That's how its currently implemented (with an attribute named mode). How it all works (Or even if it gets adopted), will depend on the sort of feedback I get.

You're 100% right, that this would not work well with the COM:QIC workflow, and there are many places where the captions are important. But I would argue there are many places where people just have captions as a place holder text since there is a spot for a caption (Many [not all] galleries on commons fit this description). In particular, the captions on the auto-generated galleries in category listings are pretty useless, and could easily be replaced with something triggered on hover.

Even in encyclopedic contexts, a gallery is used as a collection of pretty pictures, and the caption is a sort of "see also" text to provide further context for if one of the images catches the reader's eye.

--bawolff

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 10:53 PM, Daniel Schwen <lists@schwen.de> wrote:
If this should find its way into core, it should be made optional
(using an attribute of <gallery>)! Please be aware that this would
instantly destroy gallery applications like COM:QIC. Also from a
usability standpoint hiding the captions is probably not always a good
thing. Especially in the context of an encyclopedia rather than a
"pretty picture" site (like flickr).
Daniel

On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 6:36 PM, bawolff <bawolff+wn@gmail.com> wrote:
> [Cross posting to commons-l and design list]
>
> Hi all,
>
> Over the last couple days, I've been looking at making our <gallery> tag a
> lot more slick. Compared to other websites, our galleries look very "boxy"
> imo. This isn't that bad when it comes to icon/clip art type media, but for
> photos I feel we could really do better. So I've tried to make the galleries
> be more compact, with rows of images all the same height but different
> width, and the caption visible on hover. The only downside to this is the
> borders of the gallery become a little ragged, which mostly looks fine to me
> (Possibly could be dealt with with js. Would involve a bit of double loading
> the images though).
>
> A demo speaks louder than words, hence:
>
> *
> http://tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Featured_pictures/Non-photographic_media
> (contrast with
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures/Non-photographic_media
> )
> *
> http://tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Featured_pictures/Animals/Fish
> (contrast with
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures/Animals/Fish )
> * http://tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Main_Page
>
> Additionally the wiki is open to editor (You need to register an account
> first), so please don't hesitate to experiment.
>
> Anyhow, this is all still a work in progress, and I would really appreciate
> your feedback/criticism/hate mail/love letters/etc.
> --
> Thanks,
> Bawolff
>
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