Changelog

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April 1, 2021 (2021.03.26)

• Web links improvements

  • The following plugins can be now used to display files shared via web links: 3D Viewer, LibreOffice Viewer, ONLYOFFICE, Office Web Viewer, Zoho, OpenDocument Viewer, Markdown Viewer, Bing Maps, Google Maps, Text Editor, E-book Reader, Markdown Viewer, Open in browser, Video Player, Google Docs Viewer, Link Opener, Audio Player.
    The plugins used for previewing or editing files via web links can be selected from the FileRun control panel section "Files > Plugins > Defaults".
  • A web link to a file can now be shared in 4 different modes:
    • With preview: it opens a HTML page with a preview.
      The preview is generated by the plugin configured for the particular type of files.
      Image Viewer plugin can be used to show previews for non web-safe image files, such as raw images, PSD, etc.
      Important: This is the default way web links open now. Old links that you might have used to embed files into other applications or web sites, would require the following parameter "&fmode=open" appended to them.
    • Open in browser
      Just lets the browser handle the file. If it's a plain text file, a PDF document, or an image file that is supported by the browser, the browser will open it directly. If browsers can't handle the file type, they usually provide the visitors with the option to save the file to their computers.
    • Force download
      The browser will always provide the visitors with the option to save the file to their computers.
    • Editable
      This mode looks similar to the preview mode, but it can use a different FileRun file plugin, that might provide the ability to edit the file. The plugins used with this mode are configurable for the various types of files from the FileRun control panel, under "Files > Plugins > Defaults".
      This mode is available only with the permission to edit the file. This new permission is enabled under the "Advanced" panel when editing the web link.
  • You can now disable the download permission on a link.
    • If you set a preview plugin for the web links, the preview will still be shown.
      The plugins that can handle non-download previews are the same as above.
      If you do not configure plugin previews for web links, they would just show a file type icon with the message that there is no preview available.
    • This works also when sharing entire folders.
  • The "Prevent the browser from opening the file." option is no longer available. If you wish the links to provide the download, select "Force download" option under the web link URL, or append "&fmode=download" to old web links. $config['app']['weblinks']['force_download'] = ['txt', 'csv']; can still be used to prevent the browser from opening files that have the specific extensions (txt and csv for this example).

• Preview without download

  
  Users that are not allowed to download files can be now given permission to preview files.
  You can also now disable the download permission on a link which might still allow previewing.
  Available preview options:
  
  • "LibreOffice Viewer" and "Open in browser" plugins can be configured to allow PDF previews even when the user doesn't have download permissions but has preview permission. The PDF files will open without toolbar, making it difficult (but not impossible!) to save the PDF preview file.
  • "Zoho" plugin can also be configured to allow previewing without download permission. Note though that Zoho allows exporting spreadsheets and presentations from the editor to the original file format, so it does not protect from downloading. For word documents, it allows printing, so that can be used for exporting as PDF.
  • The "Autodesk" plugin allows previews without permission to download the file. This is safe as the original file never gets on the user's computer.
  • The "Audio Player" and "Video Player" plugins can be configured to allow playback of media files without the permission to download the file. Note that this does not keep the original files safe!
  • Other plugins, without download permission, will either show the file's thumbnail, an icon or no preview at all.
  • In the future, more plugins will be able to display limited previews without downloading capabilities.
  • If you do not configure plugin previews for web links, they would just show a file type icon with the message that there is no preview available.
  Very important notes:
  • This is not a safe view-only access to data. There is no such technology. Use this only with non-sensitive data that you do not mind sharing with other people.
  • It is still possible to select and copy text, or extract image data from the generated PDF previews.
  • It is technically possible to extract textual content out of an image preview.
  • It is still technically possible to download/save the generated PDF files to the users computers.
  • For image files of smaller resolution, the thumbnail is the same as the file, so saving the thumbnail to the visitors computers would technically be the same as downloading the original file.

• Unified file preview

  • Preview all files in a folder, or from a search result, with next and previous buttons. All file types are now included.
  • More screen space for previewing documents and the preview can be made fullscreen.
  • Shows edit option for editable files. (This option shows only when the file type has a default editing plugin configured inside the FileRun control panel "Files" > "Plugins" > "Default".)

• New plugins:

  • Extract PDF pages. You can extract a range of pages (1-5 or 5-1), or a list of separate pages (1,2,3), or any combination of ranges and separate pages (1, 5-10). The extracted pages can be in separate PDF files or in a combined one.
  • Merge PDF files. Two or more PDF documents can be merged into a new document. The order you select the files dictates the order the pages are copied into the merged document.
  • CSV Editor: edit .csv files in a spreadsheet-like way.
  • Text Viewer: read plain text files more comfortable and with support for the dark theme.
• Videos can be now browsed through the Videos media library option by the date their were taken and by tags. Date taken and GPS location metadata is now imported from video files, if available. Note that this requires a metadata reindexing.

• User interface improvements

  • New theme "Google Drive". Similar to the default blue, but flat with white top bar.
  • New theme "Microsoft OneDrive". Flat with square corners, thin and blue top bar, orange folders.
  • New theme "Zoho". Flat with squarer corners, black folder tree, green highlights.
  • Added "Edit" right-click option. This option shows only when the file type has a default editing plugin configured inside the FileRun control panel "Files" > "Plugins" > "Default".
  • Audio files can be opened in the audio player in a new browser tab.
  • Multiple files and folders can be now selected without using the keyboard, but instead using checkboxes that show over their icons when one or more items are selected.
  • You can now configure file plugins to hide the options for creating new files. You can allow users to edit files with plugins such as Google Editor without having the options of creating new documents with this plugin under the "NEW" button.
  • Added dark theme support for Markdown viewer.
  • Various cosmetic and ergonomic improvements.

• Other Improvements

  • The "Autodesk" plugin now reuses uploaded documents for generating previews instead of uploading the files to the Autodesk server on every preview.
  • Added option to the "Create photo proof sheet" plugin to autorient images.
  • Creating weblinks via API can be now done with all the options available via the user interface.
  • Added DPX and EXR as supported image file types.
  • Added the possibility of creating a new group of users from other groups or from all existing users.
  • The "Image Editor" plugin has now options for adjusting brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness.
  • The E-book reader now opens the book where you left them. It also provides options for adding bookmarks. Note that information on bookmarks and the last read page is saved in the browser's cache.
  • Downloading a single file now takes advantage of Chromium automatic download resuming, so it resumes the download when the connection gets interrupted.
  • Sped up thumbnail generation for video files by using ffmpeg also for scaling.
  • The Image Viewer plugin, which is used when previewing images via web links can now show small resolution previews for non web-compatible image files. This plugin can also be used to show quick previews for non web-safe image files via the versioning panel.
  • The metadata fields of type "Single value" can be now filed quicker by typing to jump to a predefined value.
  • The metadata fields of type "Small text", "Normal text" and "Multiple values" can be configured with autocompletion, where metadata values from other files are being suggested as the user types in.

• Other Fixes

  • Fixed opening PDF files and previews in newer Chromium versions.
  • Fixed possibility of downloading entire home folder.
  • Fixed LibreOffice Viewer support for non-Latin characters in file names.
  • Fixed file versions being left behind in the file system after a file is being deleted, either directly or via the trash folder.
  • Fixed reloading current folder on rename.
  • Fixed listing user activity logs for independent admins.
  • Labels and other metadata not showing for files in the search results, when searching just by filename.
  • Fixed deleting metadata file types.
  • Users can no longer create/upload folders with names that makes them hidden (for example folders with names starting with a dot character), nor they can create/upload files with names that makes them hidden (such as ".htaccess", ".DS_Store", or if a custom hidden pattern is configured for the user/group/role). This applies to any method: user interface, API, WebDAV, sync clients.
  • Fixed exporting user activity logs when specifying a date range.
  • The "Link Opener" plugin which allows you to upen .URL (Internet bookmarks) files now opens the links in separate windows, as most websites block frames nowdays.
  • Fixed display of file owner group name under the file control panel.
  • Fixed folder listing when locating a file from the search result when the file is located in the root folder of the search.
  • Fixed display of large lists of file tags in the file details panel.
  • The videos media folder is now hidden for users without download permissions.
  • Collections tree option is no longer shown when the user doesn't have download permission.

• Other changes

  • New web links that have an expiration date, will expire at the end of the specified day, rather than the beginning. This does not apply to existing web links.
  • Files and folders can now be moved inside a folder shared without download permission. The purpose is to allow file management for uploading files in an organized way, while still preventing the users from moving files from a folder without download permissions to a folder with download permissions.
  • 'Thumbs.db' is no longer a hidden file.
  • The control panel now opens in a new window and its various sections can be bookmarked for quick access.
  • "cron/paths_cleanup.php" can now take the following arguments:
    
    --deep Cleans all data related to the cleaned/removed file paths. This includes: shares, web links, metadata, comments, labels, stars, file activity logs, thumbnail caches, old file versions, search indexes, previews, etc.
    --aggressive Cleans also files that might exist and are accessible by their paths, but their paths are not perfect (for example, using back slashes or multiple consecutive forward slashes).
    --remove-hidden Cleans from FileRun database files and folders that start with a dot character.
    --path /your/path Limit the process to a particular folder.
  • Deprecated config options: $config['app']['weblinks']['show_page_before_download']