Hi folks,
We would appreciate your thoughts about a proposed "View Original File” feature for Media Viewer. (1)
1. Goals
In our surveys and discussions, many users have asked for either access to original files — or a zoom feature. These frequent requests cover a range of use cases:
* view the original file in its full resolution
* edit, crop and/or re-use images
* zoom in to see details
2. Feature
To address these requests, this feature would enable you to access the original file from Media Viewer, so you can examine it in your browser, and easily edit/re-use it. To view that original file, you would simply click on a new "View original file" button next to the image, as shown in this mockup (2). This would open the original full-size image in the same browser window, as happens now when you click images in file description pages on Commons. Your browser’s back button would return you to the Media Viewer.
This proposal would support the use cases above by providing the same core functionality editors are used to on file description pages. It would enable you to operate on files (convert/edit them), and also give you the ability to zoom on common file types in modern browsers.
3. Alternatives
The multimedia team has investigated several other solutions to address these user requests. We developed a Simple Zoom Link (3), which you can test now on Commons: but we’re concerned that this implementation provides a poor user experience that’s more complex than it needs to be. We also considered a Basic Zoom feature (4) and a Full Zoom feature (5). But these implementations require more development time than we have right now. We’re eager to wrap up this version of Media Viewer this month, so we can move on to other important issues, such as upgrading UploadWizard or fixing bugs in our technical debt.
4. What do you think?
We’d be grateful for your feedback about this proposal and some of the short-term options we’re considering, by answering these two questions:
Q1. How important to you is it that we implement “View original file” or a similar feature at this time?
a) very important
b) somewhat important
c) not important
Q2. Which of the following options do you think we should develop at this time?
a) View Original File: (~1 day of work) (1)
b) Simple Zoom Link to original file in a tab: (already on Commons, ~1 day to improve) (3)
c) Basic Zoom to original file in Media Viewer: (~1 week of work) (4)
d) Do Nothing
You can respond to these questions by email, or here on our main discussion page:
Thanks in advance for your guidance about this important issue. With your help, we hope to implement a practical solution that can address your most pressing needs in coming weeks.
Regards as ever,
Fabrice
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Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
