Common View Widget Interface Controls
Common Interface Controls
All view widgets share a number of interface controls in common, listed below:
Paging
These controls allow the user to move between pages of assets, and to choose which page to skip to by entering it in the field and pressing return.
Transparency
This button toggles between the Transparent and Opaque views. The default, Transparent, allows the user to view assets in all subdirectories of the current directory, and Opaque limits the assets viewed to those contained in the current directory only.
Multiple View Widget Toggle
Multiple View widgets can be added to a single workspace. To toggle between them, click one of the View widget type specific icons in the top right of the View widget.
Multiple View widget toggle buttons can be customized with css.
Sorting
This bar allows the assets displayed to be sorted, both ascending and descending, based on the values of various metadata fields.
Asset Tiles
The Asset Tile is the representation of an asset in the MediaBeacon system. Each tile has 3 states: Unselected, Selected and displaying the asset's Badge Overlay:
The Badge Overlay state, which is shown when an asset preview is single-clicked, a panel with an array of action icons is displayed around the asset preview. These action icons will show their function in a mouseover tooltip. When the ">>" icon in the upper right is toggled, the action icons' titles will be displayed.
Quick Tip: Did you know you can quickly select multiple assets?
Via Band Selection:
If you click and drag in the Tile View, in any region that is not an asset preview, you can pull out a band selection box, and surround asset previews to select them.
Via Mouse:
Multiple assets may be selected by Command-Clicking (Mac OS X) or Shift-Clicking (Windows and Mac OS X) asset previews.
Badges and Microbadges
Badges are small buttons that appear to the right of an individually-selected asset that perform a specified action when clicked. Many badges also have a corresponding Microbadge that appears as a small, colored square in the asset tile's upper-right corner. Microbadges are not clickable, but simply indicate a status or the availability of a given action.
Checked out
This badge indicates that the selected asset has been checked out. If you're signed in as the user that checked the asset out, clicking this badge will check the asset back in.
Discussions available
This badge indicates that comments are available in the discussion thread. Clicking the badge will bring you directly to the discussion.
Pinpoint text
This badge appears when a search has been performed. Clicking the badge will display the exact place where the search term appeared, along with the context.
Quick Download
Quick Download will download a copy of the original asset without conversion.
Workspace asset
This badge indicates that the asset is a saved workspace. Clicking the badge will load a copy of the workspace into the interface.
Widget asset
This badge indicates that the asset is a saved widget. Clicking the badge will load a copy of the widget into the interface.
Badge Frame Functions
Go to Folder
This badge is displayed when the user is in a folder that contains bundled sub-folders. Clicking the badge will bring the user directly to the bundled sub-folder.
Fetch Asset
This badge is displayed on placeholder assets for "Local On Demand" asset feeds. Clicking the badge will fetch the original file from the host MediaBeacon server.
Purge Asset
This badge is displayed on local copies of assets that have been fetched from the main MediaBeacon server using "Local On Demand" asset feeds (described above). Clicking the badge will reinstate the placeholder and remove the local copy from the remote server. The original asset will still remain on the host server.
HTML5 Video Asset tiles
Video assets have enhanced "Play-in-Place" functionality.
Duration Badge: Shown in the lower-right corner, this displays the duration of a video clip.
Playing
When the user clicks the play button, the video will play in-place, showing a playbar on mouseover.
Fullscreen
When the user clicks the Fullscreen button, the video clip will play as above, but will fill the viewer's entire screen.
Drag-and-Drop
The workspaces in MediaBeacon 8.0 are enabled to allow drag-and-drop functionality for assets. Much like dragging-and-dropping icons in an OS GUI desktop, the user may click and hold, then drag an asset or a selection of assets. Many widgets provide targets for drag-and-drop functionality for an array of different actions, such as Move, Copy, Metadata Stamp, Delete Asset, Conversion, and Download.
Quick Tips: Dragging files into the view widget from outside the browser will upload them into MediaBeacon. If the user drags the files onto a specific asset in the view widget, the files will also be linked to the asset after upload.
Accessing Asset Dialogs
In all View widgets, the Asset View may be accessed by double-clicking the asset preview. Functionality of the Asset View dialogs is discussed in the Dialogs section.
Configuring Sort Fields
Clicking the "+" icon allows a user in admin mode to add or remove fields to be used for sorting criteria.
The chosen fields can be rearranged within the panel (listed vertically), and will appear horizontally in the View widget, in that order.
Each column contains filtering options that vary based on column type. To access these options, click the down arrow next to the column and set your criteria. You may select multiple criteria from the same or different columns to refine your search. As you do so, you'll notice the search criteria are automatically added in the Search Status widget. This search criteria will override the sort order that Quick Search applies when you search.
Common View Widget Configuration
These configuration options are common to all View widgets.
General Options
Pinpoint Text
This option toggles the display of the Pinpoint search result information in a pop-up dialog in an asset's Badge Area.
In-Place Video Playback
This option toggles the ability to play video assets directly in the View widget at the current preview size.
Enable Find Like Assets
This toggles the "Find Like Assets" badge on and off in the View widget.
Assets Draggable
This option toggles the user's ability to drag-and-drop an individual or selection of assets.
Show Selection Size
This option displays the total file size of the selected assets.
Show Total Search Result Count
This displays the total number of assets in the view.
Wrap File Name
This will wrap long file names onto additional lines in the view.
Enable View Resize Slider
By default, the thumbnail resize slider is not shown to users, since it's a global setting. To show it, select this option. Drag the slider to set a default value.
Search Filtering Options
- Default Saved Search: Displays a particular saved search the first time the View widget is loaded, but allows users to change the search thereafter.
- Mandatory Search Filter: Imposes a saved search on the contents of the View widget at all times.
- Clear all pre-existing search criteria on mandatory search change: This option will clear all pre-existing search criteria when users navigate to this workspace.
- Hide Mandatory Searches: This option will prevent mandatory searches from displaying.
Advanced Options
These options provide a way to create custom landing pages for different search conditions.
- "Custom View If No Asset Found": displays specified HTML in place of the View widget when a user performs a search with no results.
- "Jump to Workspace if Search Returns No Results": takes a user to a specified workspace when the user performs a search with no results.
- "Jump to Workspace if No Search Being Performed": sets a default workspace when a user isn't actively performing a search.
- "Run Javascript on Page Load": executes the configured Javascript on page load.
- Enable Mouseover Asset Display: The "Enable mouseover video playback?" option allows users to mouse over the previews of video assets to view a preview of the video in a pop-up hovering window after a given number of milliseconds.
- "Only Hover for Video Assets": toggles restriction of mouseover display to video assets.
- "Fields To Display":allows display of one or more metadata fields at the bottom of the asset hover frame.
Highlight Configuration
Highlighting of asset previews is configured here. The asset frame will be colored if its metadata matches the desired criteria. Highlights can also be configured to display a badge with an icon and label, as shown below.
To add a highlight, click the "Add Highlight" button. The panel will expand, showing a blank Highlight subpanel, allowing values to be entered. Multiple criteria may be added or removed for each Highlight by clicking the "+" or "-" button to the right of that criterion, as it appears. To remove a Highlight subpanel, click the "X" button in the upper right of that subpanel.
The "Highlight with color" field allows custom hex values to be entered.
Note: Only fields that have been indexed can be used to highlight.
- Enable Badge: This will display an icon in the lower left corner of the asset preview.
- Badge icon: This allows administrators to upload a custom badge icon.
- Badge title: This will display an optional label alongside the badge icon.
- Enable show badge on hover: This option will hide an asset's badge's until the asset is hovered over.
- Enable Drag and Drop on Badges: This option will trigger a badge's Javascript when assets are dropped on it.
- Enable Javascript Action: This option allows administrators to enter Javascript that will be triggered when the badge is clicked.
Enable Drag and Drop File Upload
This option toggles the user's ability to drag-and-drop files from their desktop to the View widget to Upload.
Users can also upload files to specific directories by dragging them onto the Directory Tree, whose folders will then spin open.
Drag-and-Drop Upload is supported in Firefox 3.6+ (limited to 256MB uploads), Safari 4+, and Chrome 12+.
- "Upload to the Standard Directory": sends files uploaded using drag-and-drop to the standard upload directory.
- "Upload to Index/": lets administrators set a custom directory for drag-and -drop uploads.
- "Link to Target Asset": allows users to automatically link to an asset on upload by dragging their files onto it. Administrators have the option of requiring that users fill out specific metadata panels during upload linking, which can differ from required panels during normal drag-and-drop upload. See "Workspace Options; M3TAForms Required for Upload" for a discussion of that feature.