but it currently
fails on Internet Explorer 8 (quelle surprise!).

Some features:
* Two-pane browsing (can be switched to one pane)
* Browsing files by category, uploader, recent uploads, file search
* Filter current file list by title (e.g. all files in the current
category/user file list with "Paris" in the title)
* Thumbnails or detailed list, sorted by name, size, or upload date,
ascending or descending
* "Eternal scroll" - load some files initially, loads some more as you
scroll towards the bottom of the list
* Eternal scroll works for browsing files in a category, user uploads,
and search results
* Recent uploads will add new files every 30 seconds instead
* Search for categories and browse the category tree in a special tab
* Open file on double-click
* Select one or multiple files with Crtl and/or Shift keys, or with
buttons at the borrom
* Removing from / adding or moving to a category (where possible) by
buttons in the category sidebar (Commons only; needs TUSC login)

I have also hijacked the right-click context menu for files:
* Quickly add a file to a category (or move, when browsing a category)
* Rename a file (currently invokes "Move page" on Commons, as my bot
is not allowed to move pages)
* CheckUsage
* Go to file view/edit
* Show other files uploaded by the same user
* Show related files (searches for "significant" parts of the file name)
* Show categories of a file in the category browsing tab


I think this turned out to be one of my "prettier" applications, as
far as these things go. Originally, I planned to use drag'n'drop as
well, but I'll save that for later...

Please let me know what you think, and if this (or some similar thing)
would be usable within MediaWiki/Commons itself. Feature requests and
bug reports are also welcome, but please keep in mind that this is
still a very early stage of development :-)

Cheers,
Magnus