[5.x/6.x] Larger thumbnails in element index table view (size option or hover preview)

[MattAppleton]

This follows on from a brief question at the London .one conference this week — lovely to meet @brandonkelly and @kennethormandy by the way :)

What I'm trying to do

Scan an entries (table view) index visually in CP. On image-led sites (architecture, photography, art, video) editors often recognise a project by its picture, not by its title, and a 30 px thumbnail is too small to do that. Editors end up opening entries one by one to check which project is which. Screenshot below shows two ways to see a thumbnail in this list/table view, both not fit for purpose.

Current behaviour (Craft 5.11.4)

• Table and Structure views render the element chip at the small size: --thumb-size: 1.875rem (30 px), set in Cp::elementChipHtml() ($thumbSize = … CHIP_SIZE_SMALL ? 30 : 120).
• Relational field columns (an Assets field shown as a column) use the same small chip, so adding a 'Featured image' column does not help.
• Cards view uses the 120 px thumbnail, but drops the table columns (Location, Client, Date Updated in my case), the sortable headers, and the row density. It is a different tool, not a bigger table.
• The 'Thumbnails' view mode is only offered for element types where hasThumbs() is true, i.e. Assets, so it is not available for entries.
• Every thumb already carries a 2× srcset (Element::getThumbHtml()), so the pixels for something larger are mostly already being generated.

Result: the only way to see a project image at a usable size in a table is a custom index column from a site module, which is the workaround from #11521.

Proposed solution

Either of these would solve it. The first is the one I would use every day.

1. Thumbnail size option for table and structure views. A 'Thumbnail size: Small / Large' control in the View menu, saved per source alongside the existing column and sort settings. 'Large' renders the existing CHIP_SIZE_LARGE thumbnail (120 px) in the Entry column and in relational field columns, with the row height growing to fit. This reuses the chip size Craft already has for Cards, so no new transform sizes or markup.

2. Hover or keyboard preview of the thumbnail. Hovering the thumb (or pressing Shift + Space on a focused row, matching the asset preview shortcut) shows the 120 px or larger image in a popover. Cheaper to implement, but a size option is better for scanning a long list because you see all the images at once.

A simpler variant of (1) would be a boolean largeThumbs on the index source or a per-user preference, if a View-menu control is too much UI.

Why not just use Cards

Cards show the image, but a table is what editors use to compare and sort: 50 projects with location, client, and date in columns, one row each. Asking them to switch views to see the picture and switch back to see the data is the friction this request wants to remove.

Prior discussion

• Ability to customise thumbnail sizes in the admin (ie entries display) #11521 'Ability to customise thumbnail sizes in the admin' (2022, mine, unanswered; community module workaround from @wsydney76).
• [5.x] Make small automatic thumbnails in entry indexes optional #14278 '[5.x] Make small automatic thumbnails in entry indexes optional' (2024, unanswered): the opposite complaint about the same 30 px thumb, which suggests a size option (none / small / large) would serve both.
• Thumbnails of images in overview list and entry detail where bigger (adjustable in size) #1059 'Thumbnails … bigger (adjustable in size)' (2015 UserVoice import; closed 2021 without a linked change).
• Craft 5.1 made card thumbnails slightly larger, so the appetite for bigger images in the CP is there; this asks for the same in tables.

Environment

• Craft CMS 5.11.4 (Team), PHP 8.3, Chrome on macOS
• Entries index, table view, entry type with an Assets field set as the thumbnail provider

[brandonkelly]

Thanks for the suggestion! Added for Craft 6: #20124

[MattAppleton]

Thanks for taking this on, very happy and looking forward to C6 :)