I’d like to propose the idea of an official “WordPress UI Advisory Group”.
Backstory
As you may have already guessed, I’m a big fan of data informed design. You’ll notice that I didn’t say “data driven” design. There is a difference between being data informed and being data driven. If you’re data driven, you are being lazy by allowing the data to make decisions for you (bad). If you are data informed, you are using the data to help you validate your hypotheses and make informed decisions (good).
Simple example
Let’s say your gut says you should move a signup button from the right side of the page to the left. In testing the button on the left, the biggest thing you should be looking for is to ensure that having the button on the left doesn’t completely tank signups. Even if the data tells you that having the button on the right is slightly better, you should trust your gut.
Summing it up
Use your existing knowledge to make a hypothesis. Use user testing as a safety check. As long as your change doesn’t sink the ship, trust your gut. Use data to help you make informed decisions, but don’t let data bully you around.
How does this “Advisory group” fit in?
Core WP provides a unique challenge, in that there isn’t a super easy way to gather usage metrics. We can’t just slap KissMetrics or Google Analytics into core to see how users interact with the software (and for good reason). We’ve got to be a bit more creative.
I’ve been trying to think of a few ways that we could get feedback from users throughout the design process. I’d like to start with a simple email list.
Why would people sign up
I’d like for this email list to be a venue for people to contribute (thus shaping the direction of WordPress) without having to commit to spending any specific amount of time. They’ll simply:
- Add their email to the list
- Receive emails periodically with either 1) short 1-3 question polls, 2) simple click tests, or 3) requests for feedback about a certain design
- Participate when they have time, and unsubscribe if they lose interest (or get too busy)
Where would we promote it?
Wherever we can get away with promoting it. 
But to start, we’d just add the subscribe field to the top of this blog (keeping it simple to start things off).
Where will the list live?
I’d likely just set the list up on Campaign Monitor (unless I hear objections to that idea).
Thoughts?
lessbloat, 
Scott Kingsley Clark 4:16 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes! WP 3.5 is easily the most anticipated release for me in a long while. This is beautiful!
Mel Choyce 4:18 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Looking good! I just noticed one thing missing — on the attachment details screen, there’s no longer an option for linking an image to a specific URL (like to another site).
Vitor Carvalho 4:20 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Maybe because you can do it in the editor, selecting the image and then click on “link button” which will give you more options than the ones you had before.
Andrew Nacin 4:22 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Not a deliberate omission — thanks for pointing that out. We should definitely look into making that UI support a custom URL.
krogsgard 5:34 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’d love to see an option to link to the parent post as well (or current post if media won’t include a direct attachment relationship anymore). This isn’t included now, but it’s a great time to add the ability, or at least a hook, which I don’t think is there now.
Absolutely incredible work y’all. This is really, really great.
Russell Heimlich 4:59 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1 for this. We use this feature a lot. Uploading an image then copying the URL of the image for use in a widget or somewhere else. If it were easy to select an image from the media library and reference the URL in something like a widget, that would be great as well.
Daryl Koopersmith 5:14 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ah, I think you and Mel are talking about two different things (using a custom url when linking the image to in the post, versus the showing the permalink to the image itself), but you also have a point.
bradyvercher 5:20 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1 for me, too. I’d like to be able to save a custom URL for each image and have that available as an option when inserting a gallery. I’ve found it useful for linking thumbnails to PDFs or press photos to external websites.
Brady Vercher 5:39 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is looking pretty sweet! Great job so far. I had a couple of thoughts that might be outside the scope of this refresh, but would be nice to consider:
Embedding the media iframe directly on a CPT edit screen (or potentially the gallery post format) without having to open the media popup would be killer. Inserting a gallery into the post editor doesn’t always make sense.
Allowing a target field for the “Insert” button would be quite helpful for inserting an image into a widget or option field. Being able to specify whether the image URL, ID, or maybe a JSON object is returned would be even better. And can the “Insert” label be filterable?
I’ve found it fairly difficult to re-crop an automatically cropped thumbnail and have it link back to the original image.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing how this turns out!
Vitor Carvalho 4:19 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Fantastic concept! This new release will give us a good reason to not install any other gallery plugin.
wlindley 12:42 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Unless you want to do something automatic, instead of manually. The AutoNav plugin, for example lets you resize thumbnails on-the-fly: [autonav display="attached" size="200x175"]… or sort by different fields (date, title), or automatically display the first few attachments, or display attachments from other posts according to their tags or category… things which are “reactive” as you change other things in the site, versus this UI which lets you manually control everything. Both can be useful.
Mert Yazicioglu 4:20 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I really like it, looks like the media management aspect of WordPress will finally get some love
One question though, what happens when an image is clicked seem to differ from one action to another. I personally prefer this method but would that confuse the new users is what is bugging me.
Andrew Nacin 5:16 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It does differ, for sure. But we also think this will be intuitive, depending on what the user is trying to do. The different actions are glaring in the slide deck, but I doubt it will be as obvious when you’re actually using it.
There’s also a “Back” button, and we intend for these dialogs to be lightning-fast, not full page reloads, so it’s easy to return to where you left off.
But that said, this will all get heavily user-tested. And so if we find that we need to make modifications to our hover/click/next workflow, we will adjust it for sure.
Ben Huson 4:20 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think the wireframes look really good.
I particularly like the status to indicate the current selection.
Not 100% convinced on the infinite scrolling but that may just be because I am used to paging – I like having the option of being able to browse the image library but easily jump forward huge jumps, or to the last page etc.
Noticed one thing missing – there is currently an advanced tab when you edit an image which allows you to change classes etc.
Also, it wasn’t clear what “Create a Gallery” does and wether you can create multiple galleries?
Andrew Nacin 4:31 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
No, that Advanced tab is going to go away. That entire dialog goes through TinyMCE’s media handling, which makes for some awkward asymmetry. As implied in the “Edit an image” section, it opens the WP “Edit Media” window, not a TinyMCE window.
We discussed this pretty extensively. If you want to set things like CSS classes, custom styles, borders, horizontal/vertical padding, etc., you should be opening the Text (HTML) editor and doing it yourself. There’s no need for a UI for this. It’s been quite the hidden UI (and a confusing one at that), so this isn’t much of a loss.
thenbrent 6:45 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Praise! Ditch redundant UI.
Sheri Bigelow 2:33 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I don’t know. From my experience working with WP.com users, here are the things I think users will most miss from the advanced options:
Andrew Nacin 4:36 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes, this will likely support multiple galleries in some way. I think multiple galleries are really important when telling a story with photos — we’ll see what we’re able to do.
Simon Wheatley (Code for the People) 4:56 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think you are, but to check: do you & Koop envisage being able to add one attachment to more than one gallery, i.e. break the requirement for an attachment to be the child of a post in order to feature in a gallery on that post? (That would be cool… and I have some code to do it, but you won’t like it as it’s serialised in a meta.)
Daryl Koopersmith 5:06 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
In a word, yes. We’re thinking of using the current post_parent-based connection to mean “this media item was uploaded to this post object”, and changing galleries to be an explicit list of IDs (using the existing shortcode). We discussed this a bit in dev chat last week.
Ben Huson 7:40 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink
Could galleries basically be a ‘gallery’ taxonomy for media or is an explicit list of IDs better?
Andrew Nacin 8:52 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink
@Ben We discussed this, and think that it would be better for now to continue with the ‘transient’ galleries, rather than moving to persistence with galleries as a taxonomy. We’d rather not conflate workflow changes with underlying schema changes, and a few of us don’t think that galleries necessarily work best as a simple taxonomy (as you only get a description out of it, for example). This is something a plugin can do for now. Ideally we’ll revisit it in the long-term.
Ben Huson 9:03 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink
Makes sense.
Ben Huson 9:04 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink
… maybe when we have taxonomy meta in core?
Peter Chester 3:31 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink
+1 on @Ben’s p.s. about taxonomy meta
Andrew Nacin 5:08 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is actually already doable. When you do
there is no requirement for those images to be attached to the current post. We’ll be piggybacking on that.Simon Wheatley (Code for the People) 5:09 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink
Excellent, thanks both.
GreenDiablo 3:03 pm on August 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Love the new concept for the Media Library and the fact that multiple galleries are supported and you can select the images that go into the gallery (not mandated anymore by the images that are uploaded to a post)! Great job on the wires!
Would love to get more involved and help work on UX/UI. Where do I best get started to help work on concepts etc. even in the early stages?
Brian Richards 4:21 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is AB-SO-LUTE-LY amazing! Great work to everyone involved so far!
Flipping through these, I think you guys have covered the entirety of what I was hoping to see in the media upload enhancements. I’m very excited
As I was thinking about all the changes this weekend I pondered about the possibility of incorporating a drop-zone within the Featured Image metabox itself, so a user can drag-n-drop an image directly into the Featured Image metabox and it will upload and be set as featured. It’s likely this was already discussed somewhere and I missed it.
If not, would you say that action falls in line with the rest of these changes?
Daryl Koopersmith 4:25 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Glad you like it! We’ve discussed integrating dropzones and other media bits outside the editor and decided that would be a bit too much for 3.5… but an easy first step will be to make the “choose a new x” buttons dropzones as well.
As for featured images, depending on what we do with thumbnails, there’s a chance we’ll run them through the crop step as well.
Nick 9:17 am on August 10, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
If using a drop zone for the Featured Image metabox is too much for 3.5, might I suggest automatically setting the image as a featured image if the user opened the media window by clicking on the “Set featured image” link in the featured image metabox?
The current workflow for setting a featured image (Click “set featured image”, upload the image in the media popover, scroll down and click “use as featured image” after it’s uploaded) is one that new users of WordPress seem to consistently trip up over, from my testing. (They forget the last step and wonder why the image isn’t listed as featured when they close the media window; they have already told WordPress that they’d like to set a featured image, after all.) Removing the need to click “set as featured image” would improve usability a great deal.
Love the new changes, though. Great work!
Andrew Nacin 4:21 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’ve had the opportunity to do in-person walkthroughs of this slide deck with a number of people who work with WordPress regularly, including @matt, a UX expert, a journalist, two developers, and a blogger. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
It is great to have distinctive steps for the user, especially since they can jump into a specific dialog (such as jumping straight to the “Edit Media” screen from TinyMCE). However, when it comes to implementation, the screens are tightly coupled —
One question I was asked (@matt brought it up, in particular) is at what point does a caption save to the DB against the attachment, and at what point is it stored only in the post (and no longer syncs)? @markjaquith, @koopersmith, and I literally spent a number of hours discussing this issue, and how it relates to the usefulness of attachment pages, etc. I *do* think there is a way to implement this seamlessly and intuitively, without forcing users to make a decision on where, when, or how something gets saved. (It should “Just work.”)
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to put our heads together to work this out. And so I intend to have a discussion and resolution on this at the WordCamp SF Hack Day on Sunday.
You’ll note that “Title” and “Description” are now omitted from the Insert/Edit Media screen. That is intentional, given how ridiculous it is to have four fields here, when these two apply only to attachment pages. See #21391 on how we hope to improve this by separating the UIs.
Archetyped 6:00 am on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great wireframes and great discussion thus far! This is probably something that many have wanted to see get an overhaul (myself included). Here’s a suggestion for handling instance-based media properties (e.g. caption, etc):
The main difference is that selected images are displayed at the top. This is done for a few reasons:
Again, great work all, I look forward to seeing this progress!
Archetyped 6:12 am on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Just a quick note regarding handling large quantities of selected images in the top area. There are several potential solutions, a few of which are:
Carousel/slider display – Horizontally scroll through images.
Expand-o button – Hide selected images until done selecting all desired images. Then hit button (e.g. placed near “3 images selected” element) and grid of selected images takes center stage.
Horizontal Row + Expand-o button – A combo of the best of both worlds. Display a single row of selected images, but hide additional images when more items than can be displayed until the “show all” button is clicked.
Isaac Keyet 4:23 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Amazing work here. Even without a complete overhaul, the main window for browsing existing media library content or uploading new, which also combines a “shortcut” to create a gallery would be enough of an improvement going into 3.5.
Some things I noticed/wished for while viewing the slideshow:
More to come, will need to let this settle for a bit.
Devin Reams 4:29 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It looks nice but not sure how it’d work with multiple “types” of things to insert (forms, polls, other plugin features).
Andrew Nacin 4:38 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We’re really just styling the existing link + icon as a button, so I don’t think this is much of an addition, or how it’d affect other forms of media.
Isaac Keyet 4:40 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It’s true that it doesn’t really scale. Ultimately though, you’re inserting something into the body of a post, to me that should mean that it should be in the formatting toolbar itself (tinyMCE).
In the meantime Insert/Upload Media could receive special treatment and be the only button there, while “secondary” options that plugins would add could be styled the old way with a label on the left.
Andrew Nacin 4:41 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
A few thoughts:
Daryl Koopersmith 4:45 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is the main issue with using the dropzone as the first item (we debated it for quite a while). Also, on multisite, the dropzone is accompanied by several lines of text (space remaining, acceptable filetypes, etc), so squeezing that all into a single item would be a bit cramped.
Andrew Ozz 2:53 am on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Imho the whole area should be upload drop-zone. Makes the most sense to drop images straight in the library, where the other uploaded images are (consistent with moving images from one folder to another on MacOS or WIndows).
A Select Files button can be at the top for users that prefer to click something or use non-html5 browsers. Don’t see a problem if button is hidden when the page is scrolled down, the users would know where to find it.
Alternatively can have a persistent (position: fixed) toolbar, much like the toolbar on other admin screens where the Upload button would be. Also good place for Help button, search etc.
Andrew Ozz 2:56 am on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This would make the whole layout cleaner too. No need for thin “sidebar” and small drop-zone that might be hard to hit when dragging.
Isaac Keyet 4:47 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Daryl Koopersmith 5:01 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Absolutely — most of this UI can be built in a responsive/reactive fashion. Mobile-sized screens will likely need a few extra changes, but hopefully we can make that experience just as smooth.
Brian Richards 5:04 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think the “Delete” action could be handled most simply by a confirmation modal for the user, “Are you sure you want to permanently delete this image from your entire site?” and then give them three very clear options, “Cancel”, “No, just remove it from this post”, “Yes, delete it site-wide”. We could even humanize it further by making the site-wide delete a red button.
Daryl Koopersmith 5:09 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Permanent delete will have to be well marked, that’s for sure. I dislike the idea of conflating both under a single “delete” action, though — that will only add to the confusion. Instead, we can just label each accordingly (we deal with “remove” versus “delete” in several other places in core in a similar fashion).
Isaac Keyet 5:49 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Some quick thoughts in images (playing with this).
Uploading an image from the post editor has only one purpose, you want to use it in the post you’re editing somehow, most likely creating a gallery. This UI would be a better way to keep an overview of what you’ve done so far, and if you’re adding old images from the library even getting an overview of what’s selected and what’s not is going to be hard (imagine if you’ve “infinite scrolled” 2-3 page folds down, only way to get an overview then is to go to the gallery tab).
Uploading media/inserting individual image. The last uploaded item(s) should be to the left, to origin from the drop zone. Assuming ascending sorting.
Many attached items, some selected from library
lessbloat 6:33 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
A couple thoughts:
Devin Reams 4:27 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Cool stuff, great work everyone.
We often have the same problem (training) when a ‘description’ or ‘caption’ is something dynamic (saved to db) and can be used consistently versus inline (when inserted)
I also see a little bit of headache not being able to set the ‘Featured Image’ from the Insert/Upload screen as this is a pretty common workflow (again, training) that folks use: Upload > Set as Featured. Or Upload > Find image > Set as featured. Keeping in mind that some folks use multiple ‘Featured’ slots, too.
Andrew Nacin 4:33 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Upload > Set as Featured — that’s a good thing to keep in mind. That’s probably something we can add to the “Insert Media” dialog once you click “Insert.” Not quite the same workflow we have now, but, yeah… Keeping everything compatible with multiple featured image implementations is going to be fun, to say the least.
Daryl Koopersmith 4:34 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is a particular pet peeve of mine — I’d really like to find a way to communicate this well.
One of the goals of this release is to separate out the various media workflows into their individual components. A side effect of that is separating inserting media into the post and setting a featured image. If testing reveals this to be a mistake, we can always discuss merging them back. That said, as with any UI change, will be a bit of an adjustment phase for existing users.
Scott Kingsley Clark 4:30 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Do we know yet how extensible this new UI will be from a plugin standpoint? Will the Media editor form be given proper hooks for adding additional fields? The current filters really stink and I bet we could do something much better during the dev of the new UI.
Andrew Nacin 4:35 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The priority is going to be keeping the current filters working, which isn’t going to be a cakewalk. But yes, this will be extensible.
Scott Kingsley Clark 4:36 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Excellent, that’s music to my ears, I’ve been working closely with these filters and know of their many failings, looking forward to seeing what we can put together that supports the old filters as well as improving upon them for the new UI’s needs.
Helen Hou-Sandi 4:39 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
On the accessibility front (since I’ve promised to keep an eye on it):
Isaac Keyet 4:42 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1, accessibility mode much needed to think through. Also of note: placeholder HTML5 element is only supported by the latest mobile webkit browsers, if possible we shouldn’t rely on it for important field labeling or at the very least have a fall-back (regular label outside the field).
Andrew Nacin 4:45 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Andrew Ozz 3:52 am on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Using the arrow keys is usually reserved for navigating tree-like structures, mostly menus with several levels of submenus. For the gallery it would be better to use the Tab key.
Arranging the gallery images would be hard without an accessibility mode similar to the widgets screen.
Daryl Koopersmith 4:48 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
All hover interactions will be taps on touch devices (as they are in most of our other UIs), and if there are holes in the touch device workflow we can add tweaks to make the process better. We won’t leave them high and dry.
Sami Keijonen 4:57 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Looks great! I’ve been wondering can images be also filtered by author? I have magazine with students (authors) and they upload a lot of (unnecessary) images. It would help if they could filter they own images or admin could do it. This might be out of scope here.
Daryl Koopersmith 5:03 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Interesting thought. We hadn’t discussed adding filter by author, but depending on how the sort/filter/search UIs turn out, it might be feasible. If not, we should make this easy to do with a plugin.
Sami Keijonen 5:07 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
That would be awesome. Superlatives for you guys!
RDall 4:57 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I would absolutely love to be able to type in the width and get the constrained proportion. So many times I have typed in 150 width only to see the height doesn’t change as well…
Daryl Koopersmith 5:10 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We’ll definitely need a good way to preserve the aspect ratio while editing an image. It’s an extremely common use case.
RDall 5:23 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Awesome thanks koop!
Sean Butze 6:14 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1 to constrained proportions. This would be a huge improvement
DrewAPicture 5:12 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is a really good iteration and I’m looking forward to seeing more.
One inconsistency that kind of sticks out for me is the ‘Edit’ button vs the edit icon button. In some places you click the icon, in some places you get both the icon and ‘Edit’ but then you’re clicking ‘Edit’ and not the icon. Personally, I’d prefer we stick with one or the other. My vote’s on the icon
Per the ‘captions to DB’ discussion, why not just run some kind of ajax autosave?
Daryl Koopersmith 5:21 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
These buttons actually lead to different places, so we should probably hide the paintbrush icon in those cases. The paintbrush icon will actually lead to the image editor (crop, resize, etc), which is also accessible from the “edit attachment details” screen. We haven’t entirely decided on the technical requirements around the editor, so those screens have not been mocked yet (and will likely be decided at the WCSF hack day).
Daryl Koopersmith 5:23 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We definitely need to figure out how to disassociate editing an image’s details (alignment, caption, etc) from editing an image itself (resizing, cropping, etc).
Andrew Nacin 5:22 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Oh, don’t worry, these will save via ajax.
But once you insert an image into the editor, that caption is free-form text. Under what circumstances should that caption text remain synced with the attachment in the DB, versus allowing them to diverge? You can use the same image in multiple posts, and captions from the DB are used in galleries, so it can get confusing very quickly.
Andrew Ozz 3:33 am on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yeah, and annoying too. If all is synced with the DB that means there would be impossible to have different caption on the same image when the image is used in different places / different context. What’s more: if an old image is reused later and the caption is edited, that edit would show in the gallery. This may not be intended.
Currently the captions are disassociated from the DB as soon as the image is inserted in a post. Seems we can keep this.
Mark McWilliams 5:16 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It’ll be good to see the wireframes make their way into Core!
DrewAPicture 5:17 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’m curious about the thinking behind moving the drag-n-drop zone from right (Dave’s 4th iteration) to the left (this iteration). I kinda like it better on the right, myself.
Daryl Koopersmith 6:22 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We moved the dropzone to bring more balance to the UI. All of the primary actions are aligned in the top right of the selection UI so aligning them with the right edge and bringing them closer to the dialog close button makes them more prominent. Also, when uploading is involved, it usually is the first step a user takes, so it makes sense to align it on the left side of the screen, where a user will see it sooner.
Dominik Schilling (ocean90) 8:05 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Maybe we could use the dialog itself as a dropzone, so that it’s not necessary to drop it specific to this small box on the left side.
If you have a big screen the browser is normally on the left side and the file explorer or desktop on the right. Yet you have to drag your file from right to the far away left side, which isn’t the best usability I think.
Chris Jean 5:18 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is eerie. Really, really eerie. I talked with my coworker last week about a better Media Library screen, and this has all the key elements I talked about. So very, very weird.
I’m excited. Please oh please let it be easy for non-core developers to use the full functionality of it.
From the mockup, it looks like we will finally be able to create galleries with media that is not directly attached to that content. If we can make this happen, it will be awesome. I tried to make a gallery site for an artist friend of mine, and that limitation made me use a plugin when 95% of everything else was built into core.
lessbloat 5:19 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Indeed!
Andrew Nacin 5:23 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
As noted above, this is actually already doable, just not via the UI.
Chris Jean 6:43 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes. I am aware of that, but most users that I turn into WP converts really have a hard time understanding how to hand-create shortcodes.
Daryl Koopersmith 7:20 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Which is exactly why we’re going to make this doable through the UI.
zekeweeks 5:26 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I love the seamless flow between upload/select, gallery and image details, and insertion. And the contextual reactions between “insert single” and “insert gallery” are a huge usability plus. Very excited about this.
One worry I have is on slides 12 and 13: https://speakerdeck.com/u/koop/p/wordpress-3-dot-5-media-wireframes?slide=12 . When one image is selected, we have two “insert” buttons which do the same thing- one persistent one at the top, and one on the individual image. However, when we have more than one selected (slide 13), the top button contextually switches to provide “insert gallery” functionality, but we still have an “insert” button on each individual image.
I worry that this will create two problems:
For these reasons, I’d lean toward getting rid of the “insert” buttons over individual images altogether, and make the button on the top right be a consistent, universal button that is the “next-step-here” button for all contexts. However, this issue could be addressed other ways (only showing “Insert” for single selections, making “Insert” react as a gallery when multiples are selected, etc.)
Andrew Nacin 8:58 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I was strongly for the individual Insert buttons for a few reasons. Without them, I think the ease in which you can select multiple images (particularly since you can scroll so a selection is outside the viewing area) could cause people to create galleries when they don’t want to. They would need to clear the selection and then look around again to select the single image they originally wanted to insert.
Note that we deliberately chose two different verbs: The current “Insert” into post, versus “Create” a gallery. Now, maybe that isn’t enough. This is all testable — we’ll find out during user testing. We can figure out what works and what doesn’t, and adjust the button placements, strings, and the like.
We could also consider showing the selection status bar only once you have two images selected, and have individual insert buttons otherwise. I think this change could handle all of the issues we’ve both highlighted. Very good points, thanks for the feedback.
RDall 6:04 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hey guys one thing. You know how you can show the amount of post to show in the screen via “Screen Options” Can we add that to the media library? Once I got a site that have 100 or so images scrolling through them wasn’t that easy and the search was only good if I remembered what I named it. (And some days my naming convention was better then others… )
Andrew Nacin 6:09 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
If you go to Media → Library, Screen Options currently does have the ability to change the amount of items shown. And in the dialog, it’ll be infinite scroll. What am I missing?
RDall 6:33 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Andrew I was meaning when you click on add media. See Annotated Screenshot. http://cl.ly/image/0I2N100B2a31
RDall 7:10 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You mean when we go to the media library (from the insert media button) the thumbnails will scroll infinitely and will only end when we run out of media to attach to that page?
Daryl Koopersmith 7:21 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yep. The media library inside the modal will use infinite scroll.
RDall 7:22 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
You guys rock! That will be awesome!!!!!!!!!
MartyThornley 8:26 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This all looks awesome! One thing I noticed is that you either insert one image or insert a gallery. There are a lot of uses for inserting multiple images, yet not in a gallery, especially for photobloggers who write a few words then say, here are ten images… And they just show ten images one after the next. Adding that option to the “Insert” buttons would be great!
Andrew Nacin 9:01 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
If you want 10 images consecutively, then chances are you do want a gallery. Specifically, of the one-column, full-width variety.
If you don’t want 10 images consecutively, then you need to adjust your cursor each time so we know where you want those images. (If, for example, you’re telling a story and want text in between the photos.)
This dialog is not going to be a separate load of WordPress inside of a frame, like the current thickbox implementation. It’ll open (and re-open) immediately, like internal linking. So it shouldn’t actually be painful to individually insert these images if that’s what you wanted.
MartyThornley 5:01 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I was actually thinking the same as I looked through the workflow more. It is not possible with the current (old) one, but I think new workflow would definitely work for this.
Dominik Schilling (ocean90) 1:49 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1 for an option to insert all selected images.
When I start to write a post I upload the images first.
My preferred workflow would be to insert all uploaded images and then write the text between the images and/or adjust the images. And I know many people who would like this too.
See also #7013.
Andrew Nacin 2:53 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The problem with this is it confuses users, who will wonder what the difference is between inserting multiple images versus creating a gallery. A gallery really doesn’t mean that much in WordPress, but it is better when it comes to handling more than a few images. We want to keep the UI simple.
Something we should think about, though.
MartyThornley 5:05 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is one spot where a gallery doesn’t work. Thinking of them all in a row, it makes more sense to have a type of gallery that is one image after another. But there are spots where you need to just insert a few images quickly then add some text.
Maybe it could be “Insert Multiple Images” instead of “Insert Gallery” and then what is mocked up here as the gallery options would let you choose “Insert as Gallery” and choose columns, etc… or “Insert Images” which would just add the multiple image tags.
Andrew Nacin 5:18 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I understand the latter point, but just a note, a one-column gallery with full-width images does work, if you want images one after another.
ChaseWiseman 10:44 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
First of all, great work. I am very excited about this. One question: is there any reason the Featured Image dialog can’t get the same cropping features as the Custom Header dialog? Both the custom header and featured image sizes are defined in a similar fashion. It would be nice to choose which area of an image you want to use as the Featured Image.
Daryl Koopersmith 10:54 pm on July 30, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We’ve discussed it and might do just that. It depends on how the image editor (discussed above) turns out.
DrewAPicture 4:31 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This would be a really ‘good-to-have’ feature. Most of the time we’re using resized thumbs on archives and cropping from center on vertical images or images where faces are near the top is frustrating when it’s forced from the center. Being able to manually crop would be fantastic.
nhuja 3:49 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great work. Having been solely into Photography themes, this is an awesome development. I always thought media management was the weakest part of WordPress. And I was planning to develop this on my own as well.
I would love to know how these things are addressed or can be addressed:
1. I see the Create New Gallery option which is great. So, will there be a link where we can manage those Galleries (Albums), list of galleries available? Like delete an image or add another image to the gallery ?
2. Can one image be assigned to multiple galleries ? Currently it doesn’t allow unless we do shortcode cheat (I think). Also, if we are viewing the Media Library view (list of images), in the grid style, it might be great if there is a “belongs to X gallery”.
3. Can we insert one gallery to multiple posts ? Now this is one prime feature I get requests from customers.
Thanks, I am really looking forward to this development.
Cheers!
Chandra
lessbloat 12:06 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
1) Yep. The idea is that once you add a gallery to the editor, you can click the edit button on that gallery in the visual editor mode, and add/remove images from that gallery.
2) Yep, any image will be able to be added to any gallery.
3) Perhaps. I’m not certain this has been worked through at the stage, though I agree this would be nice.
nhuja 2:10 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Awesome. Thanks for confirmation.
Is there anything I can help with? 
Konstantin Kovshenin 4:41 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is just awesome! I’m glad that media management is getting some serious love in this release. Great work everyone!
thenbrent 6:53 am on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This looks fantastic, thanks for all the hard work you’re putting in to get media handling right.
When opening the Insert Media dialogue, will it display *all* media, or just those attached to the post? I’ve had complaints from users in the past about different tabs for all media and media uploaded on the one post.
The Insert Gallery looks identical to the Insert Media. This could lead to occasional disorientation. But that’s nothing a different shade of grey or some other bit of CSS wouldn’t fix.
Andrew Nacin 2:43 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It’ll display all media.
The two screens do look similar, yes, but these are only wireframes, not designs. I too have noted that disorientation is possible here. We will make sure the screens are designed with that in mind.
andyadams 1:42 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
For some reason, my last couple of comments never made it through, so I’ll try reposting the general idea:
I like the improvements, but have you considered ditching the modal window for something less obtrusive? Perhaps something more like the Theme Customizer that pops out on the lefthand side?
I say this because 2 major problems I have with modals are:
Having a modal take over the whole screen makes inserting media feel like a completely different operation than writing your content, and I feel like the two tasks could potentially be toggled in a less jolting way. This would make writing your post with lots of media a much smoother process.
Andrew Nacin 2:42 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We’ve discussed ditching the modal window for years. Literally, here’s some sketches from @jane from October 2009.
I used to be squarely in the I-want-my-media-inline camp, but I’ve adjusted that a bit. Certain actions should actually be blocking. Also, since we’re aiming for a super-fast dialog that remembers where you were, speed should not be a factor in repeated actions like inserting multiple images. As the dialog will likely be movable (like internal linking), context also becomes less of a problem.
Perhaps over time, more things move inline. Uploading, for example, should not be a blocking action. But our goals for 3.5 include separating out the overlapping and confusing workflows, which means individual, contextual dialogs. Moving everything inline at once would be a huge challenge of balancing a desire to create distinct workflows with a small space to work with.
andyadams 3:44 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Perhaps the blocking and more complex dialogs could be expanded to fill the whole screen, while the simpler and more common tasks (such as inserting an individual image or gallery) could be moved to something more inline, like the customizer?
Alex King 12:07 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
> Perhaps over time, more things move inline.
I’ve considered creating a plugin to provide a pop-over menu of images attached to the post for easy insertion into the content. Perhaps this is an area where some API enhancements (JS to insert, for example) might drive some creative plugins. Some of those ideas might in turn suggest useful enhancements to consider in core.
Dominik Schilling (ocean90) 2:03 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I really like this wireframes, great job.
One question, is it planned to be able to adjust the image size (maybe via a slider) or to get a list view?
Andrew Nacin 2:24 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We did discuss the slider idea! We didn’t include it in the wireframes, but it would be a great enhancement to this.
List view, I am not sure — depends on whether it can be designed to be useful. I would think that the view area itself would be pluggable.
sanchothefat 2:06 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
What considerations are there for other media types? In particular video and audio.
I can understand the desire to leave creation of things like playlists to plugins but the above wireframes are purely image focused. Will non image files be treated in the same way visually?
Also how will the above wireframes cope with how the media upload tabs can currently be extended by plugins? For example the ‘Upload’, ‘upload from URL’, ‘Gallery’ and ‘Media Library’ tabs that there are currently? That ability is crucial to some of my plugins.
Andrew Nacin 2:48 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This will be pluggable, which means a video could show a single frame, audio could have an embedded player, PDF documents could have an image thumbnail, etc. But by default, non-image files will likely be greeted with a generic icon/thumbnail — images first, then everything else.
I am not yet sure how we will handle tabs added by plugins. What are some examples you have seen or used?
sanchothefat 3:20 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
That sounds fine re. the handling/display of different media types – it’s pretty much what happens now and I agree you’ve got to prioritise this stuff!
A good example of using media upload tabs out there in the wild that’s widely used would be the JW Player plugin – it lets you create playlists in one of the tabs it adds. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jw-player-plugin-for-wordpress/
Also currently I’m working on a plugin that splits out media by type – it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that all attachments regardless of type appear under ‘Gallery’. My plugin creates tabs for Audio, Video and Other and for audio and video it has a form at the bottom for inserting a playlist shortcode similar to the way galleries are inserted currently.
I think the new wireframes are great and show a huge improvement to creating & embedding galleries but if possible it’d be good to have some way to see what attachments you’re looking at by source (post/media library) and then also to have them separated by type – Image / Video / Audio / Other.
Say I’m looking at audio attachments only – the add to gallery button could become ‘Add to playlist’ (assuming it’s feasible to code the gallery functionality in a generic way rather than strictly coding for images). I’d at least like to be able to plug that in if possible.
Sorry for rambling! Just getting my thoughts down – check out the JW Player plugin anyway
Anthony Hortin 2:22 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow. Great work guys! This is looking seriously sweet. Some really nice improvements to the workflow.
One thing I’d love to see, as @bradyvercher touched on briefly up above, it would be great to be able to link each gallery thumbnail to a individual url. It’d make the gallery functionality much more versatile.
Looking forward to seeing some or all of these improvements in the next release. Keep up the geat work!
Sheri Bigelow 1:59 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Linking gallery images to outside URLs is a fairly-common request on WordPress.com.
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 2:04 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
But is that even really a good idea? Too many people don’t know about the dangers of hotlinking as is, and encouraging it …. Okay, I know a lot of that is my buggaboo, but it seems like a bad idea. If flickr etc allow it, then that’s a plugin use-case, so I can see making it pluggable/hookable so a plugin can grab onto it, but I really would hate to see external image inclusion overtly included in core.
Anthony Hortin 12:30 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I wasn’t actually meaning the ability to include external images. I meant that it would be good to be able to link the thumbnail images to a specific URL (ie. other than just the larger version of the image or the attachment page). For example, It would be handy to have a gallery of 5 images that link to 5 different pages on your site.
Sheri Bigelow 11:58 pm on August 3, 2012 Permalink
Ditto.
Ryan Hellyer 9:53 am on August 4, 2012 Permalink
I agree. That seems like a sensible feature to have.
Ryan Hellyer 7:48 pm on July 31, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This looks really slick.
I’m not sure it fits into this particular area of core, but some sort of system to allow us to move attachments between folders would be darned handy. It gets really messy handing large numbers of images if they’re just chucked into folders based on the date they were added.
Reji Thomas 8:52 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is excellent work!
Some thoughts:
Reji Thomas 8:54 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Could an admin edit my comments? looks like I’ve messed up.
Sheri Bigelow 2:00 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Fixed.
John Smith 9:10 am on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Looking very, very nice.
The only thing I had hoped was that the insert button would be moved down into the actual WYSIWYG toolbar. Any reason why we keep it at the top, it’s a little confusing for first-time users until it’s pointed out.
wycks 12:38 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Please consider adding some of the gallery options (http://codex.wordpress.org/Gallery_Shortcode) into the actual UI .Most end -users do not even know about them.
Also please add as many filters as possible for developers, for example ‘image_size_names_choose’ for the size dropdown, which should work with add_image_size.
Looks awesome can’t wait because this improves everyone’s experience with wp!
Sheri Bigelow 2:39 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
The Edit Image dialogue seems to be missing, specifically: crop, rotate, flip, and scale.
Sheri Bigelow 2:41 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I just realized this is in the media library, not the Upload/Insert media workflow. Sorry!!
Andrew Nacin 2:44 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This screen is reachable from an “Edit Image” button, and buttons to this screen appear in a number of places. But no, we haven’t mocked up the screen yet.
Sheri Bigelow 2:50 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Aha, gotcha. It does seem like these are advanced image edit options and some of the things you were planning to cut (i.e. border, target, file URL) might make sense to keep here while removing duplicate edit fields (i.e. title, caption, description).
Andrew Nacin 3:16 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink
Well, they’re two different workflows. The fields we want to cut are glorified HTML controls that have to do with how an image is presented/displayed in a post. This screen is about modifying the image itself — scaling, cropping, generating thumbnails, etc. Conflated fields and windows are what we’re trying to get away from as much as possible.
Jonathan Davis 3:13 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
On the image dropzone positioned to the left, I realize it is likely a decision based on the most economical use of the space and allowing a clear visual prompt for the user to put it one side or the other. For usability, having it stretch across the bottom (or top) horizontally provides better drag access regardless of the user OS (regardless of whether the host OS keeps files on the left or right). I realize that the vertical screen realestate is at a premium. That makes it a decision of priorities. Is the drag access from left or right important enough to take up that vertical space? Is there a balance in height/size of the dropzone horizontally that won’t chew up too much space but is large enough for clumsy drags? Is left or right enough of a hindrance on usability to be worth taking up vertical simply for the sake of universal access from one side of the browser or the other?I’m not advocating one way or another, just bringing it up for the sake of discussion. Question everything and all that.
Aside from the problem of the “prompt” (how you prompt the user) with the dropzone, it would be ideal if the entire modal were a dropzone, understanding that may not be possible with how pupload’s mecahnism works, or that it might interfere with the rest of the UI. Still I wonder (thinking out loud) if you could detect the mouse drag and setup the drop zone over top the entire modal area. Probably too divergent a thought to gain traction, but thought I’d share my musings anyhow.
Good work team. It really is very well thought out. It will be very interesting to see how the user tests go.
Daryl Koopersmith 7:20 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It wasn’t shown in the mockups, but this will indeed be the case. It’s certainly possible, and just a matter of getting the UI right.
Jonathan Davis 6:42 pm on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Well, there you go then. That makes most of my earlierr usability feedback moot. No need to take up precious vertical space on the prompt if the entire modal is a drop zone.
gabediaz 3:28 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is fantastic, really great to see all these wireframes and can’t wait to see more.
Just want to ask if there was any thought about providing a List View with Order Number option when editing/sorting a gallery?
Starting with Slide 55 the only way to rearrange gallery images seems to be with a drag and drop. This works great for smaller galleries but with larger galleries you’ll find yourself dragging up/down through several slides of your infinite scroll. The currently Media Gallery Screen allows for sorting via order numbers which you can quickly tab through and manually sort with a number.
Keep up the great work!
Daryl Koopersmith 7:27 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We will certainly have to hone the sorting UX. I’m not convinced that manually typing in order numbers is the best possible experience (or necessary). We also will support keyboard-based image organization (with arrow keys). That said, this should be possible in a plugin regardless.
Maor Chasen 8:13 pm on August 1, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow, what a great work. Can’t describe in words how excited I am to see this great progress!
bakaburg1 1:25 am on August 2, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Maybe this is more specific to mac users since stuff tend to pile up on the right side of the desktop, but when i drag and drop stuff I use to mouse in from the right of the window. I wouldn’t find it nice to drag all the way to the other side of the screen.
I would then suggest to put the drop area, if not on the right which wuold be best for me, on the bottom center, large as much ad the panel, so that you don’t have a preferred dragging side, but this is left up to the users.
HWR extremely nice work! especially being able to drag directly in the editor!
One more thing I would is to be able to resize pictures directly in the editor, with text moving away during resizing. Pretty easy to achieve with javascript.
Is still possible to use external images with URLs?
Maor Chasen 12:33 pm on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi, just wanted to ask with what software did you guys create these wireframes? Looks amazing! Thanks!
MacItaly 4:28 pm on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi, great work indeed, Media Library needs a deep remake.
But nobody are interested to upload and organize files in folders/subfolders?
WP isn’t anymore only a blog and many people use it as CMS and, in those cases, have media organized per year and month it’s useless and have all of them in one folder it’s confusing.
Should be possible to have an option, on media settings, to enable a folders manager?
Something that when I upload one or multiple files, I can choose in which folder will be.
Does it make sense?
Dennis Whiteman 7:14 pm on August 3, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Will it be possible when creating a new gallery or uploading files to manage the upload location in the file system in the upload UI? I have some sites with thousands of posts and thousands of images. If I use the built-in media uploader, I end up with thousands of files in a directory. It would be nice for end users to have the option of uploading images within the media upload directory to a new folder with a name of their choosing instead of being limited to segmenting out files only based on date as is currently the option. Another example is that I have a bunch of images that I’d want in a directory called ‘images’ and podcast audio files in a directory called audio, etc.
This is particularly a problem when migrating from another CMS where the files have been manually uploaded for years. Without some choice in where files go, I usually end up having the client continue to use an ftp program to upload instead of getting the benefits of having an actual media library with meta data that’s provided in WordPress.
I have conceptualized being able to choose a folder on upload within the existing uploader, but it would be so much better if it were just builtin.
lonchbox 11:37 pm on August 4, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi!, finally! that part of the WP was too old, all my clients will love this new feature
Good Job!
Ayman Aboulnasr 9:41 am on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Wow, a very interesting new facelift to the WordPress Images and media handling! Well done guys.
Jan Fabry 1:25 pm on August 5, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Have you considered making the individual edit dialog (alignment, caption, alt text, …) non-modal? I was thinking of a floating widget, that would only appear when you have selected an image in the post editor. This gives you instant feedback (alignment, size), and could be extensible (so plugin and theme authors could add or hide controls to suit their client).
https://img.skitch.com/20120805-ruuippsxadef54fm4qcdcj8guc.png
This could also solve the problem of “saved in the db/saved in the post”. Everything you edit here is just for this post.
hearvox 3:46 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This beautiful new Media rewrite might also be an opportunity to look at the way the attachment’s Title text is auto-used in two different ways.
1. As the post_title of the attachment post, which then is used:
a. in the Media Library’s column “Title”, and
b. in many Themes, as HTML text for the H1 and head’s title elements, when displaying the attachment post.
2. As the title-attribute of the img element when using the “Insert into Post” button.
#1 is expected behavior, and makes sense-
an attachment’s Title is meant to be the document title, like any other post..
#2 is hidden to many users and can make little semantic sense.
an img’s title attr should: “offer advisory information about the element” (w3c).
this is often NOT the same as document title
Perhaps WP might consider adding a field,
so there’s one for each of the two different “titles”, like:
Attachment Title * ___________
Alternate Text __________
Image Title Text _________
(and like “alt”, the img “title” wouldn’t be written if this new last field was empty).
hearvox 3:46 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Here’s a couple common use cases that shows why current WP default
may not be optimum:
1. You have several versions of an image or scene, you may Title them
so you can easily distinguish them in Media Library list:
“Me & Crew: wide-shot”
“Me & Crew: close-up”
“Me & Crew: close-up cropped”
now say you chose not to caption the image,
but do want some img title text (a tool-tip in many browsers), like:
“Me and the home-town Crew chilling at WordCamp”
That’s great “advisory info” but maybe not-as-great a doc title.
So you must edit HTML manually to make them different.
2. Imagine the oh-too-frequent case:
so, user gets a poor attachment title, but no harm done.
until the Insert into Post grabs the post_title field as text for the title element:
<img title= "image0001.jpg" src="image0001.jpg"…
now WP's default behavior subjects the whole web to useless/redundant "advisory info".
if this is something the WP community feels needs amending,
i'd be happy to start working on the code changes in media.php.
Andrew Nacin 8:31 pm on August 7, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
We noticed this double-use of the title as well. We’re simply going to eliminate title attributes from images inserted into posts, and viola! #18984
hearvox 2:43 pm on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Much simpler solution. thanks.
Bruno Costa 8:51 pm on August 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think you only forget the image link.
The layout is very beautiful, I only think all this page changes won’t please a lot of people.
John 5:39 pm on August 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Are these rewrites going to be adapted to the Media Library screen itself ( upload.php )?
fanderzzon 9:23 am on August 13, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great work, it’s looks amazing!
How is the search function working? Are you adding AJAX search so the user automatically get a list of objects/images that matches their search query on the fly?
Peter Chester 3:37 pm on August 15, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great work Daryl!
hixen 12:49 pm on August 16, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This is really awesome, great work.
Just got one question, are you guys looking into adding more ways to structure your media library? (tags, categories?)
jamesmehorter 7:29 pm on August 22, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I would LOVE it if galleries/albums did not need to be linked to a specific post.. but could be if wanted. Many times this is the only reason I will choose NextGen Gallery. PLEASE make NextGen obsolete!
JerrySarcastic 4:32 pm on August 23, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
+1 to that!
Jesper van Engelen 4:36 pm on August 24, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I am very pleased to see that some major changes are finally being made to the media UI, great work on that! I am wondering though: in what way will this affect the countless plugins that change the media interface currently. Many plugins add buttons to the media interface for allowing users to upload media for use in their plugins. This includes many popular plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields and Option Tree – to what extent will these plugins be affected by these changes?
kkalvaa 1:16 pm on August 25, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Looks amazing, as people above has said, this alone makes 3.5 one of the key releases to look forward to.
I think the drop zone should be on the right, in a RTL setting it feels like the second step should be to the right rather than the left.
deursmo 11:15 am on August 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This looks great. Discussion here is too ‘technical’ for me but a question about using images in multiple posts. Will it be possible to see in which posts (and pages) one particular image is used? From the editor’s point of view? I don’t mean (nor use) galleries, but perhaps that is the answer. Thanks for all you people make, good whishes.
ms-studio 7:59 pm on August 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I love that concept, it’s pretty much the best system I could imagine. But I have one big question: how is the default ordering of uploaded files being handled? To me, this is a weak point in the media management, and must be improved.
Currently, the default is “by upload order”, which means that if you upload a bunch of pics from a photo camera, numbered from 00001 to 00020, the last one (00020) will be on top, the first one (00001) will be at the bottom (because the OS tends to send 00001 first).
If you want a chronological gallery, you need to reorder them each time.
Personally, I mostly want the files inside a batch upload to get ordered by filename – 00001 on top, 00020 at the bottom. But if I add a second batch of files, I want them to be added at the bottom of the list! So it’s a very tricky issue to solve …
I just openend a thread on that topic in trac – http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21643 – but I believe it’s more appropriate to continue the discussion here.
ms-studio 8:31 pm on August 26, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Just a few more words about the “default ordering” issue.
The wireframes show the ordering option “Sort by upload date”, so I assume that could be the default.
To understand the problem I see with the current setting, have a look at that quick demonstration in WP 3.4:
http://sandbox.4o4.ch/wp/WP-3.4-uploader.swf
And see here the (much more intuitive) behavior in Facebook:
http://sandbox.4o4.ch/wp/facebook-uploader.swf