On Die, 2003-01-07 at 19:37, Magnus Manske wrote:
- Smaller versions of images should be auto-generated in a separate
directory similar to the math/ directory used for texvc's images. The small versions would be viewed on the article where the [[Image]] tag is included, whereas the image would link to the original size version.
Two items with this one:
- A thumbnail should be generated upon upload, so we don't have to wade
through thaton every page display, 2. *if* and *only if* that is necessary. The images DW uploaded lately to replace mine don't really need a thumbnail ;-)
As others pointed out, trying to find the "correct" size for an image automatically is a bad idea. Sometimes you want a large version of the image in the article, sometimes you do not.
- The image page content should be included by default below the image
(preceded by a <BR>). That way when you type
[[Image:foo.jpg]]
You get
<img src="http://../foo.jpg"><BR> <I>This is an ugly photo!</I>
To suppress this and type a manual caption, you would have to do something like:
[[Image:foo.jpg notext]]
That will break almost every layout! Try a 100-pixel-image, aligned in a table or a div, and put "<br>This is a very long description that will break every damned layout on wikipedia!" behind the image...
With proper HTML this is not a problem. See [[Carl Sagan]] for an example of a relatively long caption in a table. But you are correct that suddenly showing the content of image pages on the article pages might break many simple layouts. It would therefore make more sense to reverse the syntax, that is,
[[Image:foo.jpg showtext]]
shows the text, whereas by default, it is hidden.
- It is somewhat counter-intuitive to have the caption rendered
implicitly on a page that includes an [[Image:foo.jpg]] tag. The alternative would be to do away with image pages as regular content-pages altogether. (Realistically, having a separate image namespace may have been a bad idea in the first place.)
How about the alt tag thingy I installed at the test site?
There's a very limited class of cases where the ALT tag makes sense, and that is with navigation buttons and the like. In these cases, blind/disabled users get relevant information, whereas others can, in some browsers, optionally get the ALT information by hovering, something many users are familiar with from the toolbar icons in applications like MS Word.
In almost all other cases, having the caption below the image makes much more sense: * Most people won't expect any meaningful text by hovering over photos * Not all browsers show the text when hovering (Mozilla 1.2.1 doesn't seem to, for example) * Some of the browsers that do show the text have trouble with long lines.
For an alternative mechanism of handling images, see http://nupedia.com/article/long/Polymerase+Chain+Reaction/ (RIP), which I hacked some centuries ago ;-)
No offense, but this IMHO clearly demonstrates the problems with the auto-thumbnail approach. The images are not recognizable in the article, and it is obvious that for some of them, making them larger would make sense, whereas for others, the small version is OK. Let's leave that choice to the editors, and just agree on some policies.
Regards,
Erik