Add other mediatypes (sound, video...) as well for image.module

I second this. This is an excellent suggestion. The image module would benefit us all best if it were to become the media module. Since it already handles file uploading and image manipulation it would only need minimal additional work to handle additional file types.

The module should do a file media type check. If an uploaded file is a gif then do this, if it's a swf do this, if it's a zip file do this.

You would have two new parameters on the config page,

File Type..............File Location
==================================
image - jpeg......../images
image - png........./images
zip......................./files
flash - swf.........../media
==================================

One thing to think about. If you do this you could have a lot of files everywhere. One option to handle this is for every user create their own files directory:

images/bob/[bobs media files]
or
images/judah/images/[judahs images]
images/judah/swfs/[judahs swfs]

i make my rounds with testing CMS frameworks. Now I am about to experiment with Drupal because a team I am involved with will use it for a new media project.
i stopped by drupal a few times before and it seemed light and intuitive. I am coming from a heavy experimentation with Typo3, which was impressive but i may have some doubts about it's complexity.

to the point though... i am also currenrlty developing an htmlarea plugin that is a file browser and media handler. I see there is a Drupal htmlarea module so I am hoping I can use it and that it is based off a recent version (at least v3RC1) and that I will be able to use htmlarea's plugin architecture without fail.
If so, i can provide the media handler plugin which would allow for extensive embedding/launching multimedia players within drupal's publishing forms.

or, I may decide to just work within a current drupal module and extend that for enhanced media handling.

either way, I will be in touch with progress and enter a project here.

We have an audio.module, video.module, image.module these days.
ATM there is a module being written for putting al these crap into a simple gallery. Marking as closed, because this is out of drupal 4.3 era.