This request was made on Commons this morning. In a large gallery of images, may we play a slideshow which selects images at random from that category?
Each random picture would have to be downloaded at the screen size of the user output screen, rather than whole original files found in the site, as images stored on Commons are often truly massive.
Original request is found here :- https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Village_pump&diff=352470743&oldid=352463891
Nothing is "simple"... :)
may we play a slideshow which selects images at random from that category?
Which underlying problem would this solve? When would this be useful and why? Specific examples welcome.
What is a "slideshow"? Does that imply that the image should automatically change to a different image after a certain amount of time? This probably also implies the use of https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MultimediaViewer to display those images?
I'm not sure I can present it as a problem solver. Commons already uses an app called "slideshow". Yes it would be a timed cycling of the images. The ultimate functionality for it would be to display all the pictures one at a time in random order, and be able to adjust the list of queued images while it was playing.
Commons already uses an app called "slideshow".
Where to see that? Please provide clear steps which allow seeing that.
Apologies Aklapper my email junked my notification and I rarely look at Phabricator,
From the first link in the original request, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-GallerySlideshow
I suppose the name was "GallerySlideshow"
@RTG: Thanks. As https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Gadget-GallerySlideshow already exists it's not clear to me what is requested in this task.
Just that a random selection feature be added. At present a slide show will run through the pics alphabetically. However, should you visit a category regularly for a slideshow, you will always start on the same page and run through the files in alphabetic order. Random would add a unique experience to large categories each time. For instance, when you view an image in Windows Photo Viewer, there is a large blue button at the bottom-middle. If you press that button it will run a random slideshow based on the folder the image was in. The request is to have the Commons slideshow emulate that functionality.
If you do work on this feature I would suggest it might make the slideshow more popular eventually for people who just run it in the background in a room, and it might be wise for the servers that each image is stored rather than downloaded repeatedly, at least for the duration of the slideshow..
Thanks for the clarification! So this request seems to be about an existing gadget on Commons and not about some code in the MediaWiki software,
On-wiki content like user scripts and gadgets are local features and managed independently on each wiki. Phabricator is used for MediaWiki, MediaWiki extensions, or server configuration, or by developers and teams to organize what they plan to work on. Leaving this ticket open for the Commons folks, but you also may want to bring this up on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:GallerySlideshow.js
In fact it has been listed on the feature requests of that gadget for over 8 years. I don't think the function would depend on this particular gadget. Any gadget able to produce a random slideshow would, produce a random slideshow regardless of what the gadget was then named...
If it is a simple matter please do reproduce the gadget with the appropriate function regardless of the situation... if it is complex well.. that's programming for you. I suspected it could be complex.