Skip to main content

Where does a new gallery design belong — the core Gallery or the 3D Gallery?

· 3 min read
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Senior Web Developer

The question: a "Photo Scatter" effect — photos scattered flat on a tabletop, gliding in from the edges, dwelling, then reshuffling to the next set — is unmistakably a gallery. The core [gallery] element already has 20+ layout designs. So does a new gallery design belong there, or in the Animation Engine's [gallery_3d]?

Context​

The effect came from replicating a cinematic product site whose search moment scatters file cards across a photographic desk. Nothing in the framework matched: the core Gallery's designs (grid, masonry, carousel, coverflow) are arrangements; sticky-stack's messy is a pinned scroll stack; image_box's polaroid frame is a static card. The scatter is defined by its choreography — stagger-in, rest, sweep-out, cycle.

Options considered​

  • A 21st core Gallery design — "it's where users look for galleries", always available (engine-off). But the core Gallery has no animation runtime: it would need the rAF driver, drag plumbing and reduced-motion handling duplicated from the 3D Gallery — exactly the parallel-machinery smell the CATALOG distinctness rule exists to prevent. And its designs would then split into two kinds (static vs choreographed) inside one picker.
  • A new design of [gallery_3d] (chosen) — the 3D Gallery is the choreography line: a categorized Design picker where each design is a self-contained motion system over one shared rAF driver, with drag physics, per-card Box Styles, captions/lightbox/link plumbing, and "Use as Section Background". Its picker taxonomy had already reserved a Stack & Scatter category; Photo Scatter is its first occupant.

Decision​

photo_scatter shipped as a [gallery_3d] design (engine 1.2.36), not a core Gallery layout.

Why​

  • The test is one question: "is it still a design if nothing moves?" A static scatter is just overlapping polaroids — the motion IS the design. Anything failing that test is choreography and belongs to the 3D Gallery; anything passing it (a grid, a justified layout) is an arrangement and belongs to the core Gallery.
  • Machinery gravity. The 3D Gallery already owns everything the scatter needs — server-side card rendering (links/captions ride each card), the generation-guarded rAF runtime, Section Background mode, reduced-motion fallback. Zero duplication.
  • Engine-gating is product separation, not a loss. Cinematic showcases are the Animation Engine's line; the core Gallery stays lean and always-available. Degradation is graceful either way (reduced motion = a static scatter; content is never lost).
  • The boundary rule keeps future proposals from re-litigating this: file by the one-question test.