About two weeks ago the Slim Image Cropper for Gravity Forms plugin was discontinued by its author. This was a really useful plugin that allowed images to be optimized in the browser before being uploaded to the server. This meant faster uploads, less disk space usage, and less bandwidth needed. A win-win for everyone involved.
As this was the recommended plugin for displaying images in Gravity PDF, the software being discontinued was problematic. After reaching out to the original author of Slim to get the full story (they no longer had the time to maintain the software) we came to the conclusion that we’d have to roll up our sleeves and write a bigger, better replacement.
10-days later and a lot of caffeine Image Hopper was born:
Image Hopper isn’t an 100% drop-in-replacement for Slim at this stage (a Post Image field isn’t currently available, nor is image editing features like cropping and rotating). But it does a number of things much better than Slim, including:
- The ability to upload multiple images in a single Image Hopper field (Slim only allowed one image per Slim field)
- Deep integration with the Gravity Forms ecosystem, including support for popular add-ons like Gravity PDF, GravityView, Gravity Flow, Gravity Perks Nested Forms, and the WooCommerce Gravity Forms add-on
- Accessibility at its core. The uploader is fully keyboard and screenreader accessible
- Intuitive Settings. Slim allowed you to control every setting imaginable, without much thought to the user having to do the configuring. Image Hopper takes convention over configuration approach and uses sane defaults, only surfacing the most important settings.
If you switch from Slim to Image Hopper we polyfill your Slim fields so that:
- You can still view the Slim/Slim Post fields in your admin area without hindrance
- The Slim fields are hidden/disabled from end users filling out your form
This ensures you don’t have any data loss, or data you cannot access, when you make the switch.
This is just phase 1 of Image Hopper. An extremely advanced Image Editor feature is coming in the near future, powered by the advanced DokaJS editor.
Let me know if you’ve any questions