16:10 Displays and Smugug Style

wslam

Has anyone notice that the Smugmug viewing style is somewhat 'inefficient' on 16:10 (e.g. 1280x800) screens? E.g., on the Macbook Air, or Macbook, the Smugmug style displays lots of thumnails, but the 'larger photo' on the right is rather small. It's even worse on a Mac and if the Dock is not hidden at the bottom...

Wide screen seems to be a trend, I am just curious if people here think there may be room for a little fine tuning of the style for this sort of display size. I like Smugmug style very much... I prefer it over other viewing style by a lot actually....except on 16:10 screens when resolution is on the lowish end...

Regards, ws

Andy

Example site?

wslam

Andy wrote:

Example site?

This applies to any site really, but on a 16:10 screen.... the Smugmug style is dynamic... I will try to provide a screen cap on my wife's macbook and show you. will do that asap.

mlee

wslam wrote:

Has anyone notice that the Smugmug viewing style is somewhat 'inefficient' on 16:10 (e.g. 1280x800) screens? E.g., on the Macbook Air, or Macbook, the Smugmug style displays lots of thumnails, but the 'larger photo' on the right is rather small. It's even worse on a Mac and if the Dock is not hidden at the bottom...

Wide screen seems to be a trend, I am just curious if people here think there may be room for a little fine tuning of the style for this sort of display size. I like Smugmug style very much... I prefer it over other viewing style by a lot actually....except on 16:10 screens when resolution is on the lowish end...

Regards, ws

My SM site looks awesome on my 14.1" wide 1440x900 laptop. It stretches to all the edges and fills the entire browser beautifully.

Mike

wslam

I am normally on my 30in CinemaDisplay and so I have never have the problem. But recently a few friends and relatives start telling me this, so I looked into it. Little did I know, my wife has been having the same issue but she never brought it up!

Here is an example off a macbook 13in (1280x800)

yes it uses every inch, but the main display photo is tiny.

I should point out that even if the Dock is hidden, the situation does not improve much. And with or without caption, it does not affect the way the style is dynamically adjusted for the screen size.

BeachBill

This "issue" started appearing after the stretchy feature was added. I think the Smugmug style does this because it appears to be optimized to show as many thumbnails as possible, but at too large of a size.

I've avoided it on my own site by not using the smugmug style, and/or by turning "Stretchy" off in Site-wide Customization.

Here is an example of what I think the OP is referring to:



The following is a screen shot I posted almost a year ago (23 Feb 2008):



I ended up "fixing" the above gallery by turning "Stretchy" off.

Andy

Hey guys - we'll see what can be done!

Andy

wslam wrote:

Turn off some toolbars and maximize the browser to cover the full size of the screen - then what?

wslam

Andy wrote:

Turn off some toolbars and maximize the browser to cover the full size of the screen - then what?

The difference is not dramatic. The proportion still isn't 'right'.

The turning Stretchy idea works, but then even monitors that could take advantage of the much larger and filling style cannot benefit.

What I see as a possible improvement is that instead of fitting in the main photo with the caption to be the same height as the thumbnail rows height, exclude the caption area.... am I making sense?

I think 1280x800 is quite a popular resolution these days, esp on the netbooks....

Andy

The problem is - SmugMug Large is 800px wide - thumbs are 100px wide... so three columns of thumbs is 300, then 800 for the main image that' 1100 px. Leaves only 180 pixels for padding and browser chrome. But {JT}'s gonna look at it

wslam

Andy wrote:

The problem is - SmugMug Large is 800px wide - thumbs are 100px wide... so three columns of thumbs is 300, then 800 for the main image that' 1100 px. Leaves only 180 pixels for padding and browser chrome. But {JT}'s gonna look at it

Thanks Andy. Look forward to seeing a little fine tuning some time down the road.

ws

jfriend

wslam wrote:

The difference is not dramatic. The proportion still isn't 'right'.

The turning Stretchy idea works, but then even monitors that could take advantage of the much larger and filling style cannot benefit.

What I see as a possible improvement is that instead of fitting in the main photo with the caption to be the same height as the thumbnail rows height, exclude the caption area.... am I making sense?

I think 1280x800 is quite a popular resolution these days, esp on the netbooks....

Do you realize that on a wide screen, what sets the size of the main image is which size will fit on screen without scrolling and it leaves room for a portrait oriented image to fit without scrolling. So, if you don't have a very tall screen and you have a lot of chrome in the browser and the browser window isn't full height on your screen, then you end up with something like a 3:1 aspect ratio. It picks the largest main image that would fit and then fills the rest with thumbs. To do anything differently will cause the main image to need to be scrolled to be seen.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

To do anything differently will cause the main image to need to be scrolled to be seen.

Which we don't want to have...

BeachBill

jfriend wrote:

Do you realize that on a wide screen, what sets the size of the main image is which size will fit on screen without scrolling and it leaves room for a portrait oriented image to fit without scrolling.

Unfortunately that doesn't hold true on the following gallery that I just viewed for the first time after reading your message. This is viewed full screen on my 1280 x 768 pixel laptop display. There is plenty of room for a bigger portrait oriented image here. I'm not sure what is happening here.



P.S. I'm happy to see the Photography Corner is using SmugMug galleries to host the Photo of the Year images this year...

jfriend

BeachBill wrote:

Unfortunately that doesn't hold true on the following gallery that I just viewed for the first time after reading your message. This is viewed full screen on my 1280 x 768 pixel laptop display. There is plenty of room for a bigger portrait oriented image here. I'm not sure what is happening here.



P.S. I'm happy to see the Photography Corner is using SmugMug galleries to host the Photo of the Year images this year...

But, that isn't what that gallery looks like without scrolling. This is what I see when I make a window that is about the same height and width, but I don't scroll. This gallery has a ton of (mostly wasted) vertical header space. Combine that will all the browser chrome and the short screen and you don't have much room.



Perhaps JT can tweak something, but if the desire is that the main image is fully viewable without scrolling, then this one can't get any bigger (in fact, it's already too big).

On your own Smugmug account, there is a javascript parameter you can customize to tell the algorithm to ignore a certain number of pixels of your header when choosing the main photo image size. This will allow you to fill the vertical space with the main image (after you scroll to get rid of the large header), but will make even less of it visible when the viewer hasn't scrolled yet. How you handle that trade-off is up to you.

wslam

If you are referring to the vertical scroll, then I don't think the issue is as big. Even if I use the standard Smugmug style with no customization, the situation is not improved. On many smaller screens, people will need to scroll vertically. The good thing is, once scrolled to fit the photos area, and when you click next, the page does not 'reload', so the vertical scroll position does not change. So it's really a one time thing to scroll to the appropriate position to view all the thumbnails and the main photo.

I think what I am curious, is whether the main photo can be bigger for such screen resolutions...

jfriend

wslam wrote:

If you are referring to the vertical scroll, then I don't think the issue is as big. Even if I use the standard Smugmug style with no customization, the situation is not improved. On many smaller screens, people will need to scroll vertically. The good thing is, once scrolled to fit the photos area, and when you click next, the page does not 'reload', so the vertical scroll position does not change. So it's really a one time thing to scroll to the appropriate position to view all the thumbnails and the main photo.

I think what I am curious, is whether the main photo can be bigger for such screen resolutions...

See the alterScreenHeight javascript variable described near the end of the first post here.