During the Google Summer of Code I’ve been working on improving the current attachment system to have a bit more of a modern feel to it. I’m integrating Plupload which has a variety of features such as drag-and-drop, multiple file uploads and an upload queue.
The work has been pretty straightforward and I’ve been getting a lot of help from mentors and other team members so I’ve made considerable progress in a short time. The following screenshot shows Plupload integrated with phpBB and you can also look at the code itself in my pull request:
By the end of it, phpBB users (with modern browsers) should be able to enjoy a much smoother attachment experience without a bunch of page refreshes interrupting their posting or waiting ages for a file to upload only to find out it was too big.
It’s not my first time contributing to an open source project but, surprisingly, one of the most useful things I’ve learnt is actually how to use git properly. There are a huge number of really useful features that I’ve never had to use until I started contributing to a project of this size. It’s given me more than my fair share of headaches and some of my activity history on github is a bit embarrassing now but everyone’s been really patient and helpful and I like to think I’m starting to get the hang of things now.
I’m having a lot of fun and intend to keep contributing to the project long after the GSoC has finished.