Standardize/Define multi select behavior of media related blocks

[pinarol]

I observe that we have some uncertainties around how each block should behave about allowing multiple media selection. We also have some differences between iOS/Android. In time we added lots of media related blocks but didn't quite question/refactor some of the behavior that was already there.

So, let's clarify this question for below blocks:

• Should the block allow for selecting multiple media? If yes, what should happen on multi select?

Media Related Blocks:

• Image
• Video
• Media-Text
• Cover
• Gallery (Gallery is a bit different since it is obvious what should happen when user multi-selects)

cc @iamthomasbishop @designsimply

[designsimply]

This comes up from time to time in app reviews and other user requests. Here is a recent example for reference:

Block Editor doesn’t allow you to add multiple photos!
I always switch to classic editor because I can add multiple photos but this new update forces you to use “block editor” where you need to “add image” individually!

^{1-star review by MrBruh – Feb 4, 2020}

[pinarol]

Thanks, that's really useful @designsimply.

I think it makes sense to allow multiple selection for Image/Video blocks but I am not sure about Cover and Media&Text. I can't really imagine what the expectation could be from a user's point of view for those blocks, it gets even more complicated when you consider those blocks can have other inner blocks as well.

So my gut sense tells me we should limit Cover and Media&Text to selecting 1 image/video but allow multi select for Image/Video, and then wait for feedback.

[iamthomasbishop]

@pinarol thanks for the ping! I’d be curious what @SylvesterWilmott thinks, considering he has been doing some work on refining the media selection process. I think that work should bring some consistency to the flows, but to answer this question specifically:

Should the block allow for selecting multiple media?

Gallery, yes for sure. As far as image, I have been on the fence about it for a while as we’ve discussed the differences between how WPAndroid and WPiOS work. I tend to lean towards allowing multiple for an image block, but here are a couple of things we could do:

1. Show a dialog to ask the user what they'd like to do (create as separate image blocks, or combine into a gallery)
2. Allow the user to easily select multiple image blocks and combine manually into a gallery (which would be slightly weird as a primary behavior, but good as an escape hatch to re-group if that makes sense).

Personally, I would show a dialog after the user attempts to select and upload multiple images, that asks "would you like to combine these images to make a gallery?" (yes or no, and don't show this again). In this case, we would "convert" to a gallery on the fly, and they could make either a single-column gallery or potentially split them.

For the other blocks, Cover and Media-Text are a bit different because you can only have 1 image applied. So we probably wouldn't apply the multi-select capability to those.

[SylvesterWilmott]

I would love to see batch uploads for the image block. I really like @iamthomasbishop's suggestion of showing a dialog giving the user the choice to combine all the images into a gallery.

Regarding the image picker, it would require no special consideration unless we want to explicitly point out if multiple selection is not available for that block. This is already implied by the absense/presence of checkboxes on the image thumbnails though.