Lots of new downloads from facebook as part of your galleries

jfriend · February 17, 2009

I just thought I'd post some info for folks to chew on.

If you have comments enabled in your galleries, there are now four new facebook connections that are part of your pages.

One of the four files is marked for no caching so a connection for it gets made everytime you go to a gallery (with comments enabled).
Another one of the four files is marked for about 30 minutes of caching so it gets downloaded once every 30 minutes.
The other two have cache expirations of 10 days and 25 days so they remain in your browser cache much longer.

If you turn comments off, I see none of these being part of your page anymore. I guess that's because the only place they are currently used is for comments and Smugmug is smart enough to only generate them when you are using comments.

These also aren't present on your homepage or category pages.

So ... why am I posting this. I guess it's because I was surprised to see my gallery pages are now dependent on three new domains and they are domains that Smugmug does not control and I assume they are in a different part of the network world than Smugmug is. When there's a network hiccup to pixel.quantserve.com, it's a bummer to see my pages get hung up. Now, we have three new facebook domains with the same dependency. This is in addition to the normal cdn.smugmug.com, username.smugmug.com and api.smugmug.com domains that we're already dependent on. The more things we depend on just to load a page and the more network paths that must be working well, the less reliable our site will be.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather the facebook stuff not be loaded until a user hits the comments button. I haven't studied the functionality to know if that's possible, but I'd rather my viewers not have the dependency on so many facebook connections just to view a gallery.

denisegoldberg · February 17, 2009

John -
Do you know if removing facebook from the comments page stops this problem? I removed the facebook entry, and I'd hate to find that the dependency still exists.

--- Denise

jfriend · February 17, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

John -
Do you know if removing facebook from the comments page stops this problem? I removed the facebook entry, and I'd hate to find that the dependency still exists.

--- Denise

How did you remove it? If you hid it with CSS that won't affect anything. It's at page generation time on Smugmug's servers that the facebook decision is made.

denisegoldberg · February 17, 2009

jfriend wrote:

How did you remove it? If you hid it with CSS that won't affect anything. It's at page generation time on Smugmug's servers that the facebook decision is made.

That's what I was afraid of. I hid it with CSS.

And I would prefer that the connection not be made at all from my site.

--- Denise

Allen · February 17, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

That's what I was afraid of. I hid it with CSS.

And I would prefer that the connection not be made at all from my site.

--- Denise

I second that. It just slows down photo loading. At least for a few days now.
The whole page loads except for any photo and may take 30sec for any of
them to show.

System · February 17, 2009

i have noticed the same ..... .

micknewton · February 17, 2009

I don't think it matters whether you have comments turned on or off in your gallery. The generated HTML code for your gallery loads the Facebook Javascript API either way.

What I want to know is why is smugmug using the Facebook API in the first place? Aren't Smugmug and Facebook competitors? Did Smugmug sell out to the big corporate schmucks?

If it's just a matter of allowing some of Smugmug's customers to integrate their photos with their Facebook pages, why load the API for everyone's pages? Why not load it only for the customers that want Facebook integration? I personally have no desire to integrate my Smugmug pages with Facebook, so why should my pages be slowed down by loading the Facebook API?

mbellot · February 17, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

That's what I was afraid of. I hid it with CSS.

And I would prefer that the connection not be made at all from my site.

Ditto on both points.

Another new "feature" I'm sure many Pros would prefer to opt out of on a site wide basis so comments could be left on without involving FB.

Andy · February 17, 2009

micknewton wrote:

What I want to know is why is smugmug using the Facebook API in the first place? Aren't Smugmug and Facebook competitors? Did Smugmug sell out to the big corporate schmucks?

no, we didn't sell out....
We wanted folks with facebook id to be able to comment, with that identity - it makes for fewer 'anonymous' comments. And increases the social use of the comments, too.

Our sorcerers are working on streamlining the facebook connect stuff.

denisegoldberg · February 17, 2009

micknewton wrote:

I don't think it matters whether you have comments turned on or off in your gallery. The generated HTML code for your gallery loads the Facebook Javascript API either way.

I just checked a couple of pages on my site. I did a view source on the pages; it seems that all of the pages have this in the html:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml">

And the pages that have comments enabled also have this:

<[B]s[/B]cript src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php" type="text/javascript"></[B]s[/B]cript>

I've never wanted any connection from my site to Facebook, and I want it even less after today's news stories about Facebooks license agreement and content rights - http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/facebook.terms.service/.

What can be done to get rid of this unwanted connection? Anything?

Andy wrote:

Our sorcerers are working on streamlining the facebook connect stuff.

I apparently was writing at the same time that Andy was posting...

Andy -
I hope that you mean you are going to allow us to opt out of this connection.

It may reduce anonymous comments, but frankly, anonymous is preferable to me over a connection to Facebook.

--- Denise

GollyJer · February 17, 2009

Dude. I can't believe how crazy some of you people are over this stuff. Facebook Connect simply allows someone to post a comment without having to create a login for smugmug. It doesn't put any of your work on Facebook's site.

"One identity, one login" is the wave of the future. It's not clear who will win, but there won't be any site that allows commenting (like SmugMug) that won't need to accept connections from one or more of these identity providers:
Facebook Connect
OpenID
MySpaceID
Windows LiveID
There are simply too many sites and too many logins to manage our online identities. I welcome the future where I update my personal information in one place and it is thoughtfully used by other sites I frequent.

That being said, if you're not allowing comments on your SmugMug galleries then your page shouldn't require a connection to these services.

Also, why am I NOT seeing Facebook Connect on any of my pages. I would assume it would show up on my Guestbook.

denisegoldberg · February 17, 2009

GollyJer wrote:

Also, why am I NOT seeing Facebook Connect on any of my pages. I would assume it would show up on my Guestbook.

Click on Add Comment. It's there, I just checked your page.

--- Denise

GollyJer · February 17, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

Click on Add Comment. It's there, I just checked your page.

--- Denise

Thanks Denise. Does it show up if you use Firefox?

denisegoldberg · February 17, 2009

GollyJer wrote:

Thanks Denise. Does it show up if you use Firefox?

Yes, it does. I checked your guestbook page in Firefox, IE7, and Chrome, and the connect with facebook button is there as soon as I click Add Comment.

Are you not seeing the button?

--- Denise

GollyJer · February 17, 2009

denisegoldberg wrote:

Yes, it does. I checked your guestbook page in Firefox, IE7, and Chrome, and the connect with facebook button is there as soon as I click Add Comment.

Are you not seeing the button?

--- Denise

After testing, I realize Facebook Connect doesn't show up if you're logged in, which makes perfect sense.

But! Another problem krept up. I can't logout of my site right now when using Firefox. I tried clearing my cache, restarting the browser, etc. No matter what I do it won't log me out.

mbellot · February 18, 2009

GollyJer wrote:

Dude. I can't believe how crazy some of you people are over this stuff. Facebook Connect simply allows someone to post a comment without having to create a login for smugmug. It doesn't put any of your work on Facebook's site.

One of the big problems already mentioned is that a connection to FB is attempted with every new page load.

This introduces the potential for slower site loading or long stalls depending on the latency of connections with FB.

I truly hope SM will offer an opt-out option for this, but I fear it will run the same course as the iphone interface (if you don't want it there must be something wrong with you).

GollyJer wrote:

There are simply too many sites and too many logins to manage our online identities. I welcome the future where I update my personal information in one place and it is thoughtfully used by other sites I frequent.

To each their own. I prefer to prevent cross dissemination of personal information between the various websites I visit.

rich56k · February 18, 2009

facebook users BEWARE!!

mbellot wrote:

One of the big problems already mentioned is that a connection to FB is attempted with every new page load.

This introduces the potential for slower site loading or long stalls depending on the latency of connections with FB.

I truly hope SM will offer an opt-out option for this, but I fear it will run the same course as the iphone interface (if you don't want it there must be something wrong with you).

To each their own. I prefer to prevent cross dissemination of personal information between the various websites I visit.

Not only that check this out - once you upload YOUR photos (and all other content) to facebook THEY take ownership -great!!

http://consumerist.com/5150175/facebooks-new-terms-of-service-we-can-do-anything-we-want-with-your-content-forever

tread carefully folks...

rich56k

System · February 18, 2009

this was just posted to facebook:
Terms of Use Update

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of good feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

_________________

Regardless, I am not impressed with what I have experienced, that being that i have experienced my smugmug pages / galleries have been slower to load, since this recent change with smugmug adding the facebook thing. And, I agree with a previous post of: "And I would prefer that the connection not be made at all from my site." ....

ashishpandey · February 18, 2009

Andy wrote:

We wanted folks with facebook id to be able to comment, with that identity - it makes for fewer 'anonymous' comments. And increases the social use of the comments, too.

First, this should more be "only folks with facebook id". Why pay the price everytime rather than when you need it

More importantly, I think the approach is wrong. Today there is facebook, tomorrow there will be more social networking sites (aren't there too many of them now?). If you target each one of them separately, its going to be a mess in the end.

So this goes back to Don's blog entry when he announced that smugmug is now an OpenID provider. The natural question was, why start with being a provider rather than a consumer (and the question was raised in comments on that entry). Don's response was that being a provider is step 1 and subsequently smugmug would consume too. The facebook API approach however goes in a different direction altogether. Being an OpenID consumer solves this whole issue of 'anonymous' comments in a big way, without fiddling with proprietary site APIs. That is what most blogs and comment based systems are doing or moving towards

devbobo · February 18, 2009

ashishpandey wrote:

First, this should more be "only folks with facebook id". Why pay the price everytime rather than when you need it

More importantly, I think the approach is wrong. Today there is facebook, tomorrow there will be more social networking sites (aren't there too many of them now?). If you target each one of them separately, its going to be a mess in the end.

So this goes back to Don's blog entry when he announced that smugmug is now an OpenID provider. The natural question was, why start with being a provider rather than a consumer (and the question was raised in comments on that entry). Don's response was that being a provider is step 1 and subsequently smugmug would consume too. The facebook API approach however goes in a different direction altogether. Being an OpenID consumer solves this whole issue of 'anonymous' comments in a big way, without fiddling with proprietary site APIs. That is what most blogs and comment based systems are doing or moving towards

Ashish,

Facebook Connect is a user authentication system just like OpenID, but brings 175 million users with it. I doubt that OpenID can boast of those numbers.

Additionally, I think you will see lots of blogs implementing Facebook Connect...big site like TechCrunch already do.

I have no doubt that we will become an OpenID consumer (personally, I'd like to see that) but I doubt it's the silver bullet that you are making it out to be.

Cheers,

David

PBolchover · February 18, 2009

Here in China, Facebook occasionally falls foul of the Great Firewall. (The behaviour is as if the connection simply times out.)

Will the fact that smugmug attempts to load some files from Facebook mean that whenever Facebook is blocked in China, my website won't display?

jfriend · February 18, 2009

PBolchover wrote:

Here in China, Facebook occasionally falls foul of the Great Firewall. (The behaviour is as if the connection simply times out.)

Will the fact that smugmug attempts to load some files from Facebook mean that whenever Facebook is blocked in China, my website won't display?

That raises an interesting new question. If a company blocks facebook from their internal network, but not Smugmug, will Smugmug viewing now have troubles when it did not used to?

Andy · February 18, 2009

jfriend wrote:

That raises an interesting new question. If a company blocks facebook from their internal network, but not Smugmug, will Smugmug viewing now have troubles when it did not used to?

We'll need to ensure this isn't an issue.

inkmantpa · February 18, 2009

Andy wrote:

We'll need to ensure this isn't an issue.

OK....but why wasn't that done before the Facebook Connection was implemented. As a pro subscriber, I pay a premium to have the ability to customize the items I want to use. If anonymous comments are added, I have the ability to remove them, or even leave them....who knows, if it is witty enough, it's staying...but it is my choice.

Implementing a change of this nature and then saying, "We'll need to ensure this isn't an issue." smacks of poor requirements gathering with your customers (all of us). That should have been determined as part of design and development based on solid requirements gathering.

Oh yeah, almost forgot, it doesn't actually work properly anyway. When I tried it, I got the error

"The Facebook Connect cross-domain receiver URL (http://www.doncurriephotos.com/services/fbconnect/xd_receiver.htm#fname=_opener&%7B%22t%22%3A3%2C%22h%22%3A%22fbCancelLogin%22%2C%22sid%22%3A%220.291%22%7D) must be in the same domain or be in a subdomain of an application's base domain (smugmug.com). You can configure the base domain in the application's settings."

I'm assuming this is because I'm trying this from my custom domain and not username.smugmug.com

Andy · February 18, 2009

inkmantpa wrote:

OK....but why wasn't that done before the Facebook Connection was implemented.

Yeah we know we failed on this bit, we're sorry. It's being fixed internally right now and tested. Should be out in our next release. I'm really sorry about that, our intentions are pure, but we dropped the ball on not finding the cross-domain facebook issue. Sorry

I'm assuming this is because I'm trying this from my custom domain and not username.smugmug.com

Yes.

Allen · February 18, 2009

So how do we get this thing disabled? I don't want any extra junk loading
slowing down anything. I have no interest in anyone's ID anywhere and
want no connection or reference to FB or anywhere except Smugmug.

It also sucks memory and cache adding this CSS to my pages.

/*    HTTP Host:  static.ak.fbcdn.net                                          */
/*    Generated:  January 30th 2009 2:13:39 PM PST                             */
/*      Machine:  10.16.140.108                                                */
/*       Source:  Local Cache                                                  */
/*     Location:  rsrc:enlge7l2:en_US:/html/css/connect/fb_connect.css         */
/*       Locale:  en_US                                                        */
/*         Path:  css/connect/fb_connect.css                                   */


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#bootloader_css_connect_fb_connect_css { height: 42px; }

inkmantpa · February 18, 2009

Andy wrote:

Yeah we know we failed on this bit, we're sorry. It's being fixed internally right now and tested. Should be out in our next release. I'm really sorry about that, our intentions are pure, but we dropped the ball on not finding the cross-domain facebook issue. Sorry

Yes.

OK, so we know there is a problem. My next question is, why hasn't the "feature" been turned off until this is all sorted out. Currently, if someone clicks on the facebook button when leaving a comment they get the error I mentioned above. Not all that professional looking to have the page throwing errors, especially since SM knows it is a problem and could disable the feature causing the problem.

Allen · February 18, 2009

I get three errors with Firebug.

Permission denied to call method Location.toString
[IMG]chrome://firebug/content/blank.gif[/IMG]undefined

[Exception... "Component is not available" nsresult: "0x80040111 (NS_ERROR_NOT_AVAILABLE)" location: "JS frame :: file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/components/nsSessionStore.js :: sss_saveState :: line 1909" data: no]
[IMG]chrome://firebug/content/blank.gif[/IMG] this._writeFile(this._sessionFile, oState.toSource());

And my add comment button is not working in this gallery.
Edit: button works in IE6 but not FF

Andy · February 18, 2009

inkmantpa wrote:

OK, so we know there is a problem. My next question is, why hasn't the "feature" been turned off until this is all sorted out. Currently, if someone clicks on the facebook button when leaving a comment they get the error I mentioned above. Not all that professional looking to have the page throwing errors, especially since SM knows it is a problem and could disable the feature causing the problem.

It's easier to fix it and we're doing just that. I hope it goes in this release, thanks.

peestandingup · February 19, 2009

I agree that there should be a way to opt out or at least hide the FB Connect button. I'd opt out just for the speed thing alone, cause I have noticed it takes longer sometimes for the comments to even show up now.

I am indeed a Facebook user, but I find the whole playing favorites with a particular social network thing kinda iffy.

I'm just saying, yesterday it was Myspace, today it's Facebook, tomorrow it'll be something else. Meaning these type of social networks are really flaky. What's cool today will not be cool tomorrow. It's a guarantee.

ashishpandey · February 19, 2009

devbobo wrote:

Ashish,

Facebook Connect is a user authentication system just like OpenID, but brings 175 million users with it. I doubt that OpenID can boast of those numbers.

Additionally, I think you will see lots of blogs implementing Facebook Connect...big site like TechCrunch already do.

I have no doubt that we will become an OpenID consumer (personally, I'd like to see that) but I doubt it's the silver bullet that you are making it out to be.

Cheers,

David

It is indeed the silver bullet unless you are missing the big picture

Let's take a look: google and yahoo together may be enough to surpass any reasonable userbase we are talking about.

Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenID#Adoption
Quote from above: As of November 2008, there are over 500 million OpenIDs on the Internet and approximately 27,000 sites have integrated OpenID consumer support

You talk about a specific site like TechCrunch, but you should not ignore this: http://openiddirectory.com. Look at the list there and see how much simpler this has become. Suddenly from nowhere everyone is integrating so quickly

And finally, since you are so keen to jump upto the facebook bangwagon (which I have so far not found interesting enough to sign up for), here is something to look forward to: Facebook joins openID

In the end, it's your choice to implement it as a open standard and do it once, or to fiddle with it for vendor specific APIs (which is exactly what seems to be happening right now)

Lots of new downloads from facebook as part of your galleries

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