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/N...
(contrast with
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures/Non-photographic...
)
http://tools.wmflabs.org/bawolff/gallery/index.php?title=Featured_pictures/A...
(contrast with http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Featured_pictures/Animals/Fish)
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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