Click to enlarge

Hello,

I was wondering if you have any thoughts on usability best practices for clicking on a picture to enlarge it.

The context is a newspaper-type article (as opposed to a gallery or photo site - which, I think, is an important difference in regard to user expectations), and it's one where the image opens on top of the article, blacking out the rest of the screen (like with Picassa). To return to the article and browser, you must close the image.

Some examples I've seen seem to take you by surprise and take control out of the users hands.

Because this is neither a traditional pop up nor a new tab/window, it makes me wonder whether a mouse over effect is enough to indicate that it's clickable and/or if the the text "click to enlarge" is necessary/sufficient to indicate the type of interaction that is to come. Maybe it's just a question of getting used to seeing this type of image?
Is there an icon that people have seen to work? (e.g. the "+" sign).
And finally, how good/bad can this type of increasingly common interaction be for accessibility?

Many thanks for your thoughts!

If we talk about a new online user than a link should be in text form as "click here to enlarge" or any similar textual indication.

For a regular online user : We can use more interactive icons / buttons or symbols to indicate them that he needs to click here for the related action...

But still some kind of textual indication should be there because some users may use text based browser or may not even see images on normal browsers also due to slow internet speed. So according to standards the links should be represented in a textual form to make it accessible for every type of user.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44993

You might also consider how much value the user will get from enlarging pictures. Having the ability to enlarge pictures on a site does not necessarily mean every visitor will want to use the functionality, or on every photo. I would weigh the benefit of clearly identifying pictures that can be enlarged against the risk of cluttering the page highlighting a feature that may only be used occasionally.

In particular, considering people using screen-readers...a certain percentage of them may be blind, and they may require (at most) a description of the image to put it in context with the article you're displaying.

Guess it depends on your site's purpose. If it's a photo-sharing web site, you might have a note at the top of each page indicating that each picture can be enlarged by clicking on it, then a hover-over reminder of same. If it's a news-based web site, you might just use the hover-over, on the principle that folks are there for more than just picture-browsing.

Posted from the new ixda.org
http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44993

How about using an explicit zoom button, rather than going into zoom mode from clicking anywhere on the image?

An image is a big, appealing target, especially in a sea of text. It sounds like it would easy to click it accidentally. Lots of e-commerce sites use magnifying glass buttons (or a button that says "Enlarge" ).

Diana

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Lizz esp.parham at gmail.com wrote: Hello, I was wondering if you have any thoughts on usability best practices for clicking on a picture to enlarge it. The context is a newspaper-type article (as opposed to a gallery or photo site - which, I think, is an important difference in regard to user expectations), and it's one where the image opens on top of the article, blacking out the rest of the screen (like with Picassa).  To return to the article and browser, you must close the image. Some examples I've seen seem to take you by surprise and take control out of [trim]