Plugins: Consider combining screenshot and banner.

[dufresnesteven]

In looking through the meta ticket list... I don't see anything related to why we chose a banner for the first visual of the page and a screenshot section below. ( Maybe it's a legacy problem where the banner dimensions are not suitable for a rotatable screenshot preview?)

The banner has become important in communicating plugin quality which slants the playing field towards commercially driven plugins and teams who have access to design teams.

It's a common paradigm to show the banner with screenshots prominently on the page in the same interaction zone and we should do the same.

Smaller plugin developers could focus on creating good, useful screenshots to communicate the value of their plugin as opposed to forcing together a banner image with their limited graphic design skills (speaking for myself). I mean, the counter argument is that they could provide a screenshot as their banner but with the way the experience is configured, that would be unpredictable.

[dufresnesteven]

Speaking of those design skills :)

[dd32]

I don't personally think that this is remotely viable, as the screenshots aspect ratio's are often significantly different.

That being said, this seems like feedback that should go the design team instead, and see if it's something they'd like?