Galleries out of control?
-
I made a gallery for my blog. The page is at https://wordpress.com/page/russontheroad.wordpress.com/7264. So many issues…
First, turning captions on only shows the captions for two of the images, the last two which I added a little later in making the gallery I think after converting it to Masonry form the gallery that uses square thumbnails.
Next, captions do not show when viewing the slide show of the images and that’s where I want them, not overwriting the thumbnails so you can’t see them. (Now I think remember why I gave up using captions years ago.) What’s the point in hiding the thumbnails and showing just part of the captions? How does that make any sense?
Finally, more page real estate is wasted with white space than is actually used by the gallery which strikes me as unthinking design. I cannot find any controls by which to make this gallery function reasonably. Am I missing them or are these galleries, after all these years, still not ready for prime time?
Sorry if I seem frustrated, but I am. These problems seem so obviously in need of reparations and have, it seems to me, for some time.
Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
First, turning captions on only shows the captions for two of the images, the last two which I added a little later in making the gallery I think after converting it to Masonry form the gallery that uses square thumbnails.
I pulled up that page in the editor and it looks like captions are disabled on gallery: screenshot https://d.pr/i/dclsOe
If you turn that on, you should be able to see your captions.
Next, captions do not show when viewing the slide show of the images and that’s where I want them, not overwriting the thumbnails so you can’t see them.
The Gallery Carousel is a separate thing from the actual galleries themselves and captions are not something that would be displayed when you view the larger image. You can see the settings you have for the Carousel here:
https://wordpress.com/support/settings/media-settings/#image-gallery-carousel
Finally, more page real estate is wasted with white space than is actually used by the gallery which strikes me as unthinking design. I cannot find any controls by which to make this gallery function reasonably. Am I missing them or are these galleries, after all these years, still not ready for prime time?
The Masonry block displays multiple images in their optimal position based on the available vertical space, sort of like a mason fitting stones in a wall. You’ve further restricted the size by using a two column layout within the post_content area of the theme you’re using, which is already not super wide since it’s meant to work with both left and right sidebar content (view the demo of Twenty Fourteen for example).
You might have better luck with the Tiled Gallery block instead and maybe try posting your content in a single column:
https://wordpress.com/support/images/#tiled-gallery-block
The Tiled Gallery block does have a square thumbnail option as well, so you can change that if you want that same look as the Masonry block.
I understand your frustrations and they seem to be from mostly the Twenty Fourteen theme which wasn’t designed to be a full, single column theme. You might want to check out other themes and view their demos to see if there might be a better theme to fit your needs.
I hope that helps! Let us know if you need help with anything else.
-
helper-heroponriki,
Hi. @russgreene said,
Next, captions do not show when viewing the slide show of the images and that’s where I want them, not overwriting the thumbnails so you can’t see them.
And you responded,
The Gallery Carousel is a separate thing from the actual galleries themselves and captions are not something that would be displayed when you view the larger image.
I don’t know if the theme used makes a difference, but on my primary site with a retired theme I have numerous galleries, typically displayed as either a grid or a slideshow (sometimes both). In every case in which there are captions, those captions are visible below the images in the gallery grid or slideshow, AND in the gallery carousel. In WP-Admin, which I always use to create and manage galleries, I don’t find any settings that would cause them to behave differently, other than the “Enable carousel” option at Media Settings.
However, the Captions section of the Gallery Block support page indicates that when using this block, when and where you add a caption may be a factor in whether the caption displays, saying:
If you have written captions for images in the Media library and then add the Gallery block, the Gallery block will show the captions you wrote. However, if you add captions to the images in the Media library after adding the Gallery block, those captions will not appear in the Gallery block. In that case, you can either type the captions manually on the Gallery block or remove and re-add the block so that it will use the captions from the Media library.
-
@russgreene since the real estate issue is one big concern, would you be willing to add the gallery without a second column for the text?
Also, bear in mind the gallery block is set up differently from the gallery you can get in the classic editor. We’ve been chatting about caption options in the gallery block here: https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues/11794
Galleries will be changing soon in WordPress core itself, too, to allow folks to link images to different pages and have more control:
https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/11436If you’d like to use the classic gallery for now, I’d recommend just starting a new line, and typing
/classic
to add a classic block. Then add a gallery there. Let us know if that helps!
-
@russgreene,
Next, captions do not show when viewing the slide show of the images and that’s where I want them, not overwriting the thumbnails so you can’t see them.
Following helper-heroponriki’s interpretation of this statement, I presume that by “the slide show” you meant the gallery carousel. If so, then have you resolved this issue? Because I find captions displaying perfectly in the gallery carousels on the following pages:
-
Re: Reply #3672046
Thanks so much for helping.
You wrote that “captions are disabled on gallery”. I’m not sure what you were looking at but the only option for captions I saw was to turn them on or off for the block and whichever way it was set at the time I saw captions for only two of the images. That wouldn’t seem possible with one global setting for all the thumbnails in the block, but that’s what I was seeing nevertheless.
I have made and discarded several galleries since then and have lost track of which is where and what is what, so there wouldn’t seem to be much point in trying to puzzle it out now. The page I referenced in my OP is no longer a Masonry gallery. You suggested I switch to a tiled gallery, and that is what I have done. The tiled gallery does provide better utilization of page real estate.
You wrote: The Gallery Carousel is a separate thing from the actual galleries themselves and captions are not something that would be displayed when you view the larger image.
I don’t know what you mean by “the larger image”. In any event, what I want is to see captions when using the carousel. I’m not saying this can be done, but rather that this is where captioning makes sense to me (as opposed to overwriting thumbnails in the gallery so that they cannot be seen which is what the my theme/wordpress does now). Instead, the carousel displays the file name of the image which on my site reads as gobbledygook to the viewer. Only I need to see the file name and all the reader needs to see is the caption, but the carousel presents the data bass-ackwards, IMHO. Why would a reader not want to see the caption but see a cryptic file name instead? It makes no sense. That’s my beef with the carousel implementation. I can’t write a caption for the reader to read when looking at images in the carousel but instead the reader is presented with a cryptic file name for the image…all I can say about that is how the bajeezus does that make any sense?
Another suggestion you made was to check out other themes. That’s a scary thought to me. My blog is some 7 years old and has I don’t know how many hundreds of pages. I’m afraid what might happen to them/the blog were I to try changing themes. That’s too big a gamble, IMHO.
Thanks again for your help!
-
-
Thanks for helping @misicdoc1
@misicdoc1 wrote:
Next, captions do not show when viewing the slide show of the images and that’s where I want them, not overwriting the thumbnails so you can’t see them.
Following helper-heroponriki‘s interpretation of this statement, I presume that by “the slide show” you meant the gallery carousel. If so, then have you resolved this issue? Because I find captions displaying perfectly in the gallery carousels on the following pages:
Flower Gallery
Photo Gallery
Capitol Building, Austin Texas————
Those galleries were created with the Classic editor, before the Block editor came to be. Captions in those galleries do work in a fashion, but still not in a manner that makes any sense to me in terms of being usable.
It’s really simple to me: IMHO, Captions should not overwrite thumbnails so that the thumbnails cannot be seen. There’s no point in having thumbnails you can’t see. Captions should show in the Carousel or Lightbox which is the most useful and practical place to put them. (BTW, that’s something else about WordPress that boggles the mind–it seems there are two words for the same thing: Carousel and Lightbox. Jeez.) WordPress has not gotten Captions right, again, IMHO.
-
Thanks for chiming in, staff-ozmodiar
staff-ozmodiar wrote:
Like musicdoc1, I see captions on this gallery:
What do you see when you view it
As I indicated above, the Flower gallery was and my older galleries were created with the Classic editor, before the Block editor came to be. Captions in those galleries do work in a fashion, but still not in a manner that makes any sense to me in terms of being usable. (See Reply #3672637.)
Also, I never wrote about the Flower Gallery except in repl to somebody else that mentioned it. Talking about those older galleries on my blog created in the Classic editor is a bit off topic in that my OP was about the trouble I’m having in the Block editor.
-
Hi there,
It’s really simple to me: IMHO, Captions should not overwrite thumbnails so that the thumbnails cannot be seen. There’s no point in having thumbnails you can’t see.
The issue is that we have many site owners who feel the exact opposite. For example some blocks we offer do not show captions on thumbnails and this is really upsetting to a lot of folks. So I totally understand that you feel this way, but it’s not always the case that everyone feels the same. I’m sure you can appreciate that this makes it difficult to devise a system that pleases everyone.
However, I do think it makes sense to offer an option to turn “off” captions on thumbnails. The block editor is something we derive from the open-source Gutenberg project, so I have suggested this option as an enhancement to the gallery block, which you can see here: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/31403
I don’t have a timeline on when that would be addressed, as the open source project is pretty vast and this may not be a matter of high priority depending on what they are working on at the moment, but it my be included in a future update.
In the meantime, if you wish to upgrade to the Premium plan, we can help with custom CSS code to hide the captions on your galleries so they do not show. With the proper code (which we can help with) they can easily be turned off for your site only.
- The topic ‘Galleries out of control?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 