Dear all, Welcome to the December 2009 newsletter, our bi-monthly update on developments at Third Light and news about changes and improvements made to the IMS product. Please follow the instructions at the end of this email if you prefer not to receive our newsletters. Features mentioned below are free of charge, and will be released to subscription sites on 8th December 2009 and via an Appliance update in January 2010. Quota Upgrade Good news for Christmas! Effective immediately, the quota for all IMS sites hosted by Third Light has been increased by 5GB, and by 10GB for customers with a Virtual Appliance. The additional storage has been added to all existing sites, and the standard quotas for IMS are now as follows: IMS Standard: 15GB IMS Premium: 20GB IMS Virtual Appliance: 60GB Preview and thumbnail files are not considered to be part of your quota. The maximum possible quota for subscription sites remains 50GB. Don't forget, we also back up all of your data twice each day - once to a backup system in our main data center, and once to our secondary data center located in a different city. Notifications Manager (new) IMS sites generate emails and notifications when certain events occur. For example, on e-Commerce IMS sites each order placed generates an email, while upload and download approvals involve sending emails to administrators. All emails generated by IMS can now be managed from the Tools -> Notification Manager page. The Notification Manager allows the templates for the emails to be edited, and provides a way to change the default destination address for each type of email. New Meta Data Input Types (new) (IMS Appliances) On IMS Appliances, all meta data fields (including the default fields such as caption, keywords and so on) can now be replaced with your own fields, and any field may have a Controlled Vocabulary. IMS now supports creating meta data Panels to group fields together, so allowing you to tailor your meta data forms. Meta data fields can be moved between Panels or hidden if required. IMS also has the new ability to support different input types such as pull-down lists. Of particular note, there is a new tree mode which supports layered (hierarchical) data, and is interchangeable with tree modes in products such as Adobe Creative Suite. For documentation on the new meta data interfaces, please click here. Download Wizard Updates The Download Wizard provides a wide range of possible features, such as changing file format, cropping, changing colour profile or resizing to a specific download size. In many cases, a History Note is also requested as part of the download. To make these steps more accessible, the Download Wizard has now been divided into separate pages for each step. The functionality provided is otherwise identical. File Publishing (new) (IMS Appliances) IMS Appliances can now host files that are specifically required to be public without providing any wrapping. When a file is published, instead of interactively downloading the file through IMS, it can be accessed directly with a fixed URL from your IMS server. Publishing a file means it can be embedded in an intranet page or in an email campaign, for example, and avoids the need to create a copy of the file.The publishing feature is an option at the end of the Download Wizard. To view the documentation for this feature, please click here. Adobe Bridge Plugin for IMS (new) Working with important media in IMS is now even more convenient, with the addition this month of a Third Light plugin for Adobe Creative Suite. After installing the plugin, Adobe Bridge can connect to an IMS server and browse through your IMS library. The Bridge plugin allows files to be quickly located using the standard Bridge user interface, and downloaded to your graphics workstation with a simple click. Completely free, available for all versions of IMS Works with Adobe Bridge CS4 and above on Windows, Mac OS X Connects to your IMS site with your authenticated user account (username, password) Provides a browsable tree structure for your IMS library Downloads preview thumbnails and preview images Meta data is displayed in the Bridge meta data panel (eg. Adobe XMP, IPTC data) Double-clicking on a file transfers it to your desktop. For screenshots and instructions on how to install the plugin, please click here. New Template Editor Interface Regular users of the IMS templates interface will benefit from a new programmers' text editor introduced this month. The editor provides a rich editing environment with colourisation, an undo button, a more efficient editing cycle with no page reloading required, and a full screen mode to make template work more convenient. The new editor is loaded when editing any of the .tpl templates via the Template Management interface (Configuration -> Manage Themes). A screenshot of the new editor is available in the online documentation. Internet Explorer 6 - End of Support announcement The current version of IMS is designed to work in all browsers from Internet Explorer 6.0 (IE 6) and up. However, since it was originally introduced in 2002, IE6 has been significantly surpassed in terms of performance, security, functionality and reliability. From 2010, we will cease testing IMS against IE 6.0, to focus our efforts on Internet Explorer version 7.0 and higher. A small warning triangle will be displayed to administrators using IE 6.0 to indicate that the browser is not suitable for use with IMS. We recommend that the latest available version of Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox is used with IMS to obtain the best performance and appearance. Minor Changes And Bug Fixes We have made a number of small adjustments to IMS as follows: Template update: User interfaces in IMS no longer allow unlimited thumbnails per page, to avoid performance problems with very large pages of thumbnails stalling older web browsers. The maximum number of thumbnails per page is now 150. Page titles: The HTML page title now follows the context of page being viewed (previously, all pages would use the site description from the Site Options page). User searches: When a user is in a group, their group is now displayed next to their login details when the user is being edited. Lightbox sharing: The default email template sent when a lightbox is shared now includes details of the contents of the lightbox. There is also now a Site Option option to disable auto-completion of users when creating a share. PDF read and write support for metadata: IMS Appliances now support reading and writing PDF meta data during upload and download. Download counter: The number of times a file has been downloaded can now be monitored by clicking the File Info button on the Picture Console. Smart Folders: There is now an option to limit the size of Smart Folders to a maximum number of results. This option is displayed when creating or editing Smart Folders. Search Engine: It is now possible to search for empty fields using the Advanced Search engine, with a new 'IS MISSING' search modifier. For example, it possible to identify files with no caption using a search of 'Caption IS MISSING'. This option is also supported in Smart Folder properties. Download Requests: If a user has restricted download options enabled, IMS now allows the use of Download Requests for larger sizes if appropriate. Standard rate of VAT in Great Britain On 1 January 2010, the standard rate of VAT in Great Britain will be increased to 17.5%. This change will be automatically applied to all price plans on e-commerce sites within the relevant tax area at midnight on 1 January. We will not decrease the net price of products automatically, so gross prices will be 2.5% higher unless you choose to change your pricing. VAT will apply at 17.5% to IMS subscriptions from January 2010. Feedback And Referrals We operate a referral scheme to reward any existing IMS customer who directs a new client to us. If you know of a business that would benefit from using IMS, please make an introduction - we'll provide a period of free use on your account if they buy one of our products. Every feature of IMS is based on your ideas and feedback. We keep a thorough record of all feedback and aim to implement the features that are most requested as part of our development plans. Simply email features@thirdlight.com to send us your comments. For support questions, please use the Help menu support tool, as this allows us to track your queries and answer questions more efficiently. Holiday Opening Hours Season's greetings from the team at Third Light! During the holiday season, support will be available as usual, excluding public holidays on 25, 28 December and 1 January 2010. We wish you a very happy and peaceful break and a prosperous New Year. With regards, Third Light Ltd. The Digital Asset Management Specialists http://www.thirdlight.com/