File attachments

[Alexander Honcharov]

Hello.

I think this forum is missing file attachment feature. When someone is faced some kind of problem, this person want to expose his code. Fortunately now we have code formatting. This is suitable for small code snippets. But I don't think that anyone want to open topic with 20 kb code snippet within.

The next problem - screenshots. I don't think that imageshack.us is the confortable way to store screenshots. As time goes by, those images would be deleted and screenshot liks turn to broken links. Better if images can be viewed in radWindow by clicking on attached file name.

[Vassil Petev]

Hi Alexander,

Thank you for your suggestions.

In the Welcome to telerik forums note we have provided some details on how and when the telerik Forums should be used, however we have missed to explain why attachments are not allowed. The reason is quite simple, really - we do not want people to share their projects publicly. This reason has a couple of angles:

• we sell products to developers who get paid for their work. Some of the projects our clients work on are considered confidential and it may be unsafe to share such projects in our Forums. Indeed, the decision whether to upload a solution or not is up to the developer, but offering confidential info publicly on our site will surely have consequences on us. This is why we want to protect our clients from sharing their code in the Forums. If privacy is required, the support ticketing system should be used;
• our non-trial products are royalty free, meaning that they can be used without obstacles on any site. If a client uploads his project in the public Forums, there is a good chance that our DLLs will leak out. We have many users (including malicious ones) who are simply waiting for such opportunities. And since we get hundreds of projects each day, we are not in the position to edit each project that we get and remove the royalty-free DLLs. To circumvent this, and in order to protect our client's investment in our products, as well as ourselves, we have decided that it would be best for all projects to be send through the support ticketing system. It is secure, private and protects everyone.
• finally, although we are very active in our Forums, they should not be considered a substitute of the support system. A forum post is not assigned a response time as with the support ticketing system and it may not be addressed. This is why we always ask our clients to start a new support ticket if the matter is urgent and/or important.

I hope that you understand our position on this.

Your suggestion about uploading screenshots however is very nice. I wonder how we did not think of it. Actually, you are the first person to request this feature and we will surely consider adding it to our Forums. The webteam has been notified and your points updated. Hopefully, we will be able to provide this in the next month or two.


Sincerely yours,

Rob

the telerik team

www.telerik.com | dnn.telerik.com | www.sharepointcontrols.com | www.sitefinity.com | www.mcmscontrols.com

[Alexander Honcharov]

Hello Rob.

I know that support ticketing system is for customers and I use it extensively. But the public discussion give the possibility to get the solution/help/answer faster than by using ticketing system.

If you have any doubts, check out the following topic http://www.telerik.com/asp-net-community/forums/forum-thread.aspx?b311D=ebggt.

p.s. I share your opinion about code/binaries/etc attachment.

As for screenshots - this is handy feature, because for a past two days I host two screenshots on imageshack and leave links in message.

[Vassil Petev]

Hi Alexander,

I understand what you mean, and you are not the first to request the attachment functionality. Unfortunately, we cannot take any chances.

We will try to speed things up with the screenshot attachments a bit.

Thanks for the followup!


Best wishes,
Rob
the telerik team

www.telerik.com | dnn.telerik.com | www.sharepointcontrols.com | www.sitefinity.com | www.mcmscontrols.com

[drew]

I would like to add my voice requesting at minimum the screenshot upload. If the upload is simply not enabled, just add filters for jpg/gif/png.. another forum i use allow bmp and (shudder) Word docs for image uploads, which i cannot understand, but to allow uploads while filtering most harmful or business-harmful file types should work. This is a very reasonable crowd here, and i don't sense or perceive this to be a risky addition to this already very helpful site.  Just my 2¢, cheers, drew..

[Natalie Farah]

Hello drew,

First, I would like to apologize for not posting any update about this for so long. We have though about allowing images attachement in the forums, but still have not decided for sure if we'll add this feature. Within a month we'll decide whether we'll add this feature and I will let you know.

Kind regards,
Natalie Farah
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center

[drew]

thanks Natalie, just a thought, in case you are thinking this pics must be inline, this doesn't have to be as as such. Another active developer forum i use simply allows pic files to be attached, we then simply click the link and get the image in a second window. This way, their format and layout is not compromised. I would politely suggest not allowing bmp's though, as they are so much larger than other formats. To re-iterate, it is so very helpful when trying to explain issues, as a matter of fact, in many cases, threads would not have been possible without the ability to say: here look at this, it has me stumped! ... cheers, drew..

[Natalie Farah]

Hi drew,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. We'll certainly take into consideration your suggestions.

Kind regards,
Natalie Farah
the Telerik team

Instantly find answers to your questions at the new Telerik Support Center

[Valeri Hristov]

I am a member of the Telerik team, but I will post here, you might like my idea about the attachments in these forums:
1) Allow the attachments in these forums without restrictions on the uploaded files
2) Every forum attachment will have a flag, which will indicate whether it is approved by the telerik staff, or not (the same as the KB comments). The approved attachments will be visible for everyone in the forum, the rest will be invisible for everyone, except their owner (the Telerik staff has access to everything in the forum backend), in case he wants to delete them.

This is doable and not a very hard task for implementation, having in mind that I know how the forums work. On the other hand it will spare the need to open a new support ticket if you want to send us a project and will keep the issue information in one place...

What do you think?