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Technical exploration for scaling image browsing
Closed, ResolvedPublic5 Estimated Story Points

Description

Background

We've decided we will scale the image browsing feature, starting with just (1) the image carousel and (2) detail view ingressing from the carousel

The next step, covered in this task, for us is a technical exploration that documents options (e.g., leveraging mediaviewer, something new, other wonderful surprise option???) of how to scale the image carousel and detail view components to all logged-out readers and considerations for deciding between them.

Inputs & Assumptions

  • Logged-out users only
  • Mobile web only, but please call out tradeoffs in immediate effort, long-term maintenance, etc. that might cause us to consider including desktop web in this phase too
  • Not scaling Visual Table of Contents (VTOC) and Images from Other Wikis for now
  • Making the following design improvements (if you need mocks to clarify any of these, let @JScherer-WMF know)
  • - Default to seeing all of the image
  • - Robust pinch to zoom and swipe to pan affordances
  • - Jettison the vtoc and the images from other wikis
  • - Make it clear that the horizontal gallery is scrollable
  • - Update visual design on captions
  • - Update image types/tags we want to exclude, e.g., signatures and data viz
  • - Better autocrop

Open Questions to Be Covered

  • What are all the things mmv can do on mobile? Corollary: what are all the things mmv can do on desktop?
  • If we make changes to mmv for this feature, will they be disruptive enough that we need to add an account-based preference setting?
  • How much work is it to add an account-based preference setting for image browsing?
  • [Nice to have] What work would be required to build in such a way that the top-of-page real estate becomes a feature-agnostic container for future tests?

Event Timeline

HSwan-WMF set the point value for this task to 5.Jan 29 2026, 5:46 PM
SherryYang-WMF lowered the priority of this task from High to Medium.Feb 4 2026, 4:38 PM
egardner raised the priority of this task from Medium to High.Wed, Feb 11, 5:08 PM

Change #1238835 had a related patch set uploaded (by Eric Gardner; author: Eric Gardner):

[mediawiki/extensions/MultimediaViewer@master] [PoC, DNM] Add beta MMV UI using Vue 3 and Codex

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1238835

Change #1238836 had a related patch set uploaded (by Eric Gardner; author: Eric Gardner):

[mediawiki/extensions/MultimediaViewer@master] [PoC, DNM] mmv.ui.beta: Add pinch-to-zoom support

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1238836

Test wiki created on Patch demo by EGardner (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task:
https://91b66b4fe2.catalyst.wmcloud.org/w/

Test wiki on Patch demo by EGardner (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task was deleted:

https://91b66b4fe2.catalyst.wmcloud.org/w/

Test wiki created on Patch demo by EGardner (WMF) using patch(es) linked to this task:
https://a7b235a623.catalyst.wmcloud.org/w/

Moving this task into the review column while the team reviews/discusses the findings document. A public summary can be published here once that discussion is complete.

@SherryYang-WMF I think we can close this task once we've revised the document based on the outcome of today's discussion.