- Defining Content
- Managing Content
- Working with the Media Manager and Inserting Images
- Managing Categories
- Menus and Menu Items
- Working with Parameters and Options
- Conclusion
Working with the Media Manager and Inserting Images
Inserting pictures in the default installation of Joomla! requires two steps. You have to upload images using the Media Manager and then manipulate the picture properties with the “insert picture” editing button from the editor menu when adding or editing an article.
To insert an image into an article, you must first have an article open for editing. Once you have opened an article, click the Image button (below the editing text area). You can either upload one or more new images and then select one, or simply select an existing image, as shown in Figure 5.5.
![Figure 5.5](/content/images/chap5_9780321821546/elementLinks/05fig05.jpg)
Figure 5.5. The editor Media Manager screen. Image Title is the text that will appear on the page if you choose to use a caption; otherwise it is used as the alternative text that will show upon hovering over an image.
Image Title is the text that will appear if a user moves the mouse pointer over the image. This is also the text that is used for the image caption if the Caption box is selected. Always fill in an image title. A screen reader for a blind person will read this out loud even if it is not displayed on the page.
Align is the location of the image on your page. Aligning an image to the left or right will place your picture to either the left or the right side of the text that is next to the image, allowing the text to wrap around the image.
To give the image a caption, just select the Caption check box. This will use the text entered in the Image Title field as the image caption, displayed below the image.
In the full Media Manager that is linked at the bottom of the Content menu in the main Administration menu rather than the button, you can do these two additional actions:
- Create: Click the Create icon to create a new directory. This will create a new directory in the images/ directory.
- Delete: Delete individual images and folders.
These can be very useful for organizing large numbers of images on your site.
After you have inserted an image using the Image button at the bottom of the screen, you can further manipulate the image using the Insert/Edit Image function accessed through the editor buttons located at the top of the editor screen; just select the image in the article and click the small picture icon in the toolbar. This will open a dialog box that will offer a few more options to manipulate the image, such as dimensions, borders, and vertical and horizontal space. Vertical and horizontal space is the amount of space that is around the outside of the image. Figure 5.6 shows the options available in the Insert/Edit Image dialog box.
![Figure 5.6](/content/images/chap5_9780321821546/elementLinks/05fig06.jpg)
Figure 5.6. The Insert/Edit Image dialog box
Another way you can add images to articles is by using the image fields located at the bottom of the edit screen in Joomla! 3 or in a slider on the right in Joomla! 2.5. The first field assigns an image to the intro text area and the second assigns it to the full text area. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can have a consistent layout in all of your articles.