Thumb type 'None' shows framed alt text: clever UX or visual noise?

wet · 2026-01-23 13:12:40

May I ask for your opinions on this UX speciality that caught my attention when I first came across it?

It goes like this:

You select ‘None’ as the thumbnail type for an image.
On the ‘Images’ list, the ‘thumbnail’ cell for that image shows an empty frame surrounding either the manually entered ‘alt’ attribute or, as a fallback, the image filename.

It might look like this:

Expressive ‘alt’ attribute values, which might be useful to their intended audience on the public side, escalate this layout symptom to a degree that I find strange:

Discuss!

Bloke · 2026-01-23 13:33:34

It’s the CSS or class name, I expect, because it assumes the thumbnail will exist so stuffs a border around it. A regular link underlined is probably sufficient.

Any CSS gurus able to have a stab at improving the visuals in all situations where we have an image, or not an image, or a broken image with alt text?

phiw13 · 2026-01-23 13:58:33

Bloke wrote #342355:

It’s the CSS or class name, I expect, because it assumes the thumbnail will exist so stuffs a border around it. A regular link underlined is probably sufficient.

Any CSS gurus able to have a stab at improving the visuals in all situations where we have an image, or not an image, or a broken image with alt text?

What Robert is seeing I think, is the image frame box similar to what you see for a missing image. The border is coloured blue as that comes from the parent link.

The oversized cell is because there are no width constrains on that table cell.

Bloke · 2026-01-23 14:01:26

Ah okay, cool. Is there anything better we can push to Hive to tame it a bit?

wet · 2026-01-23 18:00:59

phiw13 wrote #342357:

What Robert is seeing I think, is the image frame box similar to what you see for a missing image. The border is coloured blue as that comes from the parent link.

Phil, you think the truth.

We look at this table cell’s content:

<a title="Edit" href="?event=image&amp;step=image_edit&...">
<img class="content-image" loading="lazy" src="" alt="Kodachrome They give us those nice bright colors Give us the greens of summers Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah I got a Nikon camera I love to take a photograph So mama don't take my Kodachrome away" height="240" width="80">
</a>

/hive/.../textpattern.css:377 applies:

a .content-image {
	border-color: var(--clr-a);
}

When I re-edit the <a> tag to e.g. <barbaz>, the border turns grey as per /hive/.../textpattern.css:373:

.content-image {
  background:var(--clr-bkgd);
  border:1px solid var(--clr-brdr)
}

phiw13 · 2026-01-24 01:03:52

Bloke wrote #342358:

Ah okay, cool. Is there anything better we can push to Hive to tame it a bit?

You could suggest setting a max-width value on .txp-list-col-thumbnail (something like max-inline-size: 20em) – that will always apply, so if someone has large thumbnails, those will be scaled down too. Or apply the class .txp-contain, as is done on the image name cell.

phiw13 · 2026-01-24 01:32:55

By the way, I’ve now double checked: what Robert sees (and I…) is indeed a missing image display. Even though the thumbnail is set to none on the edit image panel, on the list panel Textpattern insists on inserting a thumbnail, … that does not exist …. Firefox and Chrome browsers then display a place holder with the alt text. And Safari only displays a place holder.

Not sure if that is all that great, UX wise. And it goes against the wishes of the user (thumbnail set to none). Before your auto thumb generation was added, I seem to remember that the list panel only displayed the word “no”.

wet · 2026-01-24 02:57:58

phiw13 wrote #342370:

And it goes against the wishes of the user (thumbnail set to none). Before your auto thumb generation was added, I seem to remember that the list panel only displayed the word “no”.

+1.

I now, too, remember this UX. Seems more natural to me than the current behaviour.

Bloke · 2026-01-24 06:33:13

Yes it should… I swear it was doing that properly in 4.9.0, but maybe it wasn’t. I’ll double check and reintroduce the No/None. Good shout.

Bloke · Yesterday 20:55:12

‘No’ is restored. And the width of the cell is constrained.

Thank you both.

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#1 2026-01-23 13:12:40