It's no secret that the "sort items" page is not very easy to use, especially with a large number of images. Adding the option to sort images based on their exif data was a step in the right direction, but it's still pretty limited: you can only sort in one direction (ascending), and of course it doesn't apply to images where the exif data is absent (which can happen for a number of reasons).

I think one method that would allow for a far greater flexibility when dealing with sorting the images is alphabetical sorting (i.e. based on the name of the uploaded file). This would allow the user to rename its files before uploading them, and therefore to control exactly the order in which the files would appear in the gallery.

Sorting should be possible in the two directions (descending and ascending), and this should also be the case for the current chronological sorting button. There are cases where it makes more sense to have the image in chronological order, but sometimes you want to have the most recent images first.

Since there would be a lot of buttons, those could be grouped:

Sort by name:
[ascending] [descending]

Sort by exif date:
[ascending] [descending]

(And maybe the nature of the "default order" button should be somewhat clarified? I still don't understand what criteria is used there.)

Comments

hepabolu’s picture

hepabolu commented

+1 for the sort on name of the uploaded file.

Right now I see unexpected behaviour when uploading files in alphabetical order. They seem to be sorted differently. Steps to reproduce:

* go to upload new items
* select several files that are sorted alphabetically
* upload them all at once
* go to tab sort items
* some of the files appear in in reverse alphabetical order, some are entirely out of order.

AFAIK I have not set anything like 'sort on EXIF date', and the order of the files doesn't appear to be sorted on EXIF data anyway.