Now It’s Official — Medium Removed This Smart Feature
Goodbye. We’ll miss you. Here’s why, what’s new, and which other features may be deprecated soon.
Image sizing matters to many writers.
Norlisa asked lately:
I wonder if you are able to expand photographs used in your article.
Right now, from my laptop, once I uploaded a photo, there is no option to enlarge or minimize it.
I was surprised.
The other day, I had a Zoom call with Patricia Ross about this feature and I also recorded how to use it for my online course.
So I checked it and… it was gone.
Since Medium is pretty buggy at the moment, I wondered if it‘s just one of the bugs Medium needs to fix — such as claps.
That’s why I asked the community whether they could still enlarge or minimize their uploaded images.
Medium took away a feature many writers used every day.
Thanks to new writer Jean Baptiste Muscat I learned that it’s not a bug.
Unfortunately, the image formatting feature has been deprecated.
As of January 2022, Medium no longer supports formatting options for images in the Medium editor. Medium
Medium took away a functionality many writers used every day.
Why did Medium remove this feature?
In late September 2021, Medium announced the company wants to improve the reading experience.
Therefore, they wanted to redesign parts of their website.
That’s a good thing. I like the fact Medium is innovative, I thought.
In Medium’s Help Center, I found this explanation:
We removed image sizing to accommodate a new right-hand column that provides readers with relevant context on the story they’re reading, along with related reads across Medium. Medium
What’s Medium’s right-hand column?
Unfortunately, Ev Williams and his team have been testing a new pop-up feature and now have decided to stick with it.
Our data shows this new right-hand column benefits writers by presenting their stories to more readers across the network.
Well, no pop-ups or ads were a big part of Medium’s success I think.
As Steffany Ritchie commented:
I’m not paying membership to get distracted (…)
This is what it looks like:
You can’t just click on it and it disappears. It is stuck on the right side of the article.
This is what I said back in August 2021, when I discovered it for the first time:
In my opinion, this new feature attacks Medium’s earnings model.
Here’s the story:
What’s new?
With Medium’s latest changes…
- all images are now displayed in a single image size
It’s a step toward a new, more interconnected Medium
To that end, we have removed certain design elements on the published story page, along with the ability to format and resize imagery in the story editor. Medium
Final Takeaway
At the moment Medium is pretty buggy.
Moreover, in the eyes of most writers, Tech Support is non-existing.
As I always say,
The only conctant on Medium is change.
Don’t be surprised if in the near future more Medium features will be gone.
PS: Do you want to give feedback?
Here’s the official announcement about the redesign of Medium’s website from September:
Share your thoughts in the comments — maybe you have already discovered another new feature or one that has been removed.
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