Extension talk:Media Viewer/About

Join the Media Viewer Consultation


Greetings!

We would like to invite you to participate in a global consultation about Media Viewer.

Please take a moment to join the discussion and add your suggestions for improvement. The goal of this consultation is to review the current status of this project and identify any critical issues that still need to be addressed. The consultation will remain open until September 7th, and will help us plan our next steps, based on your feedback.

To learn more about planned development tasks for Media Viewer, visit this improvements page, where our team will post regular progress updates.

Thanks for helping improve the viewing experience on Wikimedia sites. :) Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

My browser already has an image viewer
Reinvent the wheel, remove access to crucial information about images, require an opt-out rather than an opt-in. Just recording my discontent with this tool and confused why the community response appears not to be listened to. --99.245.191.227 18:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Usability: prefetch more images for better response times
The media viewer currently seems to prefetch one image: If I view a picture for several seconds, switching to the next one immediately displays it. However, when switching to an image with an offset greater than one, I always have to wait a bit (up to several seconds) for the next picture to display, which is really annoying. This may be related to my not too fast internet connection (2 or 3 Mbit/s), but the media viewer (in my opinion) should also have minimal response times on such a connection. So please prefetch more images to fix this issue. --Simified (talk) 00:43, 31 August 2014 (UTC)


 * It must be possible to turn off prefetch should the user be on a limited download plan of some kind. Not sure if this can be detected, I don't think so, which imply yet another user set option. Perhaps it can be inferred from the IP-address or the speed. If the user is within a IP-range where other users have indicated that they have turned off prefetch, then use this as the default choice. Jeblad (talk) 11:28, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer's Handle is just plain in wrong direction
I do not want to enter the discussion about nice/ugly or useful/not useful etc. but just want to point out, that the handle at the lower edge of the browser canvas, the handle to click on for more details on a certain image, it points in the wrong direction. When the details are hidden, in normal mode, the arrow points downwards which is not the direction the drawer would move once clicked. It would move up to reveal the details. This is counterintuitive, feels wrong, misleading. Vice versa.

It originally pointed up, which was counterintuitive to another group of people. We are looking into designs which have no handle (and possibly no drawer) at all. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Very annoying, especially when viewing multiple images
I find that it is annoying that when I close an image in the MV, and then use the 'back button' on my browser, it acts like the image was a page, and I have to hit back again. I also do not like not being able to click the image to view the full file. And lastly, I do not know about everyone else, but I happen to like seeing the EXIF info for certain images. If they were shown on the bottom of the MV below the description, it would be fine. --Mcdudeman (talk) 18:05, 3 September 2014 (UTC)
 * One month later this is still terribly annoying. If I browse Commons categories and click at some images, the back button becomes useless. It walks me through all of my viewed pictures once again. Can't you fix that somehow? --131.152.41.173 15:02, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

How can i deelete this enervous function?
Execuse me, this is really varry énervant that this popps on the compleet moniteur alldays, i want to have again the old fonction when i can view the explanations Commons page directely! Merci beaucoup!
 * You can disable it if you create an account and go to Special:Preferences on every project you are using. If this is no option, try installing Greasemonkey and tell it to run the code  on all Wikimedia projects. --Stefan2 (talk) 19:23, 5 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Now (30 Oct 2014) it is very easy to disable. Use the "gear" icon to disable Media Viewer.  You will have the traditional file detail page.  On that page you can enable Media Viewer if you want.  16:26, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Picture descriptions better, but could we get headers?
I'm happy to see the viewer now shows the description from both the page it appears in and the original page on the Commons (et al). But perhaps we could clarify things by adding headers to the sections so you know which is which? Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:52, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Crashes
Your media viewer unfortunately repeatedly crashes on my older firefox/linux system. Before that, I never had any troubles viewing the images at WP by clicking on the .jpg-links/images in articles, and I cannot understand at all how this could be "too complicated" for anyone and thus needed a "solution". "Why fix it if it aint broken" comes to my mind, cause now, for me, its broken. In my opinion, you guys have just too much donation money at hand and you are spending it in bad ways. So, uh... thanks for ruining my WP experience, called "progress". :( --87.167.252.140 09:23, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Clicking on an image thumbnail on the front page of en.wikipedia.org does not work in iceweasel. Instead of the expected file page, I get a flashing attempt at media viewer that then dumps me back to the original page with no graceful failure. This is sad and wrong.

Die Möglichkeit den Viewer dauerhaft abzuschalten klar sichtbar im Hauptfenster unterbringen und nicht "versteckt"

 * Problem:


 * Proposed solution:


 * Proposal of 93.215.28.67 20:51, 9 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Moved from m:Talk:Community Engagement (Product)/Media Viewer consultation. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:58, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
 * This is already listed as a planned improvement. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Consultation Results
Thanks to all contributors who participated in the recent Media Viewer Consultation!

The Multimedia team appreciates the many constructive suggestions to improve the viewing experience for readers and casual editors on Wikimedia projects. We reviewed about 130 community suggestions and prioritized a number of important development tasks for the next release of this feature. Those prioritized tasks have now been added to the improvements list on the consultation page.

We have already started development on the most critical ('must-have') improvements suggested by the community and validated through user testing (see research findings and ). We plan to complete all “must have” improvements by the end of October and deploy them incrementally, starting this week. See the multimedia team's improvements plan and development planning site for details.

As we release these improvements, we will post regular updates on this Media Viewer talk page. We invite you to review these improvements and share your feedback.

The foundation is also launching a file metadata cleanup drive to add machine-readable attributions and licenses on files lack them. This will lay the groundwork for the structured data partnership with the Wikidata team, to enable better search and re-use of media in our projects and many other features. We encourage everyone to join these efforts.

This community consultation was very productive for us and we look forward to more collaborations in the future. Thanks again to all our gracious contributors! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Transparent background showing as checkerboard
Once again I would like to point out the undesirability of MV showing the checkerboard pattern for transparent areas of SVGs. When you are viewing a picture, you simply never want to see this. Last time this was raised, it was mentioned that making the background white would break images that have a white foreground. In my opinion, the benefits of having a clean white background for the 99% of images that will work with it outweigh the marginal utility of being able, with difficulty, to discern a crude outline of a rare white image against the checkerboard. Or, to cover all eventualities, MV could have a toggle to change SVG background from white to black. 217.44.215.14 13:18, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

Disabeling does not work
I always disable the media viewer - but today Oct 29 2014 the disable media viewer button isn't there. So I CERTAINLY WILL NO LONGER SEND SUPPORT TO Wikimedia.

Comparison with another extension
I asked a coworker sitting next to me which one is better between these two extension:
 * Extension:MultimediaViewer (MV)
 * Extension:FancyBoxThumbs (FBT),

and she chose the second without a slightest doubt, which prompted me to compare the two. As a background, I was showing her the two extensions in our private company wiki, which includes a lot of thumbnails; and it is safe to say that she's not techie, thus represent average visitors of WMF wikis. For those who never uses the FBT, here's the visible comparison with MV (for technical details, see each extension page), which hopefully could be useful for the future development of MV. I will only focusing on features that exist in FBT, but not in MV, and not the vica versa.

Image viewing:
 * MV have black background, while FBT using grey semi-transparent background (with shadowed white box). [Observed on live WMF project also].
 * FBT have smooth pop-up animation
 * (as a result) MV occupy the whole screen, and feels like you're on a different page, while using FBT, the users knows instinctively that they're still on the same page

Closing image window:
 * In MV, the X button is way on the top right corner of the page. For small images, it means too much black background, and X (close) button too far from the image (albeit in a fixed place). In FBT, the X button is right on the top right corner of the image, therefore it is easier to click the X button, the visualization is better, and better for small images. [Observed on live WMF project also].
 * In MV, you can't escape by clicking the area outside the image (i.e. the black background), while in FBT you can (with smooth fade-out animation too).
 * (as a result) Closing the image window is more intuitive using FBT. [Note: Both windows are closeable with Esc]

Transparent images:
 * In MV, transparent images are shown with checkered grey-and-white box (too techie, I think an average Jane would think that the image background is checkered, instead of transparent), while in FBT, it is shown seamlessly (i.e. transparent on white background). Combine the checkered image with black surrounding, it's just plain ugly. [Observed on live WMF project also]. (edit: also previously reported by anon above)

Images with white background:
 * For majority of images with white background (or transparent as above), viewing the image on black-background (MV) is not pleasant at all, and the sharp contrast is just too much for me personally. [Observed on live WMF project also].

Displayed texts:
 * (I can't comment much about this aspect, because I tested FBT in private wiki only, and in private wiki, the image description is almost non-existent)
 * FBT displays the file name with the extension (i.e. XYT.png), while MV doesn't display the image extension (XYZ). Not a major drawback, and probably there's some reasoning behind it, but I don't think there's harm in putting the extension name in the description. [Observed on live WMF project also].

All observation was based on a private wiki installation, based on the extension I downloaded today (MultimediaViewer-REL1_23-fb6216c.tar.gz for MW 1.23) with the observation on live WMF project in bracket. That said, our wiki had been using FBT, and will keep using it for now.

PS: MV Bug report (same steps, but producing different errors on private and WMF wikis)
 * On the private wiki I tested, if I Ctrl mouse scroll up (enlarge), until certain very large size, the image will become very small. If I close the MV, then click the image again, it will still become very small (few pixel wide). To reset it, I can't just reset to the default size (i.e. Ctrl+0), but I had to click the "view original file" (bottom right) icon, and go back one page. [It is not observed on live WMF project].
 * On live WMF project (I tested jv.wp with MonoBook skin), click on an image (like the FA image), and on not so fast connection (or very large file), while the image is not finished rendered yet [key point], enlarge that still-loading image to the maximum, and then reset (Ctrl+0), the image's location now will be below the visible screen, and I can't scroll down, I can't see the description, basically I can't revert it back to normal by normal means. (F12 on Firefox will do the trick though). After the image finished loading, the whole page enlarge correctly, though.

Bennylin (talk) 10:29, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Interesting comparison, Bennylin. I haven't used FancyBoxThumbs, I'll have to give it a whirl. I'll look into your bugs, the detail is certainly appreciated. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2014 (UTC)

unused images
The Media Viewer would be good tool on this special page. But as far as I can see, it does not work here.--&#91;&#91;User:Bmrberlin&#124; Bernd M.&#93;&#93; (talk) 10:20, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * very good request! I filed a bug for the enhancement. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Keegan, Nice name. Always reminds me of Kevin Keegan. I'm using the FancyBox now. Installation is simple and does the job of displaying image files very nice. --&#91;&#91;User:Bmrberlin&#124; Bernd M.&#93;&#93; (talk) 06:56, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

There is more behind the scenes …
Hi, I was just wondering how to explain to a new user how she can overwrite a recently uploaded file or how she can nominate a recently uploaded file for deletion, when she gets presented the Media Viewer (which after all, is a viewer) by default. The standard welcome message on commons gives some hints on Made a mistake, but these hints are quite useless with the media viewer. The link More details about this file is tricky to find and you will not expect edit functions behind. Well, answers are appreciated, but improving the features of Media Viewer to help users to cope with mistakes is also appreciated. I feel that the MV also needs a basic (& configurable) menu, e.g. edit button. regards --Herzi Pinki (talk) 11:27, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello. Good points about a complicated issue to resolve. At this time there are not plans to develop Media Viewer to be editable since it is not intended to be a substitute for a file page. In the next month even most of the extra metadata that Media Viewer displays is going to be removed in order to create the simple, clean viewing experience that it is supposed to provide. Following that, the More details about this file is going to be much more prominent and clearly labeled both in words and with the Commons icon for context if appropriate. I hope these changes make it much more clear on where to go for file information. As for the scenario you describe with new users on Commons, last month Media Viewer was disabled for all logged-in users on Commons so the instructions in welcome templates and in other places should still work just fine, without confusion. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:28, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * So, this shitpile that you have inflicted on us will convey even less information? Let us have links from the image or caption directly to the commons page from the picture then! We'll even consider adding a link to this media-viewer for people who want an extra layer of javascript between them and the image file. Why do you like doing this to us? What is wrong with you?


 * Hi Keegan, thanks for answering. Although the button to More Details is now big enough that you cannot oversee it (I consider this an improvement), this will not help in the end for my point mentioned above. As editing is considered to be different from (view) more details. Would it be possible to add an extra button Modify file / Edit file / Edit file description or something like this making it clear that the stuff can be changed? As anywhere else in the Wikiverse? You can move the button /icon to the right border, where there are already a lot of menu entries. Which would be similar to e.g. Flickr. Or scroll in the menu on moving the mouse to the border (I leave details to your UI designers). In general, I think it would be feasible to have a configurable menu (like the one we have in the description page) directly on the media viewer. It also can be moved in on mouse events. Optimally the content of the menu is the same as on the description page (restricted to maybe some subsections like tools), one stop configuration for both. This will allow to trigger the same operations from the Media Viewer Page as from the File description page without the intermediate More Details button. regards --Herzi Pinki (talk) 10:18, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Herzi Pink, sure, these are things that can be tested to an extent. I, for one, am a proponent of the button saying "View and Edit" Details instead of "More" details, but space is a tad limited for wording it seems. There's still room to see through usability what wording works best. The "More Details" will get its chance and then we can check it against click-thru rates to the File page. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Update: First Improvements
Hi folks, I am happy to announce that we have just released a first round of improvements to Media Viewer, based on community feedback.

The goal for these improvements is to make Media Viewer easier to use by readers and casual editors, our primary target users for this tool.

To that end, we created a new 'minimal design’, with these features:
 * "More Details" button - A more prominent link to the File: page
 * separate icons for "Download" and "Share or Embed" features
 * an easier way to enlarge images by clicking on them
 * a simpler metadata panel with fewer items
 * faster image load with thumbnail pre-rendering

These features are now live on Wikimedia Commons and sister projects, and will be deployed on all Wikipedias this Thursday by 20:00 UTC.

Next, we plan to work on these other improvements:
 * an easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use
 * A caption or description right below the image

Learn more about these features on the Media Viewer Improvements page. They are based on findings from our recent community consultation and ongoing user research. For more information, visit the Help FAQ page.

We would like to thank all the community members who suggested these improvements. Our research suggests that they offer a better user experience, that is both clearer and simpler -- and that clarifies the relationship between Media Viewer and the File: description page.

Please let us know what you think of these improvements. We will send another update in October, once the next round of improvements has been released.

Onward! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 30 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Clicking on the image at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wide-field_view_of_the_Rho_Ophiuchi_star_forming_region_in_visible_light.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Wide-field_view_of_the_Rho_Ophiuchi_star_forming_region_in_visible_light.jpg will result in your computer trying to download a 442.61 MB 346 megapixel file without warning. Do we have data on what percentage of browsers will survive that?.Geni (talk) 00:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Good call, Geni. That is "problematic" to make an understatement. That danger is inherent in the file page as well; far too many times I've clicked on the image for full resolution without looking at the original file size located below. Media Viewer exacerbates this problem by not even having the resolution size :( The Multimedia team has this on their radar now, Pau is going to start working on usability design to figure out the best way to curtail this. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Geni and Keegan! This is not a new issue, as this is the same functionality we have provided for years on the File: page. But Media Viewer makes it a lot easier for users to accidentally load a huge file. So we would like to provide a warning, if we can identify a threshold that is at least partly informed by data and best practices. Does anyone here have data on what an average threshold might be for file sizes that can crash your browser? Or do you know what best practices are on that point? If we can't find reliable data or best practices, we might have to determine this threshold together, based on common sense. In that case, what do you think would be a reasonable threshold when we would start giving the warning? 50Mb or above? 100Mb or above? For now, I just filed this ticket #933 to track this issue. Thanks again for bringing this up, and we welcome any recommendations for solving this issue. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Double the size of the screen resolution, or triple, but a) not much more and b) no fixed value. --Sänger S.G (talk) 20:45, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
 * NB: why did it take the this huge uproar and you extreme hostility with superputsch to make you finally listen to the communities? Why didn't you engage sooner and waited for making it default until the mayor bugs were eliminated?

The media viewer freezes and is unusable with older browsers such as Firefox 3.5 on a Linux installation with Kernel 2.4. It was not even possible to access the link which disables this feature. --193.174.160.34 12:30, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Make the media viewer an opt-in feature, not an opt-out one as it is now. --193.174.160.34 08:19, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Improve the Commons interface instead
You should improve the Commons structure and interface itself instead of creating such autotelic viewer which is an obstacle in the linking from Wikipedia projects to Commons project. The viewer make the Commons categorization (and some othe information from Commons) inaccessible (hidden), offering a nonsensical and useless sequence instead. Moreover, the arrangement and graphics of the viewer are not just better than ones of Commons file pages.

If there is any benefit or advantage of the viewer, it should be implemented directly to the Commons. --ŠJů (talk) 15:27, 3 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello there. The upside is that work is beginning to improve the Commons structure with metadata integration with Wikidata's software. I hope you follow along as that develops as it should help the interface of all Commons-related tools. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Show title of work
Here is a picture with a work title but no description. Media Viewer doesn't show the title, it says that "no description available". Can it show the title too (also if there is description too)? ( class) --Tacsipacsi (talk) 10:36, 5 October 2014 (UTC)
 * it looks like the title template isn't used to pull CommonsMetaData at all, so it doesn't fall back to title when there is no file description. The "title" is parsed as the file name. How this data is being pulled by Media Viewer in general is being revisited as the software is being reconfigured with logic to deal with caption fields as they are available so that work may help fix this. I appreciate you bringing it up, it'll help engineering in reworking captions and titles for removing the fold :) Keegan (WMF) (talk) 14:58, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Other pages used in
This is probably the biggest piece of information left out of the Media Viewer that makes it hard to use for power editors. If you need to find file usage, you can't without extra clicks. It also makes it very hard to see the [for instance] en-wiki file page of a Commons file, which tends to hide en-wiki featured picture status. Adam Cuerden (talk) 10:50, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * "Other pages used in" was just removed in the last update to Media Viewer based on a high volume of complaints that this much detail was overwhelming and not helpful :/ Everyone's workflow is different, eh? :) The goal by the end of the month is to truly make Media Viewer a completely different viewing experience than the file page, rather than a replication of the file page but just in a different form. Following that idea you're going to see a few more changes, such as removing the file description and getting rid of the pull-up fold all together and instead display a caption below the image for educational context if it's available. In the end the experience should be pretty different than the one you've been having for the past six months or so. We'll see how the rest of the changes turn out for you, hopefully it'll be for the better. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:40, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Wrong image displayed
I uploaded a revised version in place of someone else's image (minor tweaks changing a graph to colour version and adding earlier comparative figures); the new image displays properly within the en.Wikipedia page (don't recall needing to Purge to display newly uploaded image) and both WikiCommons & the old image viewing format both properly display newly uploaded version of image, but the new Media Viewer displays the old image (although it does display newer info like my user name as the Owner/Uploader and shows my newer licensing, description, etc info).

Even clicking the Open in Media Viewer link when displaying the new image in commons opens the Media Viewer, displays the new image for just a moment, then reverts the image to the original greyscale image created by another user that originally existed.

Meanwhile, clicking the Download button ( ▼ ) then selecting View in browser displays the new image (different from what Media Viewer shows).

There is no Purge opinion in Media Viewer so I can't be sure if the image is just cached on the server (or possibly even locally on my system). en.WP: Who R you? (Talk) 20:17, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * What file page is this so I can check it out? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Position on page is lost after navigation
(Win 7, IE 11)

When I use the browser's "back" button to return to a previous page, normally it restores my position on the page. However, the following sequence of actions, which is quite common for me to do, causes the position information to be lost:

1. Go to any article with images and scroll down a way. 2. Click on any image. 3. In Media Viewer, click the image again to go to the full-size version. 4. Finish looking at the full-size version, so click browser "back" button and then "X" in MV, or click browser "back" button twice. 5. In both cases I am thrown back to the top of the article.

This is not ideal because it means that when you are reading an article and looking at images as you go along, your reading position is continually disrupted. 86.169.184.165 20:48, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a regression may have happened after the last update, this certainly shouldn't occur. Thanks for the detailed report so this can be fixed. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:33, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * And bug filed, it's being looked into. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 14:07, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Author / Caption update
How does the Author and Caption of a Image update? F. Ex. at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianca_Walter#mediaviewer/File:BiancaWalter.jpg The Author name is spelled wrong and the caption has changed. --Stefan-Xp (talk) 19:54, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

The caption is always the same text you see in the article, there is no caching involved. Details from the file description page update roughly within a day. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 10 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, nice to know :) I think it confuses some people if the "Media Viewer" Page has different data to the Image Description Page. --134.3.200.4 20:04, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Metrics Update
Here are the latest metrics about the new features we just launched, which provide some first results on their impact so far.

Early indicators suggest these improvements are working:


 * Enlarge feature: You can now click on an image to enlarge it in Media Viewer, to support a frequently requested zoom function. We now log about 1 million clicks/day for that feature across all sites -- a dramatic 20x increase from ~50K clicks/day for the previous ‘View original file’ button (see metrics dashboard).


 * File: page button: You can now click on a more prominent ‘More details’ button to go to the File: page, a frequent community request. Since this feature was launched last week, global usage has tripled, surging up to ~60K clicks/day (from ~20K clicks/day on two separate links)


 * Download button: You can now click on a separate download button that's easier to find. Since launch, global usage has tripled to ~66K clicks/day on the new icon (from ~20K/day for 'Use this file' downloads)


 * Disable rates: Since these improvements were launched, global opt-outs by anonymous users have decreased by 60%, down to ~800 disable actions per day (from ~2K/day before new features).


 * Performance: Media Viewer continues to outperform the File page for image load times: about 4.6 seconds vs. 7.7 seconds for a median image load time in the 90th percentile.

This is consistent with our expectations, based on the latest round of usability research for the recent prototype.

We hope these findings are helpful. We will post more research data on this page in future updates. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Note that the performance measurements are not fully reliable (as noted on the linked page). We are working on more robust ways of comparing the speed of MediaViewer and the file page. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

KISS please!!
Sorry, if this is documented somewhere, but I could not find that information on a quick search:

Can someone tell me which problem this media viewer thing tries to solve?

I, for one, never had any problems viewing images on Wikipedia. For me, the viewer does not make one single thing better. On the contrary: it is no longer obvious what other resolutions of an image are available and zooming in into an image is not as easy as it was before in my browser.

So, if there is no serious problem that needed to be solved with viewing images in Wikipedia, I would plead for heeding the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

No complicated, error prone, bloated and confusing solution for such a trivial problem as viewing images! (Which was already solved, anyway.)

Please, please, please, don't make the same mistakes as many commercial sites and introduce unnecessary bloatware all over the place. Please, no flash stuff, no blinking animations, no bloated javascript nonsense. Wikipedia should be there for one thing: plain old information which should be as easily and quickly accessible as possible even with old and/or weak hardware.


 * You do not sign the above, but I agree wholeheartedly with you. I raised the same point somewhere in the system months ago, but never got a comment from the instigators, who are probably a bunch of technonerds more interested in the software than the practicality of the system. I long ago disabled Media Viewer in each place where I often view images, simply because it solves no problem for me, but hinders the usability of the system. My message to them is "Don't do something just because you can. Do it only if it is useful." LynwoodF (talk) 08:04, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Interface issue
My least favourite thing about Media Viewer is the massive white box down the bottom. The main reason for this is that I have a 16:9 1366x768 laptop display, and I am already stretched for vertical space. I run my web browser in fullscreen, for example. The fact that Media Viewer defaults to placing a large white box horizontally at the bottom of the screen means that I cannot view images in sufficient detail to make it worth even clicking the thumbnail.

If it could be made to only be seen when hovering over that area, that would fix the problem. Another way it could be fixed is by making fullscreen mode an optional default. However, then the functionality provided by the quick-access stuff in the white box is removed.

Anyway, that's my biggest complaint. Other than this, it's a great tool in my eyes. I don't see why you're getting so much kickback for it.

A big thanks for all your hard work, software developers. Thennicke (talk) 05:38, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Thennicke: Thanks so much for your helpful feedback about Media Viewer. We're sorry that your screen's 16:9 aspect ratio makes Media Viewer's information panel more prominent than on standard monitors. In future versions of Media Viewer, we could consider making this an option in the new settings panel we're now developing. For now, your best bet is to use the full-screen feature, which still provides access to the information panel on hover. Thanks again for your kind words, which are much appreciated. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 21 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As 16:9 is the usual ratio on todays monitors, the MV should have been developed with those standard monitors in mind, are there still any old-fashioned 6:4 in use? It should perhaps switch from bottom panel to side panel depending on the screen aspect ratio, or at least make it a setting in preferences. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 05:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * A 6:4 (3:2) aspect ratio for computer monitors is practically unheard of (it was mostly used for cameras); the popular sizes (other than 16:9) are 4:3, 5:4 and 16:10. Unsurprisingly, Media Viewer was mostly developed on 16:9 which is what people working with computers tend to use these days.
 * A side panel would be more efficient in terms of screen real estate, but harder to use - vertical scrolling is a very well understood action while horizontal scrolling not so much. There is no horizontal scroll wheel on the mouse, etc. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Ask your colleges at Flow about screen ergonomics, they claim that the screen must not be used in full. So there would be plenty of space to put a vertical scrolling pad there, if extremely narrow Flow layout is really so good as claimed ;) --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 15:25, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how a rule of thumb from typography would be relevant to the presentation of images. Anyway, putting the text to the side would be a trade-off between more screen real estate and more awkwardness in the presentation and manipulation of text. Given that we received very little complaint about the screen area used to show the image not being large enough, but lots of reports about the info panel being difficult to use, so that doesn't look like a good trade-off to me. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I want to get rid of this "feature"
It completely breaks everything navigationwise, it looks disgusting on my PC screen (as if it was turning it ino an handheld device of some sort), it does not fit with other elements of the Wiki, designwise, workflowwise, and navigationwise - and do not dare to make the rest as ugly as well, you certainly loose a user!

I do not mind having this nonsense if people want it, but then let them choose it by enabling it in their preferences, or?

--109.44.2.248 10:00, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi 109.44.2.248: We're sorry that you don't find Media Viewer useful on your PC. You can easily disable this tool by scrolling down to the bottom of screen, then clicking on 'Disable Media Viewer', as described in this Help FAQ. In coming days, we will make this disable function more prominent, which will make it even easier for you to turn it off. Hope this helps. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 21 October 2014 (UTC)


 * But it won't stay disabled. It keeps coming back like a bad penny. 72.145.219.37 04:55, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It will stay enabled as long as your browser keeps settings (specifically, local storage). If your browser is configured otherwise (e.g. you are using incognito mode) then there is of course no way any configuration change you make could stick around. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:12, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Not true, I have to re-disable the media viewer periodically and I never mess with the local storage on my browser. I only use the same browser too, so it's not because I changed browser apps. This random re-enabling of the media viewer is quite annoying, and it's why I am here making this comment... I've had to disable the Media Viewer 4 times since I originally disabled it, and I am getting fed up. This Media Viewer feature needs to be disabled by default at the very least or scrapped in its entirety. Certainly if it were up to me given the blatant arrogance and disrespect to the community shown by the design team, I would both scrap it and fire the design team. Ikaruseijin 17:48, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * That would probably be the best solution, fire those incompetent, arrogant wannabe-programmers in SF and kick this useless bling-stuff out. But, unfortunately, those bunch have the de-facto power, and obviously don't give a flying f*** about their customers. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 17:56, 3 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Due to the way how browser and MediaWiki preferences work, disabling will only effect


 * the same user (if logged in) or the same browser (if logged out)
 * the same wiki
 * the same scheme (http or https) if logged out
 * Other than that, the settings should stick. If that's not the case, please file a bug. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Responsiveness
Since I cannot upload images here, I hosted screenshots on Imgur. The Media Viewer does not respond well on small screen devices. In regular view some details are too small to view. But if enlarging the image with th spread gesture the image caption resizes as well and spreads all over the screen. Once the spread gesture is released from the touch screen, the image pops up to the top left, so you can't even see the spot where you zoomed to. This behavior makes the Media Viewer useless on small touchscreen devices.
 * Thanks for the screenshots, they're mighty helpful. The "media viewer" on mobile is not the same as the one on the desktop; it was developed by the mobile team. I'll pass this along to them. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Media Viewer Update: More Improvements


Hi everyone: we just released a few more improvements to Media Viewer, based on community feedback:
 * An easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use
 * Re-enable Media Viewer from a file page
 * Rename File page button: "Open in Media Viewer"
 * Make MediaViewer text larger in Monobook

These features are now live on Wikimedia Commons and sister projects, and will be deployed on all Wikipedias this Thursday by 20:00 UTC.

The new Disable/Enable features make it much easier to turn Media Viewer on or off, by clicking on a prominent 'cogs' icon, as described in the Help FAQ (see screenshot). Note that these features only work on the site where you activate them: enabling Media Viewer on Wikimedia Commons will not enablie it on your home Wikipedia or other sister projects.

Next, we are working on these last 'must-have' improvements: (Note that the layout change for the second ticket above has just been released for testing on MediaWiki.org: you can view it on this test page.)
 * A caption or description right below the image
 * Move license label after source and adjust layout

These features are based on most frequent requests from our recent community consultation and ongoing user research. For more information, visit the Media Viewer Improvements page or the Help FAQ page.

Many thanks to all the community members who suggested these improvements. Our user research so far confirms that they provide a better experience for readers and casual editors, our target audience for Media Viewer.

Please let us know what you think of these improvements. We will send one more update in mid-November, once all these improvements has been released and tested.

Regards as ever. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 28 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Is there a chance you'll eventually move the "Open in Media Viewer" Button to a more reasonable position (e.g. the bar at the top of file description pages, ID: )? There was a lengthy discussion on how the button doesn't make any sense where it is right now a long time ago and some people from WMF staff agreed to work on this but nothing ever happened...
 * Additionally: Can you add a similar button (in a similarly reasonable place) to category pages? I mean there is not much point in opening a single file in MediaViewer (especially when one has already reached a good old file description page), but for browsing through categories the tool might actually be useful! --Patrick87 (talk) 01:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your helpful feedback, Patrick87!


 * We have considered other positions for the the "Open in Media Viewer" Button, as shown in this mockup (see thumbnail). We would like to discuss this idea with the Commons community, now that we're almost done with our 'must-have' improvements for Media Viewer. Before we do, we plan to collect behavioral data on how often people click on the current button, so we can have a more informed discussion; we hope to have that data available later this month, if Gilles can fit it in our development cycle, as outlined in this ticket.


 * I also like your idea to create a similar button for categories, but this seems less critical, since it is already possible to browse images in a category by clicking on their thumbnails. Thanks again for your constructive suggestions! Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Actually, there's absolutely no possibility to use MediaViewer from category pages if MediaViewer is disabled by default in user preferences. That means while I don't want to use MediaViewer normally, I can't use it to browse categories (where I think it actually could be quite useful). So (as a user with MediaViewer disabled) I'm faced with the (for me) useless "Open in Media Viewer" button on each and every file description page, while I'm not given any possibility to enable it on category pages were it would be useful (for me). With such issues one somehow gets the feeling WMF staff's point of view is at least as biased as the point of view of community members categorically rejecting MediaViewer. Finally start to think this through from all points of view, so MediaViewer can one day become a useful tool for all community members! --Patrick87 (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * As a crappy workaround, you can just right-click the first image, select "copy link URL", edit the address bar, add, paste the URL, delete everything between (but not including)   and   and press Enter.
 * As a slightly less crappy workaround, here is a bookmarklet/gadget snippet/whatever:
 * --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 22:04, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this works well when executed from Firefox JavaScript console. I'll probably incorporate this into a button loaded from my "common.js" on Category pages as a workaround. In the long run I hope this is fixed directly in MediaViewer though (since fiddling with JavaScript seems not really user friendly and not exactly advertising for the software)? --Patrick87 (talk) 23:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, this works well when executed from Firefox JavaScript console. I'll probably incorporate this into a button loaded from my "common.js" on Category pages as a workaround. In the long run I hope this is fixed directly in MediaViewer though (since fiddling with JavaScript seems not really user friendly and not exactly advertising for the software)? --Patrick87 (talk) 23:26, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You still have that stupid cog to disable it... mystery meat navigation is bad, as I have told you repeatedly. But you've never deigned to respond to me anyway. Your "easier way to disable Media Viewer for personal use" is still as confusing as ever. It remains to be seen if your anonymous opt out will stick in these new changes. When are you going to acknowledge that your #1 bit of feedback is that Media Viewer IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT and respond to that feedback by disabling it by default instead of playing this game of making tiny, ineffectual "fixes"? The entire concept is flawed and these changes won't help. Your false cordiality does nothing to disguise your obvious contempt for your users by forcing this terrible software down our throats. It remains as clear as ever that the WMF only cares about meeting its internal goals, not creating software people actually want to use. And that's sad. Stop this charade. --98.207.91.246 15:45, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi 98.207.91.246. Thanks for your comment about the Disable/Enable feature. The use of a cogs icon is pretty standard nowadays for changing your settings, and the new button is also a lot more prominent now. So we expect that the new disable/enable feature will make it easier for people to turn Media Viewer on and off. The data we're collecting seems to support this view: we saw the number of anon opt-outs double on the day after we launched the feature on Commons, as shown on this metrics dashboard; and the number of anon opt-ins tripled on that day as well. So this suggests that these users are able to find the cog icon easily. Regarding your other personal comments, I'm sorry that you find my 'false cordiality' annoying: I'm a friendly person by nature, and sincerely care about what our users think of our work; but we can't please everyone, and have to balance the needs of our readers with those of advanced users, which we aim to do based on usage data and user studies, not personal opinions. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 29 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Not only do you make absolutely no attempt to accept that this "feature" is declined by an overwhelming majority of the users in your own data, you talk about your data in a misleading way. You say anon opt-ins tripled, while opt-outs only doubled. There are about 6 times anon opt-outs in the graph compared to anon opt-ins. You fail to mention that and continue working on this media viewer thing.
 * Anyone who has basic knowledge on the foundation's and your ways in this matter must be mad to take part in the current fundraising campaign. With this background, I find it strongly insolent to advertise fundraising for a foundation which acts in this way.
 * As there is still no sign of understanding on the side of the foundation in this matter, I continue stopping my activities in Wikipedia and Commons, which date back to 2002. As a person who likes to contribute to real sharing projects I'm shocked to find my work in the hands of WMF acting in such a way. --193.18.240.18 14:03, 31 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Good to see the progress and improvements made. From a first quick glance here are some issues I still see:
 * 1) The button label on the right says "More details" which is identical to the mouse over label on the down arrow. Having the exact same text for two different destinations, without being able to distinguish between them, is confusing.
 * 2) Regarding the "Share or embed this file" button; a) for editors who want to use the image to add to an article the generic term "Embed", without any reference to Wikipedia, might be less clear than the "Use this file" option on Commons next to the Wikipedia icon. Can this be clarified with a sentence? b) On the "Embed" tab scrolling (using the mouse scroll wheel) through the drop-down box with options for image sizes very quickly leads to the info section at the bottom of the image scrolling up which is annoying.
 * 3) It is unclear for readers and editors that the info which is displayed below the image title relates to the Author and Source fields. If no author of the image is known the first word displayed is "Unknown" which, without any further context, is completely ambiguous and unclear. I can understand there is probably not enough space to display the "Author" and "Source" labels in full but why not at least display an intuitive icon in front of both fields with these labels as pop-up text?
 * 4) The enlarge feature, clicking on an image in Media Viewer to enlarge it, is nice but serves no purpose if no larger version of the image is available. As an example, Spencer_gore.jpg is already shown in the MV in the largest available size (345 × 496). The only thing that happens if you click on the image is that the exact same size image is shown again but now without the surrounding navigation and suddenly on a white background. No benefit and confusing. In my view the enlarge feature should only be enabled if a larger image is available than the image first shown in the MV.
 * 5) Change the pop-up label of the 'X' button in the top-right corner from "Close this tool (esc)" to "Close Media Viewer (esc)". An average viewer will not think of this functionality as a 'tool' (technospeak). Also for consistency with the enable/disable button pop-up label.
 * --Wolbo (talk) 01:09, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Wolbo! Re: 1), you are absolutely correct, we are working on that. Re: 3), we are introducing a person icon before the author name. Is there a situation where the lack of a source icon could be similarly confusing? (Also, not sure what would be an intuitive icon for "source".) Note that we do show the labels as popup text already. Re: 5), "Media Viewer" is even more confusing for the average viewer. Maybe we could simply go with "Close". --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Terrible
A complete waste of time, worse than having nothing at all, makes it harder to zoom, just awful. Please kill it, please please GET RID OF THE MEDIA VIEWER or have it off by default--87.242.202.85 15:02, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Will You Hear a Funding Boycott?
I'm sure many people hate the new media viewer as much as I do. You never listen to the people viewing en.wikipedia.org. I used to send hundreds of dollars to Wikimedia each year, but this year I decided not to send any money. The en.wikipedia.org still doesn't hear me. So maybe it's time for viewers to start organizing a funding boycott of wikimedia.org. And in time people will find or create another web site that is like what en.wikipedia.org used to be. Then maybe Wikimedia will KISS - KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID! Do you remember what happened to geocities.com and so many other web sites that self-destructed?

Bring back the "Disable Media Viewer" Button
As of Oct 29 2014, the "Disable Media Viewer" button is gone, probably because nearly everybody is disabling the new media viewer. Since I found the button, I always disabled the media viewer every time I view an image at en.wikipedia.org. The button being removed indicates to me that the designers of this new media viewer intend to change things and are probably very well aware that WE HATE IT. Maybe they have taken a personal bribe or favor from commercial web sites that want to destroy the competition. All indicates that the designers of the new media viewer don't care about the viewers of en.wikipedia.org. I guess nothing good last forever.

Because en.wikipedia.org doesn't hear us, it maybe time to boycott wikimedia funding and seek other web sites. Maybe then en.wikimedia.org will hear us and at least bring back the "Disable Media Viewer" button. Or maybe en.wikimedia.org will continue to make things worse such as adding a requirement for every viewer to open an account and log-in using email and real names and birthdays and other personal information that we should refuse to give them. For now, I guess I'll be looking at reddit.com to see if there is some hope there. We must have plans in place to move quickly whenever a good web site decides to destroy its self.


 * The button has been moved to a more prominent location - see Help:Extension:Media_Viewer for detailed help on how to use it. As can be seen from the stats, this has been pretty effective in making the optout option easier to find. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 12:24, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * When will the foundation hear us and end this mess? FYI: I'm not logged in for this edit because I'm on strike because of the foundation's ways. I discourage everybody to pay in the fundraising campaign for this bloated and, obviously learn-resistant organisation. Wikipedia and editing has been part of my life since 2002. It's a pity that this might have to end in this way. --193.18.240.18 12:37, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * So now I have to know to click on the unlabeled flower-shaped icon to bring up the option to disable this media viewer? It seems also that the commons file page is now defaced by your cack-handed meddling. There is now a completely superfluous notification that media viewer is disabled placed on top of the image that I am trying to view. Since I did not suffer a severe head injury (perhaps unlike you?), I can remember that I had disabled media viewer mere seconds ago and do not need a notification which requires another click to dismiss. Why do you keep inflicting your redundant piece of shit on an unwelcoming audience? Does bringing us annoyance make you happy in some way? I will join in this fundraising boycott and encourage others to do the same. I also re-announce my pledge to not contribute content or make edits to Wikipedia while media viewer is the default or while the file page has diminished functionality as a result of media viewer.


 * My reply to Tgr (WMF) 30 Oct 2014:


 * The chart at "from the stats" shows more op-outs after Oct 27th. I guess the cause maybe more wikipedia sites have been "Enable by default" for the media viewer?


 * As of November 1st 2014 The Media Viewer Release Plan clearly shows the media viewer is being pushed against wiki community wishes:


 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Release_Plan


 * June 3 (2014) - Tenth release- Enable by default on more large sites- English and German Wikipedias - (Note special Tuesday deployment) Gerrit change 134811 and Gerrit change 134812 - (checkmark-yes) Done against community wishes.


 * English Wikipedia decided to remove the feature as a default setting, effective July 9. (X) Rejected for implementation


 * German Wikipedia decided to remove the feature as a default setting, effective August 8. (X) Rejected for implementation


 * June 19 - Eleventh and final release: Enable by default on all wikis - (checkmark-yes) Done


 * The above MV release plan shows the media viewer isn't wanted, software developers know it and they push it anyway. I guess the efforts by English and German wikipedia to get the media viewer disabled by default have been overruled in "Rejected for implementation".


 * So, the question still remains unanswered - Who and why is the media viewer software bloat being added to wikimedia?


 * If an honest survey was done, they'd ask "Is the media viewer an improvement?" 95 Percent of English and German viewers would probably say no.  Wikimedia could at least make the media viewer disabled by default.  The 5% who like it could enable it, and the other 95 percent could still enjoy wikipedia as a great web site.  Currently November 1st with the media viewer enabled by default, most viewers probably never learn now to disable the media viewer, therefor in EACH and EVERY image view they put up with the annoyance of waiting for the media viewer to load then having to click through the "more details" in the media viewer to view the page of different image sizes.  That may have the same level of annoyance as the pop-up ads did to geocities.com.  For those who don't know, Geocities.com was a 1990s web site that was very successful than failed after "improvements" were made.  I don't want wikipedia to fail.

Besides the whole pro/contra MediaViewer conflict going on, removing this optio from user preferences is a very bad step in my opinion. Instead of unifying the UI and collecting all settings in a clear and structured way in one place (the user preferences... thus the name) more and more preferences are scattered across tools in different places of the UI reachable by different ways. This "maximization of inconsistency" is a really bad habit and will decrease the overall user experience people will have with the MediaWiki software (especially as used on WMF Wikis). --Patrick87 (talk) 12:05, 2 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Is anyone really contemplating such nonsense? Of course all prefs have to have an option in user prefs. If it's as well possible to change them "on the fly" in situations where it's appropriate, like with MV on pic pages, is a nice add-on, but there must never ever be any preference, that can't be changed in user preferences. --♫ Sänger - Talk - superputsch must go 12:40, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

To clarify, the "Disable Media Viewer" link at the bottom of Media Viewer has been replaced with the cog icon. The Special:Preferences option hasn't changed since April or so. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Who's pushing the Media Viewer bloat?
We should know the name of the individuals who are pushing the new media viewer!

We must know, so he or she or they will have to explain why the money donated to Wikimedia is being wasted. He or she will have to answer why the viewing experience is being destroyed for en.wikipedia.org viewers. Maybe the designers of the new media viewer are in the pockets of a commercial web site that is losing viewers to en.wikipedia.org. Commercial web sites such as Yahoo or Facebook have added software bloat that has made viewing more difficult. Some web sites now require use of the viewer's real name and birthdate and allowing tracking and giving up privacy. Most will not find a hidden op-out menu. The real bug in en.wikipedia.org's new media viewer maybe the project software engineers, those that made the decision to make the new media viewer set to default and hide the opt out button - they care more about Yahoo or Facebook than viewers who came to Wikimedia to get away from software bloat. I can't think of another reason why the producers of the new media viewer would continue to hinder or disrupt the en.wikipedia.org viewing experience. So who are the culprits?


 * In doing more study of this industry-wide problem of software bloat and how it's damaged en.wikipedia.org, it appears that Wikimedia's meeting with companies such as Google has falsely convinced Wikipedia to "modernize" the web site design to look more like mobile media. Wikimedia having spent money on developing the media viewer released in 2014, seems to refuse to admit the whole Media Viewer project has failed for English and German viewers at least.  I think Wikimedia must admit they made mistake, and set the media viewer to "disabled by default" so en.wikipedia.org can remain a favorite web site for everyone.