Gallery: choosing thumbnail size

[mtias]

This is not a great experience in core at the moment, but since some themes / people may be relying on specific thumbnail generation for galleries, it'd be good to offer that option in the inspector, to choose a specific thumbnail size from the registered ones.

[paulwilde]

A consideration is that these options can currently be filtered in core with the image_size_names_choose filter.

[kopepasah]

@mtias by "thumbnail size" I assume you referring to a registered image size. If that is the case this might be an issue because the registered image size may not have an image size stored in the upload directory, as adding an image size does not resize the currently uploaded images.

[kopepasah]

I see @mkaz and @jasmussen are assigned this issue (as of this comment). Are either of you currently working on this implementation?

[jasmussen]

Are either of you currently working on this implementation?

I'm not, and I don't think Marcus has started yet either. We have a few other tickets to look at also, https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/assigned/mkaz so please feel free to take this one if you're feeling adventurous, would really apprecaite it. Worst case, you can push your work early, and ping us, and we can work together.

💓

[mkaz]

Correct, I'm still working on #1444 #1445 and #1447 which all involve gallery & media modal - so haven't started on this one yet

[jasmussen]

Reassigned this one to you, @kopepasah, but if it drops off your radar for any reason (understandable), just ping us and we'll be back on!

[Axinet]

If "image block" has a combo box to choose from registered image sized I don't understand the hesitation to provide a similar mechanism for the gallery block. In both cases there is a possibility that user may not have an image size stored in the upload directory, but looking at popularity of "Regenerate Thumbnails" plugin people are aware how to deal with it (by the way it is strange that core allow changing image sizes assigned to medium and large names but has no option to handle already uploaded files).

[jeffpaul]

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core-editor by jeffpaul. View the logs.

[fabianpimminger]

Would be great if there is a solution to this (even as an intermediary step until there is better image size support/foundation in core as mentioned in the slack channel)

Think of all users that are uploading images in full sizes. This quickly adds big amounts of traffic to a site.

[klihelp]

+1

[radogado]

Inserting huge full size images would break the page. Thumbnails also needed for Lightbox modules.

[markfinst]

Please store image attachment IDs in JSON comment blocks (<!-- wp:gallery --> and <!-- wp:image -->). So content can be easily filtered by backend code.

In the current version of Gutenberg only wp:image stores attachment ID, wp:gallery - doesn't.

If this won't happen, every plugin or theme that wants to modify Gutenberg gallery HTML markup needs to create another block. Which breaks backward's compability.

More info at: #8193

[antpb]

I think @markfinst 's recommendation is a good one. (storing ids.) There are a few instances I could see this being useful:

1. Gallery shortcode fallbacks to respect older filters will likely rely on ids ( Gallery: figure out way to fallback to shortcode #1451)
2. Reduce Requests for the gallery block #10994 - though this issue may be a little more complicated than just getting all the ids to a single REST request, having ids stored will help make that an option.
3. extendability
4. transform possibilities

For #1451 I am exploring a classic-gallery block that allows for inspector controls in the sidebar. A temporary solution to this issue would be transforming large galleries to a shortcode or classic-gallery block. If we had the ids stored, this would be easy to adjust to. @mtias, I wanted to bring this one to your attention as we continue to discuss the possibility of a classic-gallery block.

Here's the branch where I am building the classic-gallery block: https://github.com/antpb/gutenberg/tree/add/classic-gallery

[mtias]

We are consolidating image handling improvements in #6177. This is a good opportunity to avoid offloading the responsibility of determining the right size (performance, weight, quality) to the user and the engine doing it instead with responsiveness in mind.

Moving this out of 5.0 as there could still be some additions to the gallery block around showing certain cropped thumbnails as options, but it needs a better presentation as well.

[StancuFlorin]

Is this still on the roadmap?

[anybodesign]

Hi there :)

Is it still planned to add the possibility to choose the thumbnail size in the gallery block? (As well as the "Link to" feature)

It is a heavily needed feature, there's a real performance issue with large galleries (20 and more picture). So far it is also impossible to create a gallery with square thumbnails.

Hope to hear from you soon

[u451f]

I'm also still looking for a fix or at least a workaround for this issue: either provide a general setting what image size galleries should link to or a per-gallery setting as it was pre-Gutenberg. Any hints?

[maffi-git]

Workaround for now seems to install the classic editor or use a gallery plugin. I've just started to implement a new site for a customer and this was the first real issue. Not beeing able to choose the thumbnail breaks the thing for me.
Croping for the same size would be a partial-solution - I will try to find a styledefinition for that - croping for the same height looks not nice in my test-case.

Defining a fixed height for the class .blocks-gallery-item seems to do the trick. In my case:
.blocks-gallery-item {
height: 150px;
}
Created a consistent look with the old galeries.

[Backpackstudio]

To be honest, it's a disaster to not have an option to choose thumbnail size for gallery.

[drewclifton]

Any updates on this? As I run into this issue and reflect on its ramifications, I'm actually surprised the gallery block was even released in this state. Thank you!!! 😃

[patbar5]

Ref the tip :
Defining a fixed height for the class .blocks-gallery-item seems to do the trick. In my case:
.blocks-gallery-item {
height: 150px;
}

Any tips how to handle the image width ? I tried the below...not working on mobile/cell phones
.blocks-gallery-item {
height: 150px;
width: 150px;
}

[simboonlong]

+1

[TheAggressive]

2 years later and this is still not fixed? Why are we sending large images over cellular networks? Wouldn't be better to load thumbnail images rather than large size that would have to be converted with CSS to appear as thumbnails? WordPress prides itself on being backwards compatible but this compatibility is broke in this block component. I would strongly consider fixing issues before continuing on new features. Priority should be HIGH

[frogdesk]

Adding the images size selector didn't fix this problem. The gallery should use one size for the thumbnails and a different size for the full size. That is the problem to begin with. This should have been a release blocker.

[natedolesh]

Agreed that this still seems to be an issue in 2021. I try to select Thumbnail from the dropdown, but it just goes back to Large.
After so many iterations, we don't have a functional gallery block?

[umviajante]

same problem around here and I still haven't figured out a solution ...

[frogdesk]

same problem around here and I still haven't figured out a solution ...

Unfortunately that is because there is no solution, evidently the Gutenberg developers see the gallery block as a developer example and not as an actually usable production level block. It is most unfortunate that this block is even included in general WordPress releases because it is clearly not intended for production use.

[skorasaurus]

@frogdesk & @umviajante @natedolesh

I agree that the larger images are still being loaded; is really frustrating.
I was curious myself about the status of it so I wrote this recap a couple weeks ago that summarizes the issues around loading larger than necessary images in Gutenberg.

There's not quite one 'issue' at the moment that developers are uniting around (and this issue spans multiple issues.
So to keep track of the progress around it but #20778 may be helpful.

[radogado]

It is unsustainable to insert 100 images at full size and the app will break. We need the old style gallery with thumbnails. Maybe stability should be top priority.