Prettier gallery display and navigation through core

[hew]

WordPress gallery display and navigation typically feels rather crude from the user point of view. With digital cameras dumping images as IMG_XXXX or long numeric strings, the default image titles are usually prominent and ugly in most of the themes I've tested (see attachments for examples). Some themes use thumbnail navigation instead, but those implementations also feel dated in many (most?) cases.

I realize that the theory is display/navigation is determined by the themes, and that display/navigation can be greatly altered via various plugins... but the reality of how this plays out results in a default user experience that simply feels outdated.

Many (most?) themes seem pretty unimaginative in their gallery output and IMHO a more elegant out-of-the-box display and navigation experience seems like it would really be useful for all WordPress users. I would think most users expect something like a Lightbox experience at minimum, but I am not ideologically tied to any particular solution.

Is there something we could do on the core side to strongly encourage (or even gently enforce) a prettier default construct?

Ugly title and thumbs

Ugly thumbs

Ugly titles

A very slick new carousel feature was released last month on WPCOM: ​http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/new-photo-carousel/

I would expect this via Jetpack someday, but IMHO it'd be neat to see this (or a descendant from it) mesh with core.

That's really a slideshow, though, not a gallery. While it is very pretty, it's not what people expect with the label gallery, I could see adding at a slideshow, but then we've also talked about wanting the more advanced media stuff to remain in plugins, so we'll see.

Also, this would be classified as a feature request, not an enhancement.

A nice experience is now available via Jetpack 1.5: ​http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/around-the-carousel-again/

Closing as wontfix -- though I wish it were in core as I think most users expect something pretty out of the box here in 2012.

Re-opening this, as I think there may be some interest in some improvements here in core.