Let’s look at another interesting module - the File module:

This works by the same principle as the List module for database elements - it has a folder tree and a list view of files in the folders.

The folder displayed by default (for "admin" users)  is the "fileadmin/" folder located under the "quickstart/" directory. Here a little image archive already exists. These files are not used on the website directly. If we want to do so we can either a) link to the files from content elements or b) pick the files in the process of selecting files for content elements.

Using files from the archive in your content elements

The latter approach is the most typical. Try to insert an image element on the front page of the "Fan Club" site:

And instead of uploading one image at a time by the "Browse" button you can select multiple files already on the server!

After saving the files are attached to the record. Notice that contrary to what you might think the files are now moved to the uploads/pics/ folder where TYPO3 stores images attached to page content elements.

And on the front page you have got a nice block of images:

Notice that there are really a lot of options related to images in TYPO3. Enable "Show secondary options" and see for yourself:

The most important option is the "Position" selector (#1). With this you tell TYPO3 how to position the block of images (there are three images, remember!) in relation to text. This is mostly important when using the "Text w/Image" element type of course. Secondly the "Columns" selector (#2) is important since this is responsible for organizing the images into columns, in this case "2". The "Border" option (#3) is nice since a black border is surrounding the images and that looks good most of the time. The "Width" field (#4) determines the image block width in pixels - very useful as well. The "Link" box (#5) can set a link for the images unless the "Click-enlarge" option (#6) is selected which will enable a link for all images which opens a window with an enlarged version inside! Very nice feature for galleries! Finally the "Caption" field is for the text under images.

And finally remember:

The little funky "?" icon - help at your fingertips! Use it!

If you use the Images module instead of Filelist you will have a larger view of the images:

Alternatively you can enable the thumbnails view in the Filelist module:

... and that might be good enough for you:

One way to get images to the archive would be through FTP. But of course you can upload directly in the File module. Just click the folder icons:

This will bring up a form where you can upload files:

Likewise files can be renamed, copied, deleted etc - all by the functions available in the context menus you are familiar with already:

If you are not so lucky you didn't see some of the images in these screen shots on your own server. This might be because ImageMagick was not properly detected on your server. If you used the Windows Installer Package for installing the QuickStart site it should work. But with a custom installation - and if you didn't install it yourself - you probably didn't see all the great things happen.

You will have to consult the installation documentation available to get those problems solved. Also remember there is a mailing list for installation questions.