WordPress: Simple Gallery Plugin

As mentioned in my ‘WordPress: Using the Gallery Feature’ article, I eventually wrote a WordPress plugin that overrode the standard gallery behavior so that a button would be displayed above a gallery that would activate a scrollable overlay containing large versions of the gallery pics. In the case where a gallery thumbnail is clicked the overlay would display the large version of the clicked thumbnail first, and you could scroll back and forth through the gallery from there. A ‘View As Slideshow’ button is inserted before the gallery that launches the overlay beginning at the first picture in the gallery.

The plugin uses AJAX so there is no additional image loading until the gallery overlay is launched and the initial page load is not slowed down. The advantages of using this plugin over the standard WordPress gallery on the default ‘Attachment Page’ setting are easier navigation; the overlay can be closed by clicking the display window close button or anywhere outside the display window, and the user does not have to wait for an attachment page to load every time a ‘Prev’ or ‘Next’ button is clicked.

Plugin zip file: gallery-scroll.zip

For information on installing WordPress plugins visit this page.