Molly and I are in love with these nightlights we just bought. Slurm, anyone?

Here’s some updated thinking on what I think could be done, both in core Plone and in a new add-on product, along with a simple wireframe and some implementation notes.

Making core Plone smarter

Plone 4 includes a frequently-requested feature that makes images much smarter: through-the-web configurable image scales.  Previously, these were hard-coded into ATContentTypes.  Now, we have a new “Image Scales” control panel, and site admins can add, edit and remove image scales.  This makes it much easier to provide the image scales site users need, and to eliminate the ones they done.  Nice work!

There’s one more change that I think should happen here:

Let’s make the amount of JPEG compression that PIL applies be easily configurable.  Right now, it’s hardcoded into our zope.conf, and it’s really, really high.  When we prep images for the web here at Groundwire, we typically use a compression quality of 60.  I think that it would make a lot of sense to expose this variable through-the-web in the Image Scales control panel configlet.

Rough Spec for an “Image Optimizer” Add-on Product

Ok, now here’s where the cool stuff starts.  Here are my updated thoughts on an add-on product that I think would really make life easier for sites that have lots of poorly-optimized images.

I imagine an “Image Optimization” control panel configlet that will present a UI that allows the user to:

1. Walk the site catalog, looking for all objects that are Image-ish and in JPEG, PNG or GIF format.
2. Look at the pixel dimensions and the filesize of each image.
3. Find images where the “bytes per pixel” (filesize/*(height*width)) is higher than a certain “reasonable” value.  (0.5 bytes per pixel seems about right to me, based on the idea that a 150X150 pixel JPEG image shouldn’t weigh much more than 10kb.  (Obviously, these settings should be user-editable.)
4. Present the user with a list of “suspiciously large” images, along with their pixel dimensions, filesize, bytes per pixel and a preview.
5. For images with dimensions that are larger than user-specified value, offer to resize them.
6. For images that are too “heavy per pixel,” offer to apply more compression (for JPEGs) or convert to JPEG (for GIFs/PNGs)
7. Apply changes via a separate process with AJAX updates so that Zope doesn’t bog down.
8. Afterwards, offer to rebuild Plone’s auto-resized images afterwards from this new original.  Purge caches as necessary.

Here’s a wireframe of what I’ve got in mind:

A few more implementation notes/questions:

• Alec Mitchell recommended using ImageMagick, because it offers much better quality than PIL.   I think this also seems sensible, because it would offer an easy way to spawn the intensive image manipulation work off into a separate process.  An outside-of-Zope processing approach such as zc.queue is probably worth looking at as a model.
• Resize, then convert, then compress.
• JPEGs should be compressed via ImageMagick.
• PNGs could potentially be compressed by running through OptiPNG.
• GIF’s can’t be compressed
• Use AJAX to refresh the screen on scan and as optimization proceeds.  Show optimization results by crossing out weight/dimension/density and replacing with new values.  (Hide unselected images when you hit Optimize.)  Total up savings at the bottom when optimization is complete.
• Can Plone’s image scale rebuild be run in the background somehow so we don’t tie up a Zope process?
• This should target both Plone 3 and Plone 4.
• For extra bonus points, warn the user of unoptimized images right after upload, and offer to fix it “on the spot.”

Somewhat randomly, I also wanted to take note of Kurt Bendl’s useful recipes for limiting the max KB and pixel dimensions of uploaded AT Images and Files.  This might be useful and/or worth exposing in a TTW setting.

Next steps

Doing a mediocre job on this would probably be pretty easy, but it will take some focused effort to really nail the details that will make this sing.  I think this is a project worth raising a little bit of money around, and hiring someone good to really own it.

If your clients would benefit from a tool like this, I encourage you to think about whether you can raise some cash from them for a bounty fund.  I don’t have a hard total in mind just yet, but I’m thinking that $3000-$5000 might be a reasonable range.

I’ve got a couple of people in mind that I’d like to approach as possible developers on this, but if this description strikes a chord with you and you’ve got both the passion and skills, let me know!

This also might make a great Google Summer of Code project, in which case I’d love to supplement that by paying an experienced Plonista to be a strong, hands-on mentor and ensure that the project gets done and done right.  (This worked really well last summer with Martin Aspeli and Timo Stollenwerk on plone.app.discussion!)

I’m willing to PM this and be “the customer” and Groundwire can very likely help seed the bounty fund as well.  Let’s make this happen!

The Squeezebox’s server software runs on a server.  Since 2006, I’ve been using an old Dell Dimension 2350 that we had lying around.  But this weekend, I upgraded (slightly) to a Dell Dimension 3000 that my employer Groundwire excessed from its inventory.   Wow, what a difference!

The old server had 512MB of RAM and a 2GHZ Celeron. My “new” server has a 1.25GB of RAM and a 3GHZ Pentium 4.  My music library is about 24,000 tracks (that’s large-ish, but not huge by community standards, it seems).   While my old box never swapped, it was often running pretty close to its RAM limits, and the web interface could be sluggish at times.  Under the new server, it’s smooth and fast.  I suspect it’s additional RAM rather than the faster processor that’s making most of the difference.  I also swapped in a set of optimized MySQL caching settings (thanks Squeeze community!), which allows the system to take more advantage of its increased RAM.

Bottom line: should upgraded the RAM years ago. 

Popup Forms for Plone makes it point-and-click easy to create timer-driven javascript popup forms anywhere in your Plone site.   You can see a simple example in action at Washington Conservation Voters.   It’s amazingly simple: just build your form in PloneFormGen.  (If you just want to popup a static HTML page or an image, you can use PloneFormGen’s “Form Prologue” and skip adding any form fields!)  Then, you use Plone’s portlets mechanism to assign the form to a page or folder on your site, and to configure an optional time-delay.  That’s it!  No programming, no javascript, no fuss, no bother.

Popup Forms are great for email capture forms, action alerts, user surveys, and many other calls-to-action.  If that’s what you need in your Plone site, I encourage you to check it out!

1) Talk about requirements

2) Do a complete graphic design

3) Fully implement the design in the site

4) Then move on to building out the functional elements of the site and the content.

Unfortunately, modern web development processes don’t usually work that way.

The process usually needs to go more like this:

1) Identify requirements

2) Do sitemaps and wireframe mockups to get the functional elements and information architecture right

3) Implement the technical bits

4) Do a design to make it pretty

Lots of missed expectations can easily ensue. Educating clients to the point where they can understand a wireframe can be a big — and costly — challenge.

I’ve been here for nearly 14 years, so I’m happy to field any questions if you’re thinking about applying!

CRM Consultant

We need an experienced CRM Consultant to build customized databases that transform the effectiveness of the environmental movement. Our ideal candidate brings to the table client-facing consulting experience, project management experience, and a technical understanding of database design & development.

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Groundwire Labs Manager

We are now looking for someone to run Groundwire Labs. As the Groundwire Labs Manager, you’ll lead Groundwire’s R&D investments and define the cutting edge of how we use technology to help organizations to do a better job of engaging their communities. It’s all with an eye to our mission of building a sustainable society.

Read the job description and apply online