[WikiEN-l] Slidershow: Proposal for a JavaScript-based feature to enhance some articles

[Timwi]

Hello!

A friend of mine wrote a piece of JavaScript that would allow editors to 
create a little widget inside an article that lets the user flick 
through a series of images (like an interactive slideshow).

Would this be something that would be welcome to be added on Wikipedia?

For example, if you had several maps of the world coloured according to 
data for various years, the user could flick through the years and see 
how the map changes.

This has several advantages compared to existing solutions:

1. Animated GIFs cannot be controlled by the user, so the user cannot 
look at a particular frame for the amount of time that they want, and 
nor can they easily move backwards to an earlier frame.

2. Placing many of these images in a gallery or stacked vertically makes 
it quite hard to interpret a progression or to compare a specific part 
of the image.

The solution we came up with would allow editors to place something like 
this in the article wikitext:

<div class='slidershow' style='width: 300px'>
; Term One : [[Image:Image One.jpg|300px]] Description One
; Term Two : [[Image:Image Two.jpg|300px]] Description Two
; Term Three : [[Image:Image Three.jpg|300px]] Description Three
</div>

and the JavaScript would automatically trigger on the “slidershow” 
classname and turn this into an interactive widget.

To demonstrate what the widget looks like, I uploaded it here:

	http://timwi.de/wiki/slider.htm

This currently works fine in Firefox, Opera and Chrome. (If there’s 
demand, we can try to get it to work in IE too).

You can use mouse clicks, drag-and-drop, or the mouse wheel to operate 
the slider and flick through the images.

Would this be something that would be welcome to be added on Wikipedia? 
It would only need adding to [[MediaWiki:Common.js]] and the above 
wikitext would magically start working.

If this is the wrong place to ask about this, please suggest where to 
ask instead.

Thanks!
Timwi