Choosing Default Size For Attachment Display Settings No Longer Works

Good to hear from you again, and thanks for this report. I came across this change while investigating an earlier topic:

Media Library Link To Setting not exported/imported

In that topic I said:

My recent testing reveals that WordPress has changed the way these settings are used in the upcoming version 4.4 release. It is not clear to me when, if at all, the settings will be used in the new version. The new code seems to rely on a browser cookie to record separate settings for each user, and I could not find a way to have the “site wide default” settings reflected in the Media Manager Modal (popup) Window.

I believe that if you change the setting the new setting will “stick” based on the browser cookie. I have not found any other way to work around this new WordPress behavior. I regret the news is not better, but I am marking this topic resolved for now. Thanks, as always, for your interest in the plugin.

Hi David,

Thanks for your quick reply! I just noticed some confusing behaviour and was coming back to report it, but your reply clears everything right up ??

At least the settings do stick once they’re changed, so it’s not really a problem, just more of a surprise than anything else…

Cheers!

Thanks for understanding my response. After some further thought and investigation I took up the challenge and found a way to restore the site-wide defaults in the new WordPress version. A new option is provided to disable this feature if you like the new behavior.

I have uploaded a new Development Version dated 20160114 that contains the new feature. To get the Development Version, follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Shortcode not working in (special) widget

It would be great if you can install the Development Version and let me know if it works for you. Of course, if any other problems emerge I want to know about them as well.

Thanks for inspiring a second look at this issue!

Hi David,

Actually, I do like the way things work now. Every time you change the options, they are remembered. I certainly have a default preference, but I do use other sizes as well. I’ve found that I tend to work by image size, so this is actually quite good for me since I don’t have to switch the modal settings all the time anymore. I hadn’t noticed that about my workflow until I thought it was broken yesterday, but I see now that the previous behaviour is what was broken (having to choose settings all the time is annoying and time-consuming, easy to forget, etc.).

Also, I’m fairly certain I saw a trac ticket that’s going to set the link default to none for images and to the file for documents. I’ll want that to work too ??

So from what I understand, the new WordPress defaults are best for my scenario. However, I can see that they would be annoying to someone who almost always uses the same settings, only switches them occasionally, then forgets the next time around and inserts the incorrect size…

What’s more, I just now noticed that the last-used setting sticks for all posts, not just the current post. Now that’s annoying! Every time I enter a post to edit it or every time I add a new post draft, I want my media modal defaults to start. I only want the settings to change once I’ve changed them in that editing session.

For instance, if I click Add New or Edit Post, the modal should display the settings selected in MLA. If I change them, then they should remain that way until I go to another post. Clicking Save Draft or Update Post wouldn’t change the settings back to default, only opening another post.

Anyway, that’s how I would ideally like things to work, but then again, I often work with several posts open in separate tabs, so I don’t know if it would be possible since I imagine WordPress would basically need to be adding a cookie for each post. Really not sure…

So then, I’d like to help you test the new development version since you’ve been so helpful to me, but before I do that, I’m thinking that maybe something else in my comments will have inspired you… Lol! So I’ll wait until you get back to me to make sure I’m testing the right version. I’ll just be testing it on my local install, not my live site — hope that’s not a problem…

Thanks, David!!

Thanks for your update and especially for all the details you’ve provided. It seems this is a more complex issue than I first thought.

You wrote “I’m fairly certain I saw a Trac ticket that’s going to set the link default to none for images and to the file for documents …” I did a search on Trac and found these tickets:

#35101 image_default_link_type option not being respected

#35153 Default link target for media files is none

#31467 Images should default to not linking

Ticket #35101 in particular has a long and lively discussion of the merits of different approaches. None of the topics get into issues you raised such as the effect of multiple browser tabs/windows open concurrently.

I will give this more thought, but my inclination is to wait and see what happens in WordPress core before making additional changes in MLA. I will post an update when I have progress to report.

Hi again David,

I wanted to take the time to go through and understand those Trac tickets before getting back to you on this. Thanks for pointing me to the information, it was very enlightening! Looking forward to seeing what happens.

Cheers!