Navigating the File Browser

The file browser window is used for a number of different actions, most common is when inserting images. The file browser acts as a doorway between your website and the server/your hard drive. In order to add an image or reference a link, the file must first be on the server, if it is not already, the file browser can help do this for you. Thankfully, there are a wealth of options available to you so that you can manage the insertion/uploading, relocate, alter, and preview your files all in one convenient place. Though this might sound a little daunting, a quick run-through of what can be found in the file browser will ensure that you are quickly and easily managing your file content. 

To begin we'll first address the four tabs in the top left of the browse window: Browse, Upload, Edit, and Folders, and the Current Folder drop down in the top right.

To indicate the Current Folder, the drop down menu in the top right displays the current folder and it's contents. Clicking the drop down arrow will show a list of accessible folders and their sub folders. Use this menu to quickly jump from one folder to the next. If you do not see Current Folder in the top right, then you only have one folder for files. You can add a folder with the folders tab.

The Browse Tab:

In the top left, once viewing the Browse tab, is very useful View As drop down menu. Here you can choose to view the files as thumbnails or a detailed list view. To also help you navigate through the files within a folder is the Search bar in the top right. Putting in a term and clicking Search will return all files that contain that term. For example, if you were to enter "man", it would return for you any file that contains "man" within the file name, such as "old man", "demand", "Mansfield". The search is not case sensitive.

Within the gray bar near the top of the window are the property headings: File Name, Size, Dimensions, Type, and Date Modified. Clicking on any of these headings will sort the viewed files along those parameters. When the arrow icon is pointing up, the files will be displayed alphabetically for text based parameters, or in ascending order for numerical values; the downward arrow will display files in reverse-alphabetical or descending order. This sorting works for both the thumbnail view, and the detailed list view.

The Upload Tab:

As mentioned previously, you can only utilize files that are on the server, and the Upload tab allows you do copy them from your hard drive to the server in a few easy steps. To start adding files, click the browse button in the bottom left. This will display files on your hard drive. Simply select the file(s) you wish to upload, and click Open. You can upload multiple files, as shown above, for even faster file management. The Remove button will remove accidental upload selections from the queue. Click Upload to finalize your upload selection. Please note that the location that you will be uploading to is specified in the top right, the Current Folder bar, change this as needed. Not to worry, if you upload to the wrong location, the next tab will help.

The Edit Tab:

The Edit tab helps with files already on the server. The five edit functions are found in the Action drop down bar: Delete, Rename, Move, Resize, and Rotate.

The last column for each Edit Menu is reserved for the selected action. As you can see, each file has a select box in the right-most column allowing you to select it. To finalize your action, the button at the bottom of the window will have to be clicked. In the case of the Move action, you will also have to select the Destination, located next to the Action menu.

The Folders Tab:

The Folders tab gives you control of your file structure. Similar to the Edit tab, there is an Action menu giving you the options to Create, Delete, and Move. You can see that above, we have four folders: images, navigation, tinymce, and fckeditor. Since the action Create is selected, you can tell that a folder "SUB NAVIGATION" is about to be created and that it will go "under" navigation. If you notice the arrows next to the last three folders, these denote that they are sub-folders of "images".

A similar interface is used for the Delete and Rename actions, where the right-most column is where you will modify the corresponding folder. None of the above actions will be finalized until the button is clicked at the bottom of the window (Create Folder is displayed above).