Horrible Smugmug style

Allen · October 23, 2013

I love it when Smug said that wanted your photos presented big so everyone can see how gorgeous
they are. Then they come along with this piece of crap new Smugmug style. It's total garbage with the
smaller thumbs and photos. The wasted space caused by those stupid ridiculous R/L page chevrons.
The caption not anywhere near the main photo. The ugly 1900's page nav with no first/last page
selections. No top photo nav means you jump up and down with the mouse switching between portraits
and landscapes and different photo sizes.
Who ever sold this design to management ought to be fired.
Can you tell I'm really pissed.:soapbox:pissed .....

Not to mention all the old tools they removed or broke.

No indication what thumb your on. I've spend a whole bunch of time studying the small thumbs trying
to figure what one I'm on that it's almost a joke.

pbandj · October 23, 2013

On my site the main photo in Smugmug style is actually much bigger, though the thumbs are smaller...I can live with the smaller thumbs but I'd much prefer to get rid of some of the excessive white space so they can be a little bigger without eating into the space for the main photo. That said, my caption is now "below the fold", which doesn't make me real happy.

Everything else you said, I absolutely agree with...the page nav under the thumbs looks so unprofessional in Firefox and works inconsistently with the other navigation since the chevron isn't clickable, the jumping-around photo navigation that should be on top of the photo...the caption that isn't directly under the photo anymore...yeah, it all drives me nuts but I'd deal with all of that if they'd just fix all of the keyword problems.

OK...and maybe the fact that you have to use a workaround to get a "perma-link" to a gallery.

Allen · October 23, 2013

Screen shot of NewSmug laid over legacy. Browser diagonal 17" on a 24" monitor.
Main photo large size vs closer to medium. Gobs of room to increase NewSmug to
photo to a larger size. Do not need four columns of thumbs.

pilotdave · October 23, 2013

I'm also pretty blown away by the bizarre decisions smugmug has made in the new design. I knew they would sacrifice functionality for looks, but I didn't think they'd take it so far... and still not impress in the looks department.

I'm not angry... yet. Because they haven't forced me to unveil yet. But if smugmug is still harder/slower to use for day to day stuff than it used to be when they do make me unveil, I'll be upset.

Smugmug has gone quiet recently... again. Maybe they realize how huge a failure this was and went back to the drawing board. But I doubt it... I'm guessing they see all of the issues you pointed out as nothing but minor imperfections that don't bother 99% of their customers. Smugmug's new motto should be "eh, it's good enough."

Edit: Here's an example of how inefficient the new design is. It takes 4 clicks to get from a gallery (smugmug style) to the bulk caption/keyword tool in new smug (organize, organize site, wrench tool, caption/keyword). Alternatively, it takes 3 clicks to switch to legacy mode and get to the tool (View legacy smugmug, tools, captions/keywords). I think that's almost funny.

Dave

pbandj · October 23, 2013

Allen wrote: »

Screen shot of NewSmug laid over legacy. Browser diagonal 17" on a 24" monitor.
Main photo large size vs closer to medium. Gobs of room to increase NewSmug to
photo to a larger size. Do not need four columns of thumbs.

That's interesting...and completely different from my experience! I have only a 19" monitor, but on New smug my site shows four columns of thumbs just like yours, but I get a VERY large main photo. On legacy smug I get eight columns of just slightly larger thumbs, but a much smaller main photo (with my caption showing above the fold.)

phaserbeam · October 23, 2013

Well... i like the smugmug view. There are still some things that could be changed to make it better (waste of space, adjust space between icons if you select non-square-thumbs) but i find this much better then the other styles.

Especially that it changes the content based on the browser window size, see screenshot.

Left is my normal browser window on a 20"-screen, middle is FullScreen, right is smaller browser window. On FullScreen i get less but bigger thumbs.

It's not perfect but in my opinion not horrible.

LPC · October 24, 2013

phaserbeam wrote: »

Well... i like the smugmug view. There are still some things that could be changed to make it better (waste of space, adjust space between icons if you select non-square-thumbs) but i find this much better then the other styles.

Especially that it changes the content based on the browser window size, see screenshot.

Left is my normal browser window on a 20"-screen, middle is FullScreen, right is smaller browser window. On FullScreen i get less but bigger thumbs.

It's not perfect but in my opinion not horrible.

Yep I like it too and prefer it over the legacy version where the spacing was far too cramped and was the same no matter what monitor size you were viewing on. For me, the main photo is much bigger than it was before too. Maybe it depends on the base design you use?

beardedgit · October 24, 2013

Allen wrote: »

Screen shot of NewSmug laid over legacy. Browser diagonal 17" on a 24" monitor.
Main photo large size vs closer to medium. Gobs of room to increase NewSmug to
photo to a larger size. Do not need four columns of thumbs.

Allen, I'd be interested to see a screenshot like this but featuring a main photo that is in Portrait format. I'll wager that the wasted screen-space is much worse. I'd do it myself if I still had access to Legacy, but that door's now firmly shut for me.

IMHO, SM missed a couple of tricks:

For Portrait format in SM-style galleries: if (height > width) they could have shunted the pic info etc to the left (under thumbs) and used the full height of the right side for portrait.

And for Panoramas it's worse. If (width > ~3xlength) they could have cajoled the thumbs into a strip under, leaving a fuller-width space for the main photo.

Creativity was somewhat lacking, methinks.

Allen · October 24, 2013

beardedgit wrote: »

Allen, I'd be interested to see a screenshot like this but featuring a main photo that is in Portrait format. I'll wager that the wasted screen-space is much worse. I'd do it myself if I still had access to Legacy, but that door's now firmly shut for me.
...

Portrait in one browser window size. This is approx. size I always use.

zoomer · October 24, 2013

I feel your pain...agree..for me everything seems to be more work, more steps, or just can't figure out how to do things.
Don't have time for this.....

I can hear them in their meetings "and then lets unveil it during the busy time for photographers..great idea".

WinsomeWorks · October 24, 2013

Allen wrote: »

I love it when Smug said that wanted your photos presented big so everyone can see how gorgeous
they are. Then they come along with this piece of crap new Smugmug style. It's total garbage with the
smaller thumbs and photos. The wasted space caused by those stupid ridiculous R/L page chevrons.
The caption not anywhere near the main photo. The ugly 1900's page nav with no first/last page
selections. No top photo nav means you jump up and down with the mouse switching between portraits
and landscapes and different photo sizes.
Who ever sold this design to management ought to be fired.
Can you tell I'm really pissed.:soapbox:pissed .....

Not to mention all the old tools they removed or broke.

No indication what thumb your on. I've spend a whole bunch of time studying the small thumbs trying
to figure what one I'm on that it's almost a joke.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, Allen. I just can't understand it, since Smug-style was/is so popular & the only handy way to display galleries with more than 50 or so photos. On my large beautiful monitor, people's NEW Smug-style galleries look very ugly in all the ways that your screenshots show. I get smaller main photos on new sites too, & lots of wasted space, lots of stuff all off-kilter. Besides the "bill of goods" we were sold, I think what ticks me off so much is the fact that we (you, me, & many many people) tried to help them out so much, in the development phase, by generously and good-naturedly critiquing the designs we were shown. In other words, we told them all of this over a year before they released it!!!!

So it feels like a very serious sign of disrespect that none of it mattered and they chose to ignore so many people who used to be their most loyal customers and apologists. It's a cryin' shame. And very little is getting fixed. It scares the crap outta me right now. Precious little communication, few fixes, few changes to even the most obvious uglies. And now a handful of people will probably jump down my throat, because for some reason I in particular am supposed to ignore all this, try to not notice the obvious, and just shut up in general. I guess since I'm not excited about jumping into this mess, I'm not supposed to have an opinion, even though I have eyes & see other sites. So go ahead, naysayers, just pile it on. Cuz that'll change the uglies into pretty stuff.

guy · October 24, 2013

On my home pc 19" monitor 1600X960 I think SM style looks OK:

Yocum%201600X960-L.jpg

However on my work pc with a smaller screen set to 1280X960 the thumnails are way to small & the overall look is not good. Why would SM squash more thumnails onto a smaller screen than it does on a bigger one?

Yocum%20Ridge%201280X960-L.jpg

thenickdude · October 24, 2013

guy wrote: »

Why would SM squash more thumnails onto a smaller screen than it does on a bigger one?

The most likely reason is that your main photo does not have any more room to scale vertically, which means that it can't grow to fill all the horizontal space. The spare horizontal space is therefore used to hold more thumbnails.

beardedgit · October 28, 2013

Allen wrote: »

Portrait in one browser window size. This is approx. size I always use.

Thanks for that, Allen

dennismullen · October 28, 2013

The problem is with your browser, it's not smugmugs fault!
/s

Cheers,

Allen · October 28, 2013

dennismullen wrote: »

The problem is with your browser, it's not smugmugs fault!
/s

Cheers,

That's odd, all my browsers show the same, Firefox and IE.

dennismullen · October 28, 2013

Sorry, incorrect code. Should be...

mbonocore · October 28, 2013

Sorry for not seeing this till now. I was in New York at PPE. I will talk to the developers about how the size of the thumbnails are being displayed.

Horrible Smugmug style

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