Features gone – why?

Please don’t make so many posts. It makes it hard for us to answer you.

The row isn’t gone, click on the kitchen sink icon.

The image editors will be coming back in the form of a plugin.

The session timeout layout sounds like your browser has cached the old CSS and needs a cache flush.

The image editors will be coming back in the form of a plugin.

So… What are we supposed to do in the meantime? And why was something so basic removed in the first place?

Fortunately, I know enough about web-coding that I can go in and fix it by hand, but this seems to be a bad move. Even if there’s a legitimate reason for removing the feature from the core set and assign it to a plug-in (something I would debate), there’s absolutely no reason to remove the feature without having the plug-in ready, available, and clearly pointed out to the users.

In my opinion, WordPress 3.9 for image editing within posts and pages is a disaster! I used to be able to add borders around images, padding, margins, etc., just by entering data into the image editing dialog box. Now what should I do–code each image by hand? This is a step way back feature-wise. It has impacted every page and post I work on.

I have a suggestion, how about WP 4.0 going back to coding only with no visual design? Maybe we can go back to DOS while we’re at it, too!

How can I revert back to WP 3.8 so I can get some work done? I will turn off auto-updates from now on.

And why was something so basic removed in the first place?

Because it actually isn’t used by everyone. In fact, the minority of users use it, though it’s causing a split in how to handle it with the devs. Some feel the issue is in themes, which should have properly coded in this to begin with and never made you have to, and the others think we should rebuild it and add it into a plugin or core.

Right now I don’t know which way it’ll go. The whole modal was re-written so it’s not like we can slap the old code in (it wouldn’t work anyway, whichis part of why it was removed).

Let’s hope the devs don’t remove every feature not used by all WordPress users … wouldn’t be much left.

I don’t see the issue being in the themes … when I modify the images using the advanced stuff, it on an image by image basis … not a general ‘add padding to all images’. I don’t see how themes could deal with that.

In any case … we are were we are today, with thousands of implementations which don’t have a way of controlling his without painstaking manual adjustments to images using the text editor. This is not progress.

I was hoping the image editing would be extended so images with captions can be easily moved/padded … up to 3.8.3, changing image padding moved the image outside the caption area … not good.

My vote is “old way”, at least for now. Any update that specifically changes the way that existing users have to operate, or changes as a result the way things are displayed is a bad move. Moreover, making such a move without explaining in great detail what is lost is a big deal.

I use that sort of thing in some places, particularly making blog posts that fit 800 wide with an image on one side and post context next to it. That is done with a standard spacing and a float left or right, depending on where I want the image for a given post, and that was handled in the advanced options area. Losing that would make it very difficult for me to post on those blogs without significantly redoing both the themes and editing every post made, and that is in very plain terms not feasible.

This is a case where the upgrade is a downgrade, at least for those who might have used the tools.

I noticed a new plugin was just made for adding margins and borders to images after the WordPress 3.9 update in case it helps with that part:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/advanced-image-styles/

Most of the other image details and editing features are still there including alignment, link to, image title attribute, image css class, link target (open in a new window), link rel, link class, size (you can also drag to resize in the visual editor now!), not to mention all the edit image features like crop, rotate, flip, and scale. Click the pencil icon on the image then click the “Advanced Options” toggle at the bottom left or the “Edit Original” button below the image to find all of the options.

CSS can also help a ton if you want to make image margin or border rules that happen site wide so you don’t even have to bother messing with that kind of thing on a per image basis. CSS is amazing. ??

Sheri, CSS is amazing – it’s also out of the reach of many who know enough to click advanced and fill in the boxes to put a border around an image and not much else. Not everyone is really interested in making edits to their templates, and more so editing CSS which is not friendly to non-technical types.

It’s the sort of change in the core of wordpress that moves them away from the webmaster audience that made wordpress so popular. It’s another step that makes it harder for non-techies to run a blog well.

rawalex – On the other hand, preventing users from making certain in-line changes makes it easier for them to later switch to a new theme without the old one looking awful. :/ We’re actually trying to keep the non developer hands out of the code!

Now that said… https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/27932

I made a trac ticket, since this is clearly fairly large of an issue. We cannot promise EVERYTHING will be handled, or even that my ticket won’t get turfed, however it’s a start.

We mark posts that have trac tickets as resolved for sanity. It lets mods and volunteers know we don’t have to jump in and find an issue. You should follow the discussion on trac. You can click the ‘Watch’ button on the trac ticket (it’s near the bottom) to get email alerts. If you need to log in, it’s the same ID/password as you use for the forums.

I personlly agree with everyone on this, there is no reason to change the image editor to what it is in 3.9 this cost me so much time in the past few days, after I had updated all my clients websites, and so on, I lost 3 days as of matter of fact and it was a very stupid move had to restore everyone back to the older version!

[Nasty rant redacted]

Fair enough (on your point about non-technical users and CSS). It might be interesting to note that the border and horizontal spacing boxes present in image advanced settings before were actually doing work to add CSS on a per image basis for you, but Ipstenu makes a really good point that inline styling like that can make it a lot harder to switch themes later. Because of that, it really is a good idea to select a theme that has image handling that you like to start with if you possibly can.

I still also think adding a little bit of CSS using a custom CSS plugin is an enticing solution to this problem, and I hope some people consider trying it out even if they don’t feel they’re super tech savvy! You can totally start small. Plus, using CSS to make small modifications to how a theme displays images (i.e. remove image borders) will save you a ridiculous amount of time if you were using the per-image settings to do that for every image before.

I think marking this as “resolved” sort of doesn’t cut it.

Sheri, the issue is that many people have spent years building up blogs and work flow that involves doing these sorts of things, based sometimes on custom themes or things that they have created themselves. It’s not easy to say “go back and edit 1200 posts so that you are compatible with our new vision, oh and change your work flow and methods too!”. That doesn’t work so well. General rules of software is to support backward compatibility as much as you can, and suddenly ripping a significant function out of wordpress and then thinking everyone will suddenly learn CSS to handle it is not simple.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, the CSS to have different borders and spacing around a number of different images isn’t exactly quite as simple as all that for most people to figure out. If you are thinking of doing a custom css setup, it might be better to have something that defines an image type, and defines it’s parameters in a similar manner to the pre-3.9 advanced method. Basically, custom image tag, border, spacing, padding, extra code… and then allow the user to select a “custom image tag” to apply to their images as they add them into a post. That may be functional, mostly because you obscure the nasty CSS code and replace it with simple to maintain items.

I agree it’s not easy. In cases where past habits did get settled into, a plugin like https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/advanced-image-styles/ is a good route in the short term.

Let’s watch https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/27932 because it submits the concerns raised here to the core WordPress project for consideration.

Edit: Ha! Sheri beat me to it by at least 90 seconds. ??

Just out of curiosity (honest) does that plugin posted earlier address that functionality?

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/advanced-image-styles/

The reason I’m asking is that since I do not use that feature myself I am not really qualified to answer that question. But I do think if that functionality can be restored that way then perhaps user’s workflow can be restored.

That’s really the important part and I think everyone should keep their eye on that ball.

Quoting MIka above:

Now that said… https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/27932

I made a trac ticket, since this is clearly fairly large of an issue. We cannot promise EVERYTHING will be handled, or even that my ticket won’t get turfed, however it’s a start.

These topics are important but they typically get marked resolved when a ticket is raised. Also the original poster can of course mark this topic unresolved as well.

The Advanced image styles plugin partially fills in the blanks, but misses the mark. Additionally I’m concerned, both in the short and long term, that the developers will start dumbing down WordPress core, removing features that they regard as “only used by a minority of users” and forcing that minority to resort to plugins that may not provide the same functionality (like the Advanced Image Styles plugin), may slow down the site because of plugin overload, forces users to pay attention to one (or more if more are needed to restore needed functionality) more plugin that needs to be updated, has the potential to cause plugin conflicts and forces people (like me) who support dozens of users to retrain dozens of people and make sure the plugin is installed on dozens of sites. Even using ManageWP, that’s a chore.
Although I do use CSS to establish a baseline of runaround for each image based on its float, there are always images that require individual handling for border, padding and margin. The nice thing about the old functionality was that you could enter the values and then edit in the field and it was even easy to teach. Trying to teach inexperienced users to go to text mode and add all the border, margin and padding info with all of its variations is just not gonna happen.
For me this is simply not trivial, nor is it mitigated completely by the release of a third party plugin, despite best intentions.
Frankly, I was so disheartened by this “upgrade” experience, I thought of the possibility of throwing in the towel, selling my beautiful dual screen Mac Pro system and going and raising chickens and goats.