Extension:Media Viewer/About



Media Viewer aims to improve the multimedia viewing experience on Wikipedia, Commons and MediaWiki sites, to display images in larger size and with less clutter. It is being developed by the Wikimedia Foundation's new multimedia team and we aim to have a first beta version ready for testing in early November 2013, as part of our new Beta Features program.

After you've had a chance to test it as described below, we invite you to join this discussion. Hope to see you there!

Why Media Viewer?
The purpose of this tool is to:
 * Provide a richer multimedia experience, to match user expectations
 * Display images in larger size, on the same page as the thumbnail you click on
 * Reduce confusion when users click on thumbnails (bypass duplicate file info page on Wikipedias)

It aims to serve all users of Wikipedia, Commons and other MediaWiki sites (including new users, as well as very active editors). Note that this media viewer will initially only be for still images, as we are now using the Kaltura video player for audio and video. But over time, we would like to use the same UI across players, and eventually use a single viewer for all file formats.

Current features include:
 * Show images in larger, media viewer panel when you click on them
 * Modal panel opens up as overlay (on same page where you clicked)
 * Large image appears without clutter (lightbox view)
 * Information about the image can be accessed easily (in lightbox view)
 * Image can be shown in full-screen mode (full screen view)

How does Media Viewer work?




Media Viewer provides two different views of an image when you click on its thumbnail on an article page: Lightbox and Full Screen View.

Lightbox View
The 'lightbox view' for this tool includes:

The image is shown in large size, as an overlay over the page where you clicked on the thumbnail, against a white, slightly translucent background. This makes the image stand out more and removes some of the visual clutter typically found on a text-heavy page.
 * Image

For the first release, we are offering these simple tools:
 * Tools
 * Close button (goes back to article view)
 * Full screen button (expands into full-screen view)
 * Lightbox button (returns to smaller image in browser lightbox)

Here is the information that is shown above the image (see mockup):
 * Primary Info
 * File name (Zonotrichia atricapilla)
 * Author (e.g. Alejandro Erickson)
 * Source (e.g. Bird Institute)
 * License Info (e.g. CC-BY-SA-2.0) (or link to license info)

Here is the information that is shown below the image:
 * Secondary Info
 * Site name and link (e.g. Wikimedia Commons)
 * Description
 * Uploader name (e.g. Smallbones)
 * Creation Date (e.g. 12 April, 2012)

Full Screen View
The 'full-screen view' for this tool will show a large image across the entire screen, with minimal information and buttons available on hover, as shown in this mockup.

This is the view that lets you focus exclusively on the image, with no other distractions. When you click on the full screen icon, you see the largest version of the image that fits within the user's screen. The image is displayed across the entire screen (not just the browser window), set against a pure white background color that only shows the image. In this mode, you only see the file name and the author/source/license near the image, as well as link to Commons.

First Release
A first beta version of Media Viewer will be released in early November, as part of Beta Features, a new experimental program that will enable users to opt-in to test new beta features before they are released widely.

In the first release, the Media Viewer will only support the most widely used image file formats (e.g.: JPEG, GIF, PNG). It also only works when users click on thumbnails in the article namespace. (In future releases, we plan to also enable Media Viewer in galleries and category pages, and support for PDF, TIFF, SVG, as well as audio and video file formats).

How you can help


Can you help us test Media Viewer in coming days? This beta feature is now available for early testing by logged-in users on MediaWiki.org and on TestWiki. ''[Note: Should be deployed on Thu. Oct 31 by 12pm PT, if all goes well]''

To test this feature, check the box next to 'Media Viewer' in the new BetaFeatures section of your user preferences — and click 'Save' (see screenshot). You can turn off any this options anytime, by reversing these steps. To make it easier for you, a small 'Beta' link will show up next to 'Preferences' in your personal menu when this extension is released worldwide in early November.

Try out Media Viewer and let us know what you think on this discussion page. If you find any technical bugs, please report them here. Based on your feedback, we will improve this feature in coming weeks.

For now, we are still in early stages of development on this feature and our work in progress can be viewed on this alpha site.

More Info
For more information about this tool, visit the project overview page on MediaWiki.org.

This feature was designed in collaboration with community members like you, through a series of discussions held over video conferencing, IRC and in person at Wikimania.

Media Viewer was brought to you by many Wikimedia Foundation team members, including: Fabrice Florin, Mark Holmquist, Jared Zimmerman, Gergő Tisza, Bryan Davis, Rob Lanphier, Brian Wolff, May Galloway, Keegan Peterzell, Luis Villa, Erik Moeller, Howie Fung and Tomasz Finc, to name but a few.

To learn more about other multimedia projects we're working on, visit this Multimedia project hub.