Interactive Features

Square Orb Gallery provides visitor interaction tools to make exploring large photo libraries engaging, fast, and accessible.

1. Smart Search (Experimental AI)

When enabled, Smart Search renders a responsive search input directly above your gallery grid.

Live Client-Side Filtering: As visitors type, gallery items filter instantly without reloading the page. Searches evaluate image titles, captions, and assigned category taxonomy names.
Instant Feedback & Counters: Displays a dynamic result counter (Showing X items or Showing 1 item) so visitors know how many matches exist.
Filter Reset Button: An inline Reset filters button appears as soon as a search or filter is applied, allowing visitors to return to the full collection with one click.
Empty State Handling: If no images match the search criteria, a clean notification message (“No items matched your current filter/search.”) is displayed in place of an empty space.

Square Orb automatically bridges WordPress categories with your media library attachments.

Taxonomy Integration: When your attachment images have categories assigned, enabling Category Filters automatically generates filter buttons above the gallery.
Dynamic Active States: An All chip is active by default. Clicking any category button filters the grid using smooth CSS opacity and transform transitions.
Combined Discovery: Category filters and Smart Search work together—visitors can click a category (e.g., “Portraits”) and then search within that category.

Square Orb includes hardware-accelerated scroll animations to provide a polished, app-like entrance for your photography.

Intersection Observer: Uses native browser IntersectionObserver APIs (threshold: 0.1) to monitor when images scroll into view.
Performance Focused: Non-visible elements stay lightweight until needed, reducing CPU and GPU work during rapid scrolling.
Auto-Disable: Scroll animations are automatically disabled on the Traveler’s Map layout to keep pin rendering crisp and responsive.

For galleries containing dozens or hundreds of photos, Square Orb avoids long initial page load times by loading images progressively.

Initial Media Per Page: Choose how many media items load initially (min: 4, default: 20).
REST API Endpoint: When clicking Load More, the gallery requests the next batch from /wp-json/square-orb/v1/get-images and injects new cards into the DOM.
Toggle to “Show Less”: Once all images in the gallery have been loaded, the button text seamlessly changes to Show Less (customizable), allowing visitors to collapse dynamically loaded items back to the initial set.
Custom Button Styling:
- Shape: Pill (Fully Rounded), Rounded Corners, Square, or Inherit WordPress Theme Default.
- Colors: Independent control over button background color and label text color.