MG 2.2 Media Gallery 2.2 - Lightbox navigation, attachment mirroring and more!

XenForo Media Gallery (XFMG) 2.2 sees a range of new features and improvements. Some of these are a result of new integrations with XenForo 2.2 itself, while others are exclusive new features to XFMG itself.

Lightbox navigation​

Starting with XenForo 2.2 we are introducing a brand new lightbox which as well as being a much improved user experience also affords us some flexibility in how and where we use the lightbox.

One such use case which we couldn't resist treating you to for XFMG 2.2 is of course navigating through media items in the media gallery. Before we get into it, this is what the experience looks like.

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The lightbox as used in the media gallery supports all media types including media embeds, video and audio.

By default the lightbox opens up a very useful sidebar which displays most of the information and functionality that you get if you go to the full media page. If you prefer not to view that information then you can collapse the sidebar. Sections within the sidebar can be expanded and collapsed as required and we remember your preferences here so only the relevant sections are displayed.

The lightbox will initially only contain the items from the current page but, as you can see in the video, you can continue navigating beyond the page you're on and we will load additional items from the subsequent page dynamically.

If you need to view the full media details and access the full functionality you just need to click the "New window" icon in the lightbox toolbar or click the caption of the image.

You can navigate through any media list in this way be that the list of media in an album or category, all media in the New media page or the entire media gallery via the media index.

We think this is an awesome way to navigate through the media gallery but if you prefer to keep things as they are (we won't be offended!) then you can disable it:

We should also take this opportunity to note that all of the lightbox functionality you see here is a general concept baked into the core lightbox itself so should any add-on developers which to add a similar navigation or sidebar concept to their existing lightbox implementations then this should be fairly trivial to do.

Attachment mirroring​

For a very long time you have been telling us that you would like to have a slightly closer relationship between attachments in threads and posts and the media gallery, and the new "Attachment mirroring" system in XFMG 2.2 aims to somewhat bridge that gap. It starts with a forum-level or media category-level configuration:

While viewing a media category you can pick which forums attachments are mirrored from...

... and while viewing a forum you can pick which media category attachments are mirrored to.
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Once you have specified which media category your forum should mirror attachments to, any attachments which are added to posts in that forum will be automatically created as media items in the specified gallery.

As an example, here is a post containing an image I have attached inside the "Travel and nature" forum:

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And here it is now displayed in the media gallery:

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As you can see here we make display a clear reference to the fact that the media item originated from a particular thread with the "Originally posted in: Thread 'Travel photos'" line. Thins links and takes you straight back to the post where the attachment was originally posted.

While viewing the thread, we also make clear that the attachment has been also posted over in the media gallery too. Of course images open up in the lightbox and when you do so, the media information opens up in the sidebar with an additional link that links back to the full media gallery view if needed:

But what about all of those existing threads with great images you might want to bring over to the media gallery? We've added a rebuild which will take care of that for you:

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This allows you to have old items that were not yet mirrored synced into the media gallery, plus it will move or remove items from the media gallery as applicable if you disable mirroring or change the target category.

But wait... there's more!​

In addition to these great features we have also added (or in the process of adding) support for the following previously announced XF 2.2 features including:

• Custom field output control support for media fields
• Activity summary support for latest albums, latest media and latest comments
• Writing before registering support for comments

 

[Chris D]

Nothing specific. But you can, as ever, disable commenting at the category level using permissions.

So if the target category only contains mirrored attachments then you can set its permissions such that comments are disabled.

 

[Faust]

Nothing specific. But you can, as ever, disable commenting at the category level using permissions.

So if the target category only contains mirrored attachments then you can set its permissions such that comments are disabled.

Thanks. Would be nice if posts could be mirrored as well, maybe for future updates.

 

[beerForo]

Thanks. Would be nice if posts could be mirrored as well, maybe for future updates.

Please no!

 

[beerForo]

Thanks. Would be nice if posts could be mirrored as well, maybe for future updates.

They are not in the context of a thread they are single images. And there is already a link to take you to the post.

 

[Faust]

They are not in the context of a thread they are single images. And there is already a link to take you to the post.

Than that should be fine. As long as I can turn off comments on mirrored images.

 

[beerForo]

I would keep them on for engagement and activity. You might have a thread discussing butterflies but in the gallery someone might want to say "Beautiful pic!" which may not fit into the discussion on the forum. It is great that we can mirror and have pic comments that are not part of the thread, imo.

 

[Faust]

I would keep them on for engagement and activity. You might have a thread discussing butterflies but in the gallery someone might want to say "Beautiful pic!" which may not fit into the discussion on the forum. It is great that we can mirror and have pic comments that are not part of the thread, imo.

You might end up people being more active on media gallery comments then forum. For my side I will turn off, a bit non sense to have 2 different pages for commenting same photo.

 

[beerForo]

I don't use my forum for photo comments that's what I use Gallery for, so to each...

 

[Faust]

I don't use my forum for photo comments that's what I use Gallery for, so to each...

We run forums differently

 

[Faust]

I would like to ask, would photo EXIF will be mirrored as well on media gallery ?

 

[Chris D]

It's not something we're able to capture when mirroring. There is an open bug report about this but there are significant challenges, particularly if an image gets resized which would lose the EXIF data before we're able to mirror it into the gallery.

 

[Faust]

It's not something we're able to capture when mirroring. There is an open bug report about this but there are significant challenges, particularly if an image gets resized which would lose the EXIF data before we're able to mirror it into the gallery.

Most of images uploaded on gallery media has exif data, even if they have been compressed using TH addon. So you saying this won’t be possible?

 

[Chris D]

If you upload the image directly to the gallery we can capture the EXIF data before the image is resized or compressed. If the image is uploaded to a forum post first, there's two issues. First, we don't even attempt to set the EXIF data when mirroring. Second, even if we were to set the EXIF data, if the image has already been resized by the time it gets to the gallery the EXIF data will already be wiped from the image.

So it's not technically possible in its current form but as I said, there's an open bug report, so this is something we will try to resolve if we can, but it may be possible that we can't.

 

[Faust]

If you upload the image directly to the gallery we can capture the EXIF data before the image is resized or compressed. If the image is uploaded to a forum post first, there's two issues. First, we don't even attempt to set the EXIF data when mirroring. Second, even if we were to set the EXIF data, if the image has already been resized by the time it gets to the gallery the EXIF data will already be wiped from the image.

So it's not technically possible in its current form but as I said, there's an open bug report, so this is something we will try to resolve if we can, but it may be possible that we can't.

Alright. Thanks for clarification. Hope this will get sorted.

 

[Chris D]

We did make some changes today that should help:

Fixed - Image gallery metadata not displayed if uploaded to a thread

Not sure if it's a bug or an oversight, but when you upload photos into a mirrored forum thread, the metadata isn't shown in the lightbox sidebar. If I upload the same image directly to the relevant media gallery, the photo's metadata shows up in the sidebar when I view it from the media...

xenforo.com

 

[Faust]

We did make some changes today that should help:

Fixed - Image gallery metadata not displayed if uploaded to a thread

Not sure if it's a bug or an oversight, but when you upload photos into a mirrored forum thread, the metadata isn't shown in the lightbox sidebar. If I upload the same image directly to the relevant media gallery, the photo's metadata shows up in the sidebar when I view it from the media...

xenforo.com

Alright, so exif from uploaded images on thread will show on media gallery when mirrored?

 

[Chris D]

Yes

 

[webbouk]

Hi Chris, is it possible to disable the download icon/link either completely or via permissions?

 

[webbouk]

Also, if you look at any of the images in the lightbox and either click the download link and then try to go back, or refresh the page whilst in the lightbox , the lightbox disappears and you're presented with a basic scroll page

I don't know if this is a bug?

 

[Timmie]

I love the new lightbox and attachment mirroring that now allows users to like and comment on attached images posted in the forums which is great for the photography forum that I run.

However, although this works great with the sidebar when using a large display, when you switch to a smaller display the sidebar is removed completely and it's now no longer possible to comment or like images.

Is it not possible to move the sidebar to below the image on smaller displays to retain this functionality? Similar to how it seems to work for IPB.

I know that you can click the "new window" icon in the media gallery to open the media view and then like and comment, but this isn't really very practical or intuitive. Also when you click the "new window" icon from attachments the attachment/image opens in a new window, not the media view.

With 50 percent of my users on mobile devices this is rather a big issue.

Or maybe I have missed a setting to enable this?