While working on a review of WordPress Photo Editors at the PhotoFinishes.ca a number of WordPress Media Library questions arose for which immediate answers were not available That is what this post is about; so lets consider the deferred issues:
0 -3rd party, free Media Library photo editor plugins certainly enhance image editing in the Media Library;
1 – Even 3rd party photo editors supplied limited image optimizations. WordPress 5.8 supported use of WebP images in the media library but AVIF with better compression is a contender. How compression resolves is still unknown;
2 – given video’s increasing importance on WordPress sites [ media account for over 70% of the bytes downloaded for the average website] begs the question – when will WP Core or 3rd party video editing/optimization routines come to the Media Library;|
3 – PageBuilders like Oxygen and BricksBuilder are promoting cuts to WP bloat. One target is all the automatic creation of 4-5 thumbnails stored for every photo but seldom used in the Media Library – no resolution from the Core Team yet;
4 – WordPress Media Library currently leads Web Builder competitors like Shopify, SquareSpace, Wix/Editor X in the media and objects supports:
Images: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .ico, webp
Documents: .pdf, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .pps, .ppsx, .odt, .xls, .xlsx, .PSD
Audio: .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, .wav
Video: .mp4, .m4v, .mov, .wmv, .avi, .mpg, .ogv, .3gp, .3g2
And WPBeginner has a post on how to add a wide array of WP Custom File Types to the Media Library. So along with Blocks, Block Themes, Block Patterns this presents a rich opportunity and a dangerous challenge.
The rich opportunity is to to further step ahead of rival Web Builders where only Wix/Editor X has made an effort to extend its Media Gallery/Templates capability. However, rival ThemeBuilders/Editors like BricksBuilder, Breakdance. Divi, Elementor, Oxygen, and others are also hard at work making their Media/Templates not only more versatile but also performant.
The dangers are twofold:
1 – The basic Phase 2