th23

WordPress has come a long way to be a fully featured content editor system, but the default gallery does not keep up with it. And while there are many plugins with various features, I did not find a small and simple one putting the focus on enlarged images.
<a href="https://photoswipe.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">PhotoSwipe</a> is a great basis and thus core component of my th23 Gallery plugin, which replaces the WordPress default to output galleries into a way containing all key information required while maintaining a simple and easy markup.
th23 Gallery is built with some few goals in mind:
<ul>
<li>Unintrusive way to focus on images</li>
<li>Leveraging PhotoSwipe / Lightbox-like overlay</li>
<li>Navigation between images in all galleries in a post via intuitive swipe, keyboard or mouse activity</li>
<li>Compatibile with modern blocks and legacy shortcodes</li>
<li>Simple markup and styling for thumbnail preview images (polaroid-style)</li>
<li>Plain styling for medium / large preview images allowing for theme based style</li>
<li>Minimized footprint on page loading</li>
</ul>
<h3>Usage</h3>
th23 Gallery works out-of-the-box and does not require any special handling – right after activation all embedded galleries will use PhotoSwipe to enlarge pictures.
Note: Polaroid-style works only on galleries which have set the preview image size to <code>Thumbnail</code>
Note: Previously inserted galleries might require a review to ensure link to media file and preview image size are set to work as expected – especially when also using the plugin on legacy <code>[gallery]</code> shortcodes.

th23 Gallery

Replace standard Wordpress Gallery block and legacy [gallery] shortcode handler, opening galleries using PhotoSwipe

th23 Gallery vs Mixed Media Gallery Blocks