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 (1), 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 (2). 

Next, we are working on this last big 'must-have’ improvement for this release:
* a caption or description right below the image

These improvements are based on the most frequent requests from our recent community consultation (3) and user research (4). Learn more about these features on the Media Viewer Improvements page (5), and please let us know what you think of these new features on the Media Viewer talk page (6). 

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.

We will send one more update in mid-November, once all these improvements has been released and tested one more time.

Regards as ever,


Fabrice and the Multimedia Team



(1) Pictures of the Day on Commons: 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day#mediaviewer/File:Meenikunno_maastikukaiteala.jpg

(2) Help page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:Media_Viewer#How_can_I_turn_off_this_feature.3F

(3) Community suggestions:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_(Product)/Media_Viewer_consultation

(4) User Research:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Media_Viewer_Research_Round_2_(August_2014)

(5) Improvements page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Multimedia/Media_Viewer/Improvements

(6) Talk page:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:Media_Viewer/About#Media_Viewer_Update:_More_Improvements