Speed, Beauty & Brains – January 22nd, 2007
Wow, this one was much more painful and took far longer than we anticipated. Thanks so much to the thousands of you that helped us beta-test it over the last 1.5 months. We really do appreciate it and it’s a much better release thanks to you.
On with the show:
- Speed – faster than ever
- For the SmugMug style, there are no longer “pages”, so moving from photo to photo and “page” to “page” is massively faster.
- No more scrolling when you change pages or photos, it’ll always keep your position.
- Keyboard navigation makes going from photo-to-photo and page-to-page even faster.
- Beauty – clean and pristine
- The new photoBar slides out when you mouse over a photo, and contains most of the links that were cluttering up your pages.
- The new EXIF window keeps you on the page while showing you lots of photo details. Drag it around wherever you’d like, and it’ll keep updating as you go from photo to photo.
- New Save Photo icon is far easier to find than the old text link. (Of course disabling Originals in your gallery settings will remove this, as always)
- Comments now use your Bio photo, if you have one set.
- Brains – juiced up the IQ, too
- Photo comments can be left and read right from the main page – no longer need to click through to a separate photo comments page.
- Can hide gallery comments entirely and just focus on the photo comments.
- the lightBox now remembers what photo you were viewing so when you close it, you’ll still be on the right one.
- lightBox URLs are now permalinks, so you can copy & share at will
- activity notifications, including a throbber, so it’s obvious when things are happening in the UI.
- perfect browser history, including forward & back buttons and bookmarks, across all three major browsers – IE6/7, Firefox, and Safari. An internet first, we believe.
Oh, yes, there is just one more thing… There’s a new sharing interface, including an address book, HTML emails with embedded photos, and detailed tracking of exactly who’s read your email and whether they’ve clicked through to see your photos or not. Look for the ‘Share’ button in your galleries. Enjoy!
PS – All account levels now have unlimited traffic levels. No bandwidth restrictions!
Categories: new features, release notes, SmugMug
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excellent upgrade. makes existing users very satisfied, and im sure will entice more users as well!
keep up the good work!
I hate it. You guys roll out an upgrade in and don’t give me the option to keep the old interface on my old galleries. My customers didn’t complain about the old galleries, not once, in fact most of them had nothing but good things to say about them. I shouln’t be forced to change my galleries in the middle of my photo cycle. If you are going to charge me a yearly fee I should be able to control when I am forced to upgrade and make massive changes. Between this upgrade and sales tax issues I will not be buying your service again. You guys have a great idea going for you, but seem to get to antsy to upgrade an interface that works and not antsy enough to take care of other issues.
Hello -
I like the improvements you made in the new upgrade. I can see how some of the changes will benefit me and those who visit my site. However, you have removed the “SmugMug Small” option. I read Andy’s comments in one of the posts in Dgrin where he writes, “…You can narrow your browser and still have SmugMug small if you like – 9 thumbs and a small image. Poke around with the new style, change is hard, but we hope you’ll like it….”
I agree, change can be hard for some. Personally, I am very receptive to change, if it is well thought out. I think that amateur users will hardly notice the additions or omissions. But, as a Pro Level account user, a very useful function has been removed. I set my site to default to SmugMug Small and specially placed certain photos in position “one” for each page of a particular gallery. These are photos that I want to highlight. The new release, does revert to the SmugMug small size if viewed with a minimized browser window. However, this is not the case if viewed with a fully expanded window. In effect you have taken away the control I had regarding which photos will be highlighted for visitors to my site. This was a very useful and important tool.
Also, the SmugMug Small format prevented the need to scroll down to see all of the photos on a given page. With the new format, when the browser window is fully expanded, it is necessary to scroll down to see all of the photos on a page. I consider this a nuisance when viewing images.
Please return the option for using a SmugMug Small format. Or, provide CSS code to work around this problem.
Thank you…Sonja
I like a lot of the changes- the speed is nice, and the clean look is nice.
I’ve had a few issues with browsers closing, however, when viewing with the Photo Info popup open. In both Mac OSX (Safari, Camino, Firefox) and Windows (IE). I’ve never had browsers quit on me before with smugmug.
I still agree with other’s comments from beta testing- Info should popup away from the image.
And similar to the user who asked for the smugmug small option to be configurable, I’d like the option to display both filename and caption beneath each photo without using the slideout (similar to the option during slideshows). I ask customers for exact filenames, and this adds an extra step for them to gather that info (possibly many steps, if they are moving the popup overtop the thumbnails, then closing the window to find their next pick).
Overall- great changes!! I’m sure you’ll get the details from our input worked out- thanks for always considering our suggestions!!!
Shucks! I like the way photos display without refreshing the whole page, but I could have done without the collateral damage!
Before this change, I had suppressed keywords showing for all my galleries, but now they have appeared and I’m going to have to find a way to get rid of them again. I hope there is a way.
I also have comments suppressed, but now I get the “comments – add comments” box displayed momentarily while the page is being built, before it goes away – very ugly! I’m concerned I may not be able to avoid this, which would be very disappointing.
As a relative newcomer to Smugmug I would like to add my disappointment that the Smugmug small style has been removed. During my trial period I spent some considerable time checking out that the options available for customizing met my requirements, Smugmug small was the one that fitted the bill and now in less than a month this has been taken away from the choices. I have nothing but praise for the wonderful assistance generously given by those on the support forum and in general I am very impressed with Smugmug but I’m not a techie, I just want to get on with creating galleries and showing my pics. Please bring back Smugmug small.
Caroline
@Ross:
The keywords and comments things sound like bugs we must have missed in testing. Please email the Support Heroes and let them know, or post on Digital Grin. We’ll get them fixed, assuming I understand the problem.
@Caroline:
We’re fixing the SmugMug Small problem as I type this. Stand by.
Keywords-
if you used this
#photoKeywords {display: none;} before, you now must change it to this:
#photoKeywords {display: none !important;}
Sorry for that hassle. Holler on Dgrinif we can help more!
There needs to be some sort of icon for the photobar. Do you realize how many people navigate just by clicking the thumbnails? There is no clue that more information is hidden within the main photo.
Like Ross above I also have comments suppressed. It is fine on gallery pages but the ‘add comments’ button has shown up on all my individual photos within each gallery. I like my pages clean and uncluttered and want to remove it completely. Any suggestions to get rid of it quickly? Or do I have to do something to every single photo?
Also, the ‘next’ button when moving to the next picture in a gallery does just refresh the picture rather than the whole page which is better than before BUT it still pushes the browser back to the top so I still have to scroll down on every single picture! I thought it was meant to fix that!
I am sure these are all little ‘glitches’ and will be sorted out soon! Please tell me I am right!
Just wanted to give a thumbs-up in general to Smugmug for an overall good upgrade. The interface is much more slick, and it’s really great to be able to page through an album with the arrow keys.
One request I would echo is having the filenames viewable with a mouseover or click. I really like to have that connection to my personal workflow visible if people want to talk to me about specific photos.
But on the bright side and along those same lines, I noticed that when I went to download the original of a photo, the Smugmug number was followed by the beginning section of my original filename. So if one of my customers downloads a photo, it retains my index number. Thanks for honoring the request(s); I appreciate it!
Smugmug small is back less than 12 hours after I realized it had gone! Thank you so much for responding so speedily – very impressive, just like everything else about Smugmug.
Cheers from the UK
Caroline
I like the new interface and the speed the photos load is miles better.
Also like all th information on the photos with the mouse , a much better improvement.
I see some moaners on here..why dont you go to another site..:-)
Loving the new interface! Although I haven’t really used the share feature in the past, I do enjoy having an address book and easier way to email people with a gallery. I think I’ll use it to share a gallery I promised to send to some co-workers instead of emailing directly from my email client….
Also I am a huge fan of the speed increase in load time as well as the fact that it remembers where you scrolled to on a page when you are flipping through gallery pages. That is a huge plus.
The only thing I find a little weird is that the add comment section now combines gallery and photo comments to the same link. That really put me through a loop the first time I was looking to play w/ the new “bio photo in comments” thing. But it’s not too bad once you get used to it I suppose.
Anyway, keep up the great work, I’m always a huge fan!
Help me out here guys.
2 things.
1. I am not seeing any real difference in speed within my galleries. I thought that when I opened a gallery, all the other images within that gallery were being downloaded into the viewers cache whilst they were looking at photo number one, then onto photo 2 etc. and files were still downloading in the back ground so when they click image 3 and so on, they are there instantly. Have I got it wrong? If not, then my page or somewhere down the line has a problem. Because I see no change in speed. I am on broadband.
2. The key words thing leaves me cold. I don’t want a cluttered looking site with random words all over the top of the page. I have a slide show that I installed on my smugmug home page which I think looks slick. I would much rather a search box near the top of the page without keywords everywhere. Can a search box be used on my page for photos only within my site?
If you could help me out here it would make my smugmug experience so much more professional. Thanks in advance.
Dave.
@Dave, We can sure help you get your site the way you’d like it. Customization is all possible. I’ll have our Specialist contact you, and it shall be done! Look for a mail from Barb or Ivar from our team, and they will also give you some great links to the other resources we have to accomplish what you want.
I hope this helps!
- Andy
Hey Guys,
For the most part I like the new format. But there are a couple of issues I am having. First, on the old format my galleries showed 15 thumbs per page plus the main photo. Now it only shows 9. Second, the old style allowed you to jump from page to page, but now it only allows me to move from photo to photo. The only way to go to the next page is to click on the last photo on the current page then click the next arrow. This is very inconvienient for large galleries.
I notice in the “news” section that there is suppost to be a page picker bar or something I can click on. I have not been able to find that or turn that feature on yet.
If you could address these issues I would really appreciate it.
Thanks for your time and effort,
Bryan
@Bryan – I’m your House Pro here at SmugMug and I’ll help.
http://www.bryanspix.com/gallery/2202942#114638660 looking here, for example, I see 15 thumbs and the main image. Our new site is set up that if you are using a small window, or have small screen resolution, you’ll get 9 thumbs and a small main image. You can see this just by resizing your browser window, give it a try
Now one thing, with your older version of Safari that you are using, you’ll might have problems with the page picker – it’s a Safari issue, but no worries, we’re fixing that, and you’ll be able to navigate like you used to, shortly.
I notice that you’ve used IE as well, if you can hop on a computer that has IE, you’ll see the page picker
Holler to us at the help desk if you have any more questions, we’ll be here for you!
I hope this helps! Please do write back if you have more questions. Oh and don’t forget the other great pro resources in my signature below.
- Andy
I like most of the new features, but i don’t like how a huge RankBar appears when I point my mouse on the image. It covers over half the picture sometimes, when my browser window is small. Moreover, i can see how two people would be sitting at a computer screen and looking at photos, and wile trying to point out some element in this photo with a mouse pointer the RankBar will cover this element (and a portion of the photo itself). My suggestion would be to make this RankBar smaller and make it appear on the outside of the image.
@Yusup – As a pro account holder, you can customize nearly any element on your SmugMug site. I’ve gone and added the 1 line of customization that makes the photobar come out on the bottom. Do you like it now?
Check any gallery on your site in SmugMug style
If we can be of any service, let us know. Thanks for being our customer!
I hope this helps!
“There’s a new sharing interface, including an address book, HTML emails with embedded photos, and detailed tracking of exactly who’s read your email and whether they’ve clicked through to see your photos or not. Look for the ‘Share’ button in your galleries.”
Where??? I must be going blind. I don’t see a “Share” button in any of my galleries, logged in or not…
Okay, I found that I had my breadcrumb hidden and that is why I did not see the “Share” button. I was able to fix that…
However, when I view my galleries with the standard smugmug style in IE 6 I see the thumbs on the left but no photo to the right of the thumbs. Works fine in FF. What gives?
Hey,
I notice you did not address my previous post. If you missed it, please scoll up and see if you have any thoughts on the problems I am having. The following is some additioinal info that I’ve gathered by accessing my site from different computers and with different browsers.
On my Mac using safari, the updates are there but not everything works. For instance, you can’t jump from page to page. It’s not there anymore. You have to go one pic at a time.
On my Mac using Explorer, my site still looks and acts like the old format. None of the new features are there and when I click on a photo, it uploads the whole page again.
On my Mac using FireFox, all of the new features seem to be there and seem to work. I say seem because I don’t use FF for much and didn’t spend a lot of time on it.
On my PC at work using Explorer, all of the updates seem to be there and work properly. .
So, why am I getting all the different versions??? And what do we do to fix it???
@Bryan:
First of all, we haven’t supported Explorer on a Mac in quite some time. Neither has Apple or Microsoft. It’s ancient and broken. I’m sorry.
Secondly, it sounds like you’re using an old version of Safari, too. The new interface runs on Safari 2.x, the old version runs on Safari 1.x. Far less than 1/10th of 1% of our customers use Safari 1.x, but they’ll just have to deal with a lesser interface. Sorry about that.
Finally, the new interface works great on Internet Explorer 6 and 7 on Windows, as well as Firefox, so that’s why you’re seeing it there.
Wish I had better news, but technology advances and older technologies are left behind. One day Internet Explorer 6 won’t work anymore, either, but the good news is that the user-interface will get dramatically better the day that happens.
I like the upgrade with the exception of two things I cant do now…
1)I cant figure out how to link pictures to other forums (it used to be easy)
2)I cant figure out how to delete an empty gallery (I cant find that option)
IE6 is displaying the thumbs AND the photo on the right in smugmug view properly now…
I like the upgrade Thanks for all the hard work!
*Now if we could just be able to set a default style (ie: journal or other) for the galleries while still allowing visitors to change or pick the style they want to view the galleries in if they don’t like the default style we chose… That would be awesome!!! Hint Hint
@ David A – re: #1) there’s a new share button. You will now find a “share” button above the large photo in SmugMug style. Click it! You will be taken to a new page where we have a new email feature. You can now email your friends and family your photos right from within your SmugMug site. If you are looking for the links page, up at the top, click on “forums/blogs/etc.” You will then see your familiar links page just like before.
We will remember your preferences, so next time when you click on “share”, you will be taken directly to the links page. Of course, if you want to use the email feature, just click on “email.”
#2) it’s due to this CSS you have in your customization: .nophotos {display: none;} perhaps you need to make that gallery specific, if you made an html-only gallery, or if you made a youtube video gallery. To do that, just change it to look like this: .gallery_XXXXXX .nophotos {display: none;} where XXXXXX is the gallery number
I hope this helps!
Hi guys,
Upgrade is good – appreciate all the work you guys have put into this. However… I can’t seem to get any EXIF/camera info to appear – anywhere. Using latest Safari & Firefox on Mac. Used to display fine below photo before upgrade. Doesn’t make any difference if camera info is yes or no in CP. Any help?
Jim
I think the is a problem with the the Carbonite theme and the new features. It’s not letting me see the new photo sizes when I pick from the photobar. When I do pick a size, it removes the browser scroll bar, but does not do anything else. It will sometimes show me the photo when I either hit the space bar or when I refresh the URL. However, when this photo is shown, I still do not have the scroll bar until I close out the photo and return back to the gallery view.
Also, I don’t see a “share” option in the photobar (not a big deal, since I can view properties to find the URL).
I am running Firefox v1.5.0.7, however this also happens in IE 6 (under XP), which makes me think that this a because of the Carbonite theme.
Good God. Please save me from this nonsense!
I don’t want ANY popups.
I don’t want ANY Javascript.
I don’t want ANY Ajax.
I don’t want any BS pulldown effects.
I don’t want any DOM manipulation.
I don’t want any hovering images of any sort.
I don’t want anybody from Wired Magazine to love me.
I don’t want “best viewed with VistaVision2000 NavGoggles(tm) — please update your browser.” What browsers and what computer operating system people use is their choice, not mine, and not yours.
I just want image hosting, simple regular 100% universal HTML links, keywords, multiple resolutions, a gallery of thumbnails, and persistent (remember that) URLs which can be given ourt and work indefinitely. (And is displaying the date at which a photograph was taken too much to ask, or is that sort of Advanced Web Site Solution doomed to be a Professional Feature?)
It’s simpler and cheaper — and faster — to do the above, and doesn’t involve months of wasted Web Design Professional effort to provide this, but no, the latest and greatest see-mom-look-at-what-I-can-do is forced on us.
This WebTech wanking event is a complete disaster from my perspective. I didn’t want it and I didn’t ask it for it. Welcome to 2007 Web 7.0!
Prepare to be assimilated, then obsoleted in another couple of months.
First, let me say that I love smugmug’s quick and personal service.
However, with respect to the new upgrade, I’d like to put in my 2-cents’ worth and agree with Robert Hume’s 22JAN2007 post:
“I hate it. You guys roll out an upgrade in and don’t give me the option to keep the old interface on my old galleries.”
…or keep the defaults of the old interface on all new galleries.
Even free (and correspondingly unresponsive) services such as Yahoo! Mail hav (historically) given folks a long time (forever? not sure) to stay with older-version interfaces, and even MICROSOFT lets folks keep the “Windows Classic” look-and-feel on their OS upgrades. I’d hope that smugmug could do the same with their web interface (for those of us who have reason to prefer the old interface to the new).
Presumably, such elements are parameter-driven, and thus it “should” be easy to allow backward compatibility of visual onscreen elements.
“????????”
Thanks,
-pt
I do not like the new interface at all, except perhaps the faster speed. I hate the popup bar that shows up when my mouse inadvertently is place over the picture. Why was it done this way, were the photo info and photo sizes link taking up that much room at the bottom? Perhaps there is an option to turn this feature off that I haven’t found yet.
I guess the new interface is not so bad, but what really irks me is that there are so many other things that could have been addressed instead. For example, an easier way to batch delete photos, re-arrange photos, and rank them (1-5). Batch deleting photos where you are only able to see the tiny thumbnails is a pain. Same goes with custom rearranging of photos.
The drop-down menu interface to choose what you want to do is very clunky and requires more mouse clicks.
I am surprised at the negative comments up here. I’d like to post for the record that I find the changes to be a vast improvement, and any drawbacks I have encountered are not of any real significance.
I am also surprised by the “I hate it” comments about the interface. What has been done on this website is awesome! It’s virtually a perfect implementation of AJAX with none of the usual AJAX downsides. I have yet to find a bug, and all the navigation and bookmarking works seamlessly.
For the pros who are complaining above, maybe you can implement a “Luddite” option. But they do have a valid point about not updating the look and feel without user consent. Maybe when new features come available they can be offered to each user the first time they log into their account. Great work – thanks!
For the record, the response has been overwhelmingly (>99.99%) positive, with a small and very vocal minority opposed.
Our destiny, though, isn’t to have a single super-happy customer – it’s to have millions of super-happy customers. But we can’t please everyone all of the time.
I have a large flat monitor 20.3 and I find the small, medium, large sizes to be all what I consider small. Then there’s original which in my case – since I put very large photos on Smugmug – is huge and much bigger than my monitor screen and slow to load besides although I have broadband. If I want a nice big pic I must use slideshow, which is not convenient for just one or two photos. How about a large which is truly large? I checked your “large” photo and it’s 600×800, which is really pretty small. How about a large that is 768×1024 at least. Then one would not have to go to slideshow for a good big image.
I love all the changes, except for the fact that there appears to be a known bug that prevents the large version of the photo on the right side of the screen in the default SmugMug template from appearing. Argh! It works great in FireFox2.0, but not in IE7. HELP!!!!
I like the new interface, but what happened to the handy links for inserting pictures in blogs and other websites. That was very useful information, but i cannot find that now. I sure it is somewhere, but I don’t know where.
Thanks
Giving Smugmug a try and prepared to give it a fair try, as the intention seems good but, to me, there seems a long way to go to match the usability of Flickr…
1. Why, when reading instuctions about how to do something, are you told to go somewhere else (like the tools sections) instead of being able to do it from that point, or having a direct link – that’s poorly thought out.
2. No drag and drop – eg for the bio photo you have to upload an image to a gallery then point to that image – it should be at least one process fewer. This seems to apply in many places.
3. Why can’t I see all photos in a gallery at once instead of pointing to next or a number? The site should all be about images!
4. Worst design error – amending images in a gallery should be much easier. Rotate for instance should happen instantly so you see the result happen not wait MINUTES and you can’t see the result. Flickr fixed this only a few months ago but that’s a big improvement.
5. Mac Uploader buggy, and very poor implementation. Crashes are very annoying where you have to find what’s uploaded and not – and you find out only in the morning. You shouldn’t need to have to monitor this manually! Would prefer to upload direct from iPhoto or Aperture á la Connectedflow.com
6. Comic Sans!!! No!
Hope constructive! Tim
My gosh, I absolutely love this upgrade. It’s beautiful! This site was great when I first signed up 2 years ago and it gets better and better. It’s like Christmas. Thanks again!
Thanks a lot you guys! This is by far the best site I have ever seen for posting pictures. I am not a pro and nor I intend to be, but this is way more than I could expect. All my friends and family are really impressed with the site and the way my pictures looks in it. The upgrade has just made it better. Keep the good job. Thanks
What happened? I can no longer see the large version of a photo on the right side of the browser window after clicking on a thumbnail when in the
default SmugMug template view.
A few more gripes. On the Custom Pro Pricing page, the Save buttons are missing and the Apply button does not work! Same goes for the Customize Gallery page, no save button! I am using IE 7. Do I have to swith to Firefox? And my customers too?