MetaSlider Gallery 2.39: Media Styles Reset, Privacy Tools and WCAG 2.2 Accessibility Fixes

This post is about a release of the MetaSlider Gallery plugin. This is the quickest, easiest, and most stylish way to add a photo gallery to your WordPress site.

MetaSlider Gallery 2.39.0 is a substantial update. You can now reset your Media Styles to their defaults with one click. The plugin also cleans up after itself when uninstalled and works with the built-in WordPress privacy tools. The gallery, lightbox and editor have been reworked to meet the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard. Alongside those changes comes a long list of fixes that make galleries save, display and behave more reliably.

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Better accessibility

The gallery, lightbox, gallery editor, lightbox settings and block have all received fixes aimed at the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. These changes help visitors and editors who rely on keyboards or assistive technology.

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Interface touches

• Two column layout picker: Layout options now appear in two columns, so the Before & After label is no longer cut off.
• Centred Showcase controls: The Showcase thumbnail strip and Prev/Next arrows are now centred to match the pager.
• Reset Media Styles to their defaults: If you have experimented with Media Styles and want a clean slate, you no longer need to undo each change by hand. A new reset button returns the Media Styles settings to their original defaults.

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Cleaner uninstalls and privacy tool support

Uninstalling the plugin now removes its settings and opt-in data. Your galleries are kept, so nothing you have built is lost if you reinstall later. The plugin also works with the export and erase tools under Tools in your WordPress dashboard.

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Important: PHP 7.0 is now enforced

PHP 7.0 has always been the plugin’s stated minimum. From this version, the plugin will not load at all on older PHP versions. Most hosts are well past this, but if your site still runs on a very old PHP version, ask your host to upgrade it before you update.

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Bug fixes

This release fixes a large number of issues. The most noticeable ones are listed here:

• Single lightbox: Clicking an image in a classic WordPress gallery now opens one lightbox instead of two.
• Caption links: Links in lightbox captions keep working when the caption is wrapped in a styled element.
• Trash and Restore: These links now work, and saving a trashed gallery no longer republishes it.
• Trashed galleries hidden: Trashed galleries no longer appear in the gallery block selector.
• One column galleries: Galleries set to one column now save and display as one column, matching the preview.
• Preview columns: The live preview no longer drops to a single column when no column count is set.
• Duplicating galleries: Duplicated galleries now copy the original’s image styles.
• Video posters: Custom video posters now appear in the lightbox thumbnail strip instead of the YouTube thumbnail.
• Video options: Video links that already contained parameters no longer break when loop or mute is turned on.
• Fullscreen carousels: Maximizing a carousel gallery’s lightbox no longer leaves page content showing on top of it.
• Small images: A minimum image size of 0 is now respected, so small content images get the lightbox as expected.
• WordPress galleries: Gallery links that already had a CSS class now keep the lightbox behaviour.
• WooCommerce exclusion: Excluding Products in the Manual settings now properly turns off the WooCommerce integration.
• MetaSlider captions: Captions no longer disappear because of how the setting was stored.
• Failed saves: A gallery that could not be created now shows an error instead of opening the editor as if it had saved.
• Notice dismissal: Dismissed notices now stay hidden for exactly the number of weeks shown on the button.
• Before & After tooltip: Hovering the Pro lock no longer triggers the layout’s own tooltip as well.
• Console error: Opening the lightbox no longer requests a missing loading image.
• Translation: The “Exclude by CSS selector” label can now be translated.

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For developers

• PHP guard: The main plugin file now enforces the declared PHP 7.0 minimum across the plugin header, readme and Composer requirements.
• Settings robustness: A plugin option stored as a non-array value, such as an empty string, no longer causes a fatal array_merge() TypeError on every request.
• Post type checks: Saving a gallery or manual caption now verifies the target is a gallery post, so other posts can no longer be overwritten.
• Caption reads: Reading a manual caption now ignores posts that are not galleries.
• ID sanitising: Negative image IDs in saved gallery data are now dropped rather than converted to positive IDs.
• Coding standards: Output escaping, file deletion and form input handling in the settings and gallery screens now follow WordPress coding standards, which slightly changes some printed markup.
• Uninstall and privacy: An uninstall routine removes plugin settings and opt-in data while keeping gallery posts, and personal data exporters and erasers are registered for opt-in data.
• Tooling: The repository now uses the shared PublishPress dev-workspace 2.0, with yarn driving the wp-scripts JavaScript builds.
• Tests: New Jest tests cover the gallery button mode and the video poster picker, and the end-to-end suite has been restored.

This post provides an overview of the new features in this release of the MetaSlider Gallery plugin. The complete changelogs for both Free and Pro versions are available in our Docs area.