I’ve had a list of changes and updates to apply to the JavaScript Image Cropper for quite a while now and I have been thinking of these in a lot more detail recently. There are lots of changes that I plan to make that would bring the cropper up to V2 level and ensure that it remains a viable cropping solution for the future.
These changes include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Fix as many bugs as possible, if not all.
- Add a couple of new features to the base cropper.
- Core architectural changes to improve flexibility of the cropper, read alternative framework support.
- Improved documentation and support network.
- Improvements to maintenance and updates, read more regular updates.
- Any performance improvements that can be made (a fresh look at the code always seems to reveal areas that can be improved).
Over the past couple of evenings I have documented and investigated my plans and the architectural changes that I would need to implement to take the cropper to the next level and these have provided me with a rough timeframe for completion of V2.
However I am incredibly busy at the moment and other commitments are taking priority, but I also do not want the cropper codebase to stagnate as I understand the popularity of the cropper — it’s the main traffic driver on my site and has had nearly 32,000 downloads so far and is averaging over 1,000 per month.
But as I say my other commitments are taking priority and a lot of my spare time, so I thought I would try an experiment, fund raising.
Why fund raising?
Firstly I must state that this is not about the money, if it were I would not release my code for free (and this will continue for version 2 of the cropper). But it is the only thing I could think of that could give me a clear indication of the desire for an updated version of the cropper. It is all well and good having the odd comments praising the cropper and/or mentioning the desire for feature x or bug fix y, but it is something different to put your money towards achieving that.
So far the cropper donation ratio is about 0.04% of all downloads result in a donation (that’s 14 donations out of around 32,000 downloads), so the fund raising activity should really test the reaction of the version 2 plans — thus the target figure I’ve entered and the timeframe are not as important to me the reaction.
So when will version 2 be released?
That is partly down to the results of the fund raising, I do seriously want to implement all my plans, but whether that’s this month, next month, next June etc. I cannot specify right now due to my current commitments, all I can say is that if the reaction to the fund raising is successful then it will help me prioritise the cropper appropriately and will result in version 2 being released sooner rather than later.
Okay, enough of the sales patter, how do I donate?
I’ve setup a campaign on Pledgie, which you can use your existing PayPal account (or credit card if you don’t have a PayPal account) to make a donation.
I look forward to your help and support and the changes that V2 will bring to the cropper.
Comments
There have been 35 comments so far, join the discussion.
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20. Mike - 19th Mar 2008 - 6:26 pm
Excellent work! I have not yet used it on a site, but look forward to the opportunity to use such an excellent script. I went ahead and dropped you some bucks for your outstanding work (and I would like to see the script adapted for different frameworks – jQuery, mootools, as well as prototype/scriptaculouts).
I did have an additional request as well. I really like the “Preview” option, but was wondering if there would be a way to extend that to a “Thumbnail” option. For example, only showing the “preview” thumbnail (not the full photo) and using a Prototype or mootools slider to zoom in and out. For example, using something similar to this image zoom on Magento (open-source shopping cart).
Many thanks for your hard work!
19. Raj - 27th Feb 2008 - 4:54 pm
My apologies for not responding earlier. I was away for a while. I have not had a chance to play around with this for longer periods of time. I have never crashed Firefox (on Linux) or IE on XP. I will examine my own environment a bit and play with the original script some more before I take your time. I will update you as soon as I can.
Thanks again for a great script.
18. AJenbo - 21st Feb 2008 - 5:34 pm
Runs fine here and I’m usign IE7 on Vista 64x (32bit IE). can you post your sample I’m ususaly pretty good at finding bugs.
17. Dave - 21st Feb 2008 - 10:34 am
*@Raj:*
Let me know if you figure out what the issue is – I don’t have Vista (and probably won’t for at least a long time and then probably just as a testing VM) as far as I’m aware there have been no reports of it crashing IE7 on XP.
16. Raj - 21st Feb 2008 - 9:50 am
This is really a great script. I integrated this with a perl script. Works well, but the script crashes Internet Explorer (v. 7.0.6000 on Vista) after a while. I ran HTML validator against the source generated by the perl script. Got rid of all HTML errors. But the crash still occurs. Does not happen always, so it is hard to figure our why. Seems like it occurs during mouse (scroll) or expose events.
If I can get around this, I can make use of the script and would like to take a small share of the expenses towards the development of the project
15. nuno - 11th Feb 2008 - 10:28 pm
thanks dave, i have a little script that indicates the co-ordinates see,but…
http://sonicrevolution.no.sapo.pt/image-crop-selection/index.htm
still missing someting can you help me :)
14. Dave - 11th Feb 2008 - 4:50 pm
*@Nuno:*
The croper UI is just the UI part of a cropping solution, to physically crop and save the image you’ll need to process the image server side based on the co-ordinates the user submits from the cropper.
13. Nuno - 11th Feb 2008 - 3:08 pm
sory double post, but if i save the image from the “Crop Preview” i will save the big image and not the image i choose in preview.
there is some away to save the “data” from “Crop Preview” in javascript?
12. Nuno - 11th Feb 2008 - 3:03 pm
hi, i want know how i hill save the from the “Crop Preview”
http://www.defusion.org.uk/demos/060519/cropper.php?demoType=preview&image=castle&formSubmit=Load+demo
i need this in javascript
and i find a bug try this…
go to this page
http://www.defusion.org.uk/demos/060519/cropper.php?demoType=dynamic&image=flower&formSubmit=Load+demo and change the Flower then change “Dynamically change image” to castle/flower.
the image Castle is to big and hide menus.
11. Anders Jenbo - 12th Jan 2008 - 2:18 pm
Hi, grate script.
I found 3 minor flaws in the code that prevents it from being properly compressed. Line 1321, 665 and 537 all needs to be terminated with a semi-colon. After adding this it can be compressed to just under 10kb using http://dean.edwards.name/packer/
10. Dave - 9th Jan 2008 - 2:42 pm
With regards to alternate framework support I’d definitely be adding mootools, as that’s the framework I now use – as previously mentioned I’d also like to look at a jQuery.
9. James - 9th Jan 2008 - 1:30 pm
I’d definately give you a donation if your revised ver will work with Mootools….?
8. Mike Schinkel - 5th Jan 2008 - 6:13 pm
I just posted a link to Douglas Karr’s website who I mentioned your cropper and your campaign to but your spam protection wouldn’t let it go through: www dot douglaskarr dot com.
7. Dave - 5th Jan 2008 - 5:32 pm
Mike:
I have lots of incoming links, to the cropper page primarily, and that’s where most of my traffic comes from. As for the feed I get a decent number of readers on a regular basis, but not a shed load. But your point is correct, if people have just downloaded the cropper once, and maybe even used it – they may not actively be hoping for newer versions as it may do everything they need it to at the moment – again another reason why I’m using this campaign to test the waters.
6. Dave - 5th Jan 2008 - 12:32 pm
Mike:
It’s pretty much outlined in the post above, the work I was planning for V2 will take about 1~2 weeks for me to do, however I do not have a time frame as to when I would begin on V2. The fund raising was less about the money that people donate and more about the level of support that a V2 of the cropper received, for example if there was a flurry of small donation’s in a short amount of time (say 100 people or so) then that would have shown me clearly that V2 is something that people really want (and, for want of a better phrase, are willing to put their money where their mouth is).
I hope that clarifies a few things.
-D
5. Dave - 4th Jan 2008 - 1:34 pm
Oh and I meant that comment to read that jQuery support will most likely be included out of the box for V2.
4. Dave - 4th Jan 2008 - 1:32 pm
One of my plans is to make it so that it can be easily to switch to other frameworks, this will include jQuery. I’ve got some thoughts and changes planned (as I mentioned above) which should make this a lot easier for V2.
3. Dave - 24th Dec 2007 - 6:43 pm
Russ:
Thanks for that, it’s nice to be getting some feedback in so quickly after my post.
2. Russ Michaels - 24th Dec 2007 - 6:32 pm
I am shocked (but not surprised) you have had so few donations so let me be the first to send you a pledge with my thanks for a very well written and useful tool.
I have only used it once but it certainly saved me a lot of time trying to write something myself and was a lot better than any other solutions I found.
I too have written an open source CFML tool that I had people begging me to update for ColdFusion 8 as it was supposedly critical to their business and harrassing me to do it ASAP, yet these same people didn’t even want to make even the smallest donation, thus why I said I didn’t find it surprising that you have had so few donations.
So come on people, if you use the software then it has to be worth something to you, especially if you made money from it. Just drink 1 less beer tonight and give $5 to Dave instead.
1. Sergey Koksharov - 24th Dec 2007 - 4:04 pm
Great stuff, Dave!
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