Releasing 2sxc 9.4 without Telerik

2sxc still used telerik components in the background to pick files and images. This caused many issues because DNN 8/9 needed additional installation steps, + the security issues of the Telerik components caused a lot of concerns. No more...

JS File Browser - Not found :(

We evaluated a lot of options for a good file-browsing experience. Our goal was to use a standard component so that we wouldn't have to develop and maintain another file manager. We checked the following options.

1. Preferred: Use a DNN-standard JavaScript UI file picker - there is none :(
2. Alternative 1: Include a third-party Angular based file picker that's just done - there is none that really fit
3. Alternative 2: Include a third-party standard JS-based picke that we can just use - again there is none that really fit

So basically there was no appropriate solution which wouldn't require a LOT of work + a lot of future work, for maintenance, multi-language, upgrades and more. 

As it turned out, there was no good solution. So back to the drawing board...

Requirements Engineering

As we went back to the drawing board to re-define what we really need, we specified the following priorities: 

1. browse for existing files in the portals folder structure, based on the DNN internal folders / files structure
2. Upload new files - but limit upload to safe files according to DNN rules
3. Rename and delete files
4. Create / delete / rename folders

While evaluating this, we realized that ADAM does everything, except for renaming + that ADAM always creates a new folder for each entity/field. So we decided to enhance it, to provid the new features

ADAM Based File Browser

We're very happy with the result - as we were able to develop it in about 1.5 days and it adds very little additional overhead for future releases. It completely removes our dependency on telerik. Here's what it looks like: 

So it looks almost like the classic ADAM. To ensure that users realize which "pot" they are working on, we added an icon with a world for the portal-files, and an apple for adam-files, here:

New Feature: Rename

This was added because it's one of the most required enhancements - especially because a lot of galleries etc. will show all the files by A-Z, so often there was a number in front of a file name like 001 to ensure desired sorting:

The rename will also ensure that the file extension can't be changed, to protect against malicious uploads. 

TL; DR

Hope you love it :) - download it here.

Daniel