User blog:Ieatrice/New Image Galleries Available in Labs

For the past few months we've been working hard on a new way to present image galleries, and we're now ready to give everyone a first look! Today, the new image galleries are available to enable in the Labs section of WikiFeatures.

Goals
Our goals for this updated design are to:
 * Increase reader engagement with images and image galleries. We believe that engagement can be improved via standardization of gallery presentation, making them easy to browse.
 * Increase average page views per visit. The current style of image galleries are not constrained by their height, allowing them to take up infinite vertical space on the page and limiting a user's ability to find content below the image gallery. By standardizing the height of image galleries in the new style, we allow more casual users to easily scroll past and find additional relevant information.
 * Streamline the gallery creation process with a new tool for VisualEditor (coming soon!)

Viewing galleries

 * Even without the new galleries enabled in WikiFeatures, you can view the new style on any page, on any wikia, by adding  at the end of the page's URL.
 * The gallery shows a maximum of 8 images by default on the page. The arrangement of images will vary depending on the amount. If there are more than 8 images, a "show more" button appears which expands the gallery
 * Clicking the "show fewer" button on an expanded image gallery brings you back to original 8 images

Creating/Modifying image galleries

 * For now, new image galleries are only available for creation and modification using wikitext (source mode), and are not supported in the classic rich-text editor or the Visual Editor.
 * Enabling the new galleries via WikiFeatures will remove the gallery tool from the classic editor.
 * Navigation galleries — defined as galleries with the  parameter set on at least one image — will not have the new style applied.

For more details about new image galleries, please go to the Help page.

What's next?
We're working on a new and improved gallery tool for the Visual Editor which will include the option to upload multiple images at one time. In the meantime, we'd love to know your thoughts on this updated layout for galleries. Enable new image galleries on your wikia and see your image galleries come to life!

Before and After
Here are some before and after shots from the Marvel Database: