[Plugin: Media Library Assistant] Gallery thumbnail captions

Hello David & everyone else,

I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts on the display/creation/functionality of the gallery thumbnail captions and titles. I think that the standard WP gallery is a bit “simplistic” in that regard, and [mla_gallery] could easily add really useful functionality with some configuration options and/or parameters.

First, a method to freely configure what will actually be used as the caption under the thumbnails would be really awesome. This could be a configuration setting (to set the defaults), as well as parameters passed on through the shortcode. For example, if I wanted my caption under the thumbnail to NOT actually be the caption, but the “title” that I configured in the media library, I would use [mla_gallery caption="title"].

Second, a configuration like that could also be applied to the “title” that is shown when the mouse is over the thumbnail. For example, if I wanted the long “description” to appear when the mouse is over the image (since the caption already shows the title, or caption, or whatever), I would perhaps use [mla_gallery title="description"].

If I wanted the caption to appear under the thumbnail be the image title, and the mouseover-title to be the long description, the shortcode would be [mla_gallery caption="title" title="description"] – now that looks a bit confusing perhaps at first and requires explanation in the FAQ or documentation. 😉

Another idea (I saw that first in a plugin called “Cleaner Gallery”) – add an option to link the caption under the thumbnail to the attachment page. I find that really useful for galleries that use link="file" to show the original file directly (or with a lightbox overlay), as it allows the viewer to also open the “details” (attachment) page for the image.

I hope my feedback is useful, all the best
Alexander.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/media-library-assistant/