Update the Edit Post media interface

[andyadams]

I'm mulling over a redesign for the image/media/gallery interface on the Edit Post screen. As I've used WordPress, it has been the single most frustrating piece for me, requiring at least a few plugins to make the experience feel decent. Because I feel that image, gallery and media control are so vital to the CMS experience, I'd like to embark on a project to:

• Get rid of the thickbox overlay and replace it with a media selection area somewhere on the edit page. In particular, I'd like to make it so you don't lose the context of the content area when inserting images.
• Allow easy inserting of multiple images (without having to reopen the overlay).
• Allow multiple galleries per post with easy selection of specific images per gallery (probably via the include/exclude attributes).

I have a feeling this is a big project and I am a total newbie to core contribution, so I have a few questions before I dive into this:

• Is there any similar project underway that I'm not aware of?
• Based on my description of the new interface, is there anything that would be a "non-starter" for the WordPress UI?
• Any technical limitations that have been hit before when trying to do something similar?

Thanks for any help. Like I mentioned, this whole contribution thing is new to me, so forgive me if I'm overlooking anything obvious!

[johnbillion]

This is something that has cropped up in discussions on and off for probably the last eight years or so. I believe there was mention (in a comment on another ticket) recently that Nacin wanted to kill the media lightbox and bring it back inline into a meta box.

I had a quick look through tickets in the 'Media' component on Trac but I didn't see any open tickets regarding these improvements. I suspect there have simply been mentions of it all over the place.

I think some of your suggestions deserve to be split into separate tickets (multiple galleries per post for example). Maybe this ticket could serve as a tracking ticket for tickets covering the related tasks.

[ocean90]

Such tickets are more counterproductive.

First we already have tickets for these specific changes:

• Thickbox: #10955
• Multiple Images: #7013
• Include/Exclude: #20258

And second, since this is more an idea, the right place would be ​http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/.

[andyadams]

Replying to ocean90:

Such tickets are more counterproductive.

First we already have tickets for these specific changes:

• Thickbox: #10955
• Multiple Images: #7013
• Include/Exclude: #20258

And second, since this is more an idea, the right place would be ​http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/.

Thanks for the ideas link, I wasn't aware of it. Also, #10955 seems to be on the right track for what I'm looking for.

#20258 falls way short of what I'm thinking, but I think once we make some progress on #10955 we can talk improvements on the gallery interface.

I'll focus my efforts on #10955 for now. Closing.