Image Hopper brings exciting new updates such as Gravity Forms 2.7 Support, Major Architecture Improvements, New Plugin Compatibility, and More!
Our team has been busy adding greater compatibility with Gravity Forms add-ons and the WordPress plugin ecosystem, squashing bugs, and making the software more reliable for more use-cases. To give you perspective, in the last three months we’ve published a combined 10 updates to Image Hopper Core and the Editor add-on. Here are the highlights…
Gravity Forms 2.7 Orbital Themes Compatibility
Last week Gravity Forms announced 2.7 was out of beta. It can be downloaded directly from their website, and will be pushed out via automatic updates in phases. This week we published Image Hopper 2.6, which includes compatibility for the new Orbital theme included in the 2.7 Gravity Forms release. Image Hopper will retain the same design and layout, whether using Gravity Forms Legacy / Default / Orbital theme.
Deleting Existing Images
In the 2.4 update released late September, we made the decision to change how existing images get deleted when editing entries. Instead of following Gravity Forms convention and deleting files from the server when they are removed from the ‘Hopper, we now handle deletions when an entry is saved/updated. This solves two big issues:
- Data Integrity
- User Experience (UX)
If one of your users edits an entry and removes a file from the ‘Hopper, but then doesn’t update the entry, you get a data integrity issue. The entry still includes a reference to the now-deleted image, and the next person who comes along to view or edit the entry will see a broken image. This situation might occur for a number of reasons. The user might get sidetracked and forget to hit the update button, or they may have accidentally removed an image. When it happens, it’s not a great UX!
To make this change possible, we needed to successfully detect newly uploaded images, existing images, and existing images that were removed when an entry is updated. We found out that isn’t always easy to do, and while most customers had no problem, there were some “growing pains” for others with more complex setups.
Many of the updates released over the past few months have been to address edge-case issues related to how we now handle image deletion. I dislike introducing big architecture changes like this one into an established plugin, but when the outcome is a significant improvement to the UX, it can be worthwhile.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) Support
Some customers use a CDN to cache their website assets (Javascript, CSS, images), so they are delivered faster to their global users. In Image Hopper 2.5 and Editor 2.7, we resolved a CORS error that prevented the plugin’s Javascript files from being loaded.
wpDataTables
This popular plugin displays data in tabular or graph format, and it includes a Gravity Forms add-on. The Image Hopper 2.5 update adds support for displaying Image Hopper fields when using the wpDataTables GF integration (just like native File Upload or Post Image fields are handled by the integration).
Better License Registration Feedback
Prior to Image Hopper 2.5, a generic error message was shown if your license key couldn’t be activated on your site. But there can be numerous reasons why a license key doesn’t get activate (e.g. it’s expired, or you’ve reached your site activation limit), and we’ve now included more specific messaging.
Browser Cache Busting
Image Hopper 2.4.4 adds a timestamp to the end of all URLs when images are loaded into the ‘Hopper. This gets around an image browser caching problem after you’ve used the Editor add-on to manipulate existing image files (common to GravityView).
As always, we value your feedback and encourage you to reach out with any questions or suggestions.
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