Announcing KickAssets 3 for SilverStripe

Today, I've released KickAssets 3, an alternative to the Files and Images section (AssetAdmin) in SilverStripe.

But why read? Here it is, in 49 seconds of superfluous flair:

Kick-History

Several years ago, I released this module for SilverStripe 2.4. It developed somewhat of a cult following, mostly owing the CMS's core file management experience that was just begging to be better. The module offered a number of features that were lacking from SilverStripe at the time, including drag-and-drop uploading, multi-selection, and many other desktop-like UI paradigms. After the release of SilverStripe 3, I was surprised to find that many users were looking for a 3.x adaptation of the module, and I hastily rewrote it to be just good enough to not be broken and released it as KickAssets 2.

Last year, I completely fell in love with React JS, a UI library authored and maintained by Facebook. It's really invigorated my desire to create awesome frontend experiences for users and made me question how I could get React and SilverStripe to work together happily. I decided KickAssets 3 would be the perfect test project.

As it turned out, it was a lot of fun to build, and I learned way more about JavaScript and frontend optimisation than I ever dreamed I would. Incidentally, as my codebase matured, adjacent conversations were igniting in the SilverStripe community on the topic of bringing React JS into the core, and coincidentally, the test flight for this integration is a revamped Files and Images section for SilverStripe 4.0, coming next year.

Today I'm happy to announce the public release of KickAssets 3. I hope you'll find that it's fast, slick, and packed full of features that are missing from the default file management experience in SilverStripe.

Screenshots

The KickAssets UI is rendered in a modal window, to provide a consistent experience with files regardless of context. Whether you're attaching a file to an upload field, browsing media for the TinyMCE editor, or just doing general file management, the experience is always the same, and it doesn't take you away from what you're doing.

Create new folders in line.

Lasso select and drag-and-drop files.

Edit filenames in context by double-clicking the text.

Search for files without losing your place.

Use the list view to show more listings in the viewport, and expose more file attributes.

Sort files by a variety of properties.

Perform bulk actions on multi-selections.

More Information

Check out the Github page to learn more about the JavaScript API, installation, and more.

If you want to write a guest blog post about an awesome module that you have built, email vinh@silverstripe.com