[Proposal] Allow easier setting of Featured Image

[iamthomasbishop]

Problem

The current Featured Image flow has a few issues:

• Featured Image is only available in Post Settings screens, which means it can get buried and not easy to locate

• If you've set an image from the post body as a Featured Image, it's not obvious which image is selected because there is no visual cue

Solution

To solve the above issues, we should we should supply an intuitive "shortcut" of sorts to achieve this – in context. This could be on the first image of the post, which is typically the image users expect to use.

• Add a quick action button to the Image block settings sheet

• Add an indicator over the image that is being used as the Featured Image – similar indication that we have on GIFs in Aztec

• Optionally, if the Featured Image is already set, we could display a dialog that confirms whether the user wants to replace the current image.

It might look something like this:

Aztec

If we do any work on the Aztec end, I'd recommend we simply add the Featured badge to the image that's being used as the Featured Image.

[hypest]

May I suggest adding the in-content shortcut way as a complementary to the one via the Post Settings? Reason is that via the Post Settings, the user can select any image the image picker can offer (local device, Free Photo Library, taking a new photo, WP Media library), while the in-content shortcut will obviously be for the images already in the post.

[iamthomasbishop]

@hypest To be clear, this proposal wasn’t meant to be a replacement for the UI in Post Settings, but as a complimentary piece to better align with user expectations.

[SiobhyB]

Just making a note of the relevant open issue for the web here: WordPress/gutenberg#13795

@iamthomasbishop, it's mentioned in the comments of that issue that a common error around featured images comes from themes defining specific sizes:

How should we account for those errors?

[jd-alexander]

At @SiobhyB @iamthomasbishop I am looking at the flow here and I have some questions I wanted to ask both of you so I can be on the same page as I will be doing a pair programming session with @SiobhyB to navigate this task. My questions are as follows:

1. Would the "Set as featured image" button would be dynamic? Meaning would it contain the text "Clear featured image" or "Remove featured image"? the reason I am asking this is since we are adding the featured image behavior to an existing Image / Image block and we arent adding a Featured Image block, so I want to understand if when we clear/remove a featured image the only thing we are doing is removing that flag from the image and the Image will remain.

2. Along with the question above, I am wondering how we will go about replacing the featured image. Would it be best if the user followed the normal image edit flow of using the settings tooltip to launch media options? "

3. Since we are allowing the first post in the image to be set as featured image what happens if that image is set as the featured image and then the user moves another image block above the featured image - image block? Is that the reason why we need to "Replace current" dialog? And are we saying that the "set as featured image" should only shown in the image block that's at the top? and any featured image - image block that already exists would only contain the set as featured image button?

Let me know if my questions are clear or if I need to expound anymore.