BUG: Applying Quick Setting after upload does not adjust thumbnails properly

darryl

Steps to reproduce:
===============
- Create one more more galleries without selecting a Quick Setting.
- Upload photos.
- Hate Square Thumbnails.
- Apply Quick Settings that contains Original-aspect ratio Thumbnails to gallery that already has photos, OR
- Try using Bulk Quick Setting to apply the change to multiple galleries

Expected behavior:
===============
Thumbnails should be rebuilt in the original aspect ratio.

Actual behavior:
===============
Thumbnails do not get rebuilt.

Annoying workaround:
=================
Go to every single gallery, drop-down menu, select Adjust Thumbnails, Original, Select All, Save.

References
=========
There's some talk in this thread about this being a known bug, but it was never made clear whether Thumbnails should be adjustable for a single gallery Quick Setting or in bulk. I think it used to work in both places, but maybe that was just a dream I had.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=105263

darryl

Hey Andy, can you move this into Bugs? Also, any word on this?

I would *really* *really* like to be able to bulk change a bunch of galleries from square to original thumbs. All of my guest uploaders keep forgetting to set the right Quick Setting and it drives me crazy.

jfriend

darryl wrote:

Hey Andy, can you move this into Bugs? Also, any word on this?

I would *really* *really* like to be able to bulk change a bunch of galleries from square to original thumbs. All of my guest uploaders keep forgetting to set the right Quick Setting and it drives me crazy.

The real feature request is that you should be able to set a default for your site so that "by default" all galleries are the same type of thumbs. Ever since Smugmug implemented square thumbs and made it the default for all new galleries, I've asked for this. Everybody else apparently likes square thumbs so nobody else seems to care. I hate square thumbs because most of my sports shots are portrait orientation and cropped close and square thumb cuts off every single head. The problem would be solved if we could simply set our own site default (square or rectangle) for thumbs.

denisegoldberg

jfriend wrote:

...problem would be solved if we could simply set our own site default (square or rectangle) for thumbs.

And here I thought I was the only person who hates square thumbs!

I've finally made it a habit to use a quick start setting with my thumbs set to originals. But I would love it if I could set this as the default for new galleries.

--- Denise

docwalker

This was an annoying bug even before I took over the bug duties. I will track the critter down and put a big spotlight on it so that the programmers can kill it.

darryl

Jfriend, Denise -- you're right. Being able to set new gallery defaults for thumbnails (among other items) would be great, and that's the "right" way to handle this. But that's a *feature request*. (And one which I actually mentioned in a post from back in [post=933525]September 2008[/post].)

I'd be thrilled if they just fixed this *bug* so it works like one might expect. That is, applying Quick Settings to a single album or multiple albums actually results in the settings actually being applied, even if that means queueing up a bunch of Thumb Adjustments.

Thanks for getting on this Doc! Hope springs eternal!

aostrom

Can't get quick settings to work at all.
I can't get quick settings to work at all; can any one else? In the "look and feel" section I toggle the radio button for "filenames" to yes, select "auto-sort" to "by filenames", then save it all to a new quick setting. Applying that setting to other galleries does nothing... Any advice? Thanks!

docwalker

Can you send us a link to the gallery in question? You can send it here or to the help desk if you want to keep it private. We can take a look. Be sure to let us know what browser you are using.

darryl

Fixed Fixed Fixed!
When I went in to Customize a Gallery today I thought I saw something new:

Thumbnails: Square ( ) Original ( ) "Changes will take a few minutes to appear..."

Hrm, I don't remember them telling me that before...

So selecting a Quick Setting, I then tried changing Thumbnails from the accursed Square format to the one-true Original format.

And lo and behold, IT WORKED! Original thumbnail goodness. Next test -- bulk application.

Tell me again how your SmugMug Release Notes are supposed to work? Are they somehow tied to your Bug Tracking system that is supposed to be linked to the "tickets" we file here, and now (apparently) on smugmug.uservoice.com?

I'm just asking for a little follow-through, folks.

Thanks for fixing the bug though!

darryl

Minor nitpick: The thumbnail for the video is still square. That's lame guys.

darryl

Follow-up: Does not appear to work for Bulk application of Quick Settings (multiple galleries). Bummer. :-{

Related: STILL no way to set default settings (including thumbnails) for new albums: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=1196781#post1196781

Andy

darryl wrote:

Minor nitpick: The thumbnail for the video is still square. That's lame guys.

Where? How 'bout a link

docwalker

I really do appreciate the feedback and the bug reports. But, please help me out by keeping on the topic of bugs here. Feature requests can be added to the http://smugmug.uservoice.com

docwalker

Darryl,

I personally take the bugs from this forum and try to replicate using our test system and test accounts on the live system. If I can, I enter them into our bug tracking system with the details of the test and steps to reproduce. (if you can give me those steps in detail it helps speed up the process) When the programmers fix the problem, the release notes are manually written up by our help writers and posted on the Release Notes blog.

Uservoice is for Feature Requests. There is no connection to the bugs tracking other than we do enter them into the same system as a Feature Request when applicable. The help writers add them to the Release Notes the same way.

I hope that helps you understand the process.

--Doc

darryl

Andy wrote:

Where? How 'bout a link

It's a password-protected site. Link on its way to the help@smug address.

Thanks.

darryl

docwalker wrote:

[Bug tracking/release note process described]

I hope that helps you understand the process.

--Doc

Doc -- thanks for the rundown. I try to make my bug reports as concise and accurate as possible (we have great QA folks @ Palm, so I try to follow their lead). Ideally you should be able to cut-and-paste my "steps to reproduce" into your bug db's Description field, but I know that bug reports posted to a forum are seldom that way.

I remember once proposing the wild idea that SmugMug make their bug db public, the way that Atlassian does for their products (admittedly, they make bug tracking and other build management software, so it's a great way to advertise). I believe Andy's response is that bugs entered into the system contain links back to the posts here on Dgrin, and that when bugs get closed there, they should also get closed here.

One nice thing about Atlassian's bug db (JIRA), is that it actually has a feature where release notes can be auto-generated based on the bugs that were fixed for a given release. Obviously there is some amount of clean-up that would be required before internal bug summaries could be made public as release notes (hence writers *do* have their place :-), but in theory it's supposed to help keep things from following through the cracks (such as this bug almost-fix, which IMHO is a pretty big deal.)

Sorry about cluttering UserVoice up with bug reports. I guess my reason for putting them there is because I figured they'd get a little more "traction" if people were voting them up, since it's the "hot new thing" around here.

My bugs are old, validated, and in my opinion, fairly important and again, in my mind, seemingly simple to fix. (Clearly you have a routine to kick off thumbnail adjustments from the Tools menu. Why can that routine not be called when a gallery setting changes the thumbnail setting? Why it would be so hard to store one integer in the user database (Quick Setting) to remember the defaults for new albums?)

So when I see Andy telling folks to file Feature Requests there, and see that some of those FRs get filled (yah ok, Packages and Coupons have been a long time coming), it's frustrating when old pesky bugs such as these continue to fall to the bottom of the list. (Again, I assume they're on the bottom of the list only because I have no visibility as to their true placement on the list, and because they've not been fixed in so long.)

docwalker

Actually I am very much on the same page as you are. I personally hate using a forum for bug reports. Its not very conducive to what I see the bug process to be. I would much rather have a system like the uservoice that allows folks to subscribe to bugs, contribute, vote, and even help with the process. Sure, you can do some of that with a forum. But this is too free form. I like the structure of uservoice for feature requests. I am not sure if they would work for bugs or not. But it would be nice to look into that. This is just me venting and looking for solutions.


I do appreciate your detailed bug reports. I wish that others would do the same thing instead of saying "its broke"... Whats broke? What did it do? etc... :-)

darryl

Thanks for the affirmation, Doc.

Yah, at least Andy took my suggestion of *finally* creating separate sub-sub-forums for Bugs/Feature Requests. Trying to follow and search through those monolithic "Bug Reports" and "Feature Request" threads that periodically got archived was a *NIGHTMARE*.

jfriend

docwalker wrote:

Actually I am very much on the same page as you are. I personally hate using a forum for bug reports. Its not very conducive to what I see the bug process to be. I would much rather have a system like the uservoice that allows folks to subscribe to bugs, contribute, vote, and even help with the process. Sure, you can do some of that with a forum. But this is too free form. I like the structure of uservoice for feature requests. I am not sure if they would work for bugs or not. But it would be nice to look into that. This is just me venting and looking for solutions.


I do appreciate your detailed bug reports. I wish that others would do the same thing instead of saying "its broke"... Whats broke? What did it do? etc... :-)

There are numerous web-based bug reporting systems that work outside the firewall and over the internet. I lived on bugzilla for years at Netscape and there are many others these days. It let you subscribe to a bug, cc other people, carry on full conversations and debates, get email notifications of changes, link to other bugs, set priorities, run queries, assign responsibility, created dependencies with other bugs, tracking the whole lifetime state (reported, reproduced, assigned, fixed, verified, etc... all the things you need to report and track an issue. And, because it was all web-based, it could work anywhere.

UserVoice doesn't look anything like a bug system to me. I don't even like it for discussing or developing a new feature because it sucks as a discussion board. What it's good at is taking new request, taking votes on the existing requests and showing people things in a ranked order - things that have little to do with bugs.

I'd be happy to report my issues in a "real" bug system if one were available.

darryl

jfriend wrote:

UserVoice doesn't look anything like a bug system to me. I don't even like it for discussing or developing a new feature because it sucks as a discussion board. What it's good at is taking new request, taking votes on the existing requests and showing people things in a ranked order - things that have little to do with bugs.

Worse still, it apparently allows Andy to mark requests as "completed" without adding any comments. So there are 6 out of 9 "completed" requests that have no explanation as to *HOW* SmugMug supposedly implemented these requests. (NiceNames is a huge thing, too, for the SEO stuff and easy navigation URLs.)

Another nitpick with UserVoice: No date/timestamps on the completed badge or comments. Also, I hate timestamps formatted as "less than a minute ago", "5 days ago", etc. They're fine for crap like Facebook, but when you're trying to track features/bugs, give us real date/timestamps. (And actually, I hate that style of timestamp on Facebook too, but I'm old-school like that.)

docwalker

Yep, getting rid of the huge Bug list was a BIG step for me. I hated that thing with a passion.

docwalker

Darryl, Just to follow up.. I have added a bug for the video thumbnail problem.

darryl

docwalker wrote:

Darryl, Just to follow up.. I have added a bug for the video thumbnail problem.

Thanks Doc. I recall seeing mention of it in somebody else's thread a while back ago, but it was never an issue for me until you guys "fixed" the Customize Gallery / Thumbnail bug and I tried it out.

Andy

darryl wrote:

Worse still, it apparently allows Andy to mark requests as "completed" without adding any comments.

Release notes, Darryl

Andy

Guys, http://smugmug.uservoice.com is not for bug reports.

It's for features that people want.

Right now, we get bug reports right here on DGrin - ONE THREAD per bug (PER DARRYL'S request )

And we get bug reports at hour help desk, when you write our Support Heroes.

We'll get to more automated bug reporting system one day, but that's behind a bunch of other stuff.

Andy

darryl wrote:

One nice thing about Atlassian's bug db (JIRA)

It's way to complicated for the average JoeCustomer. You'll do fine with it but most folks would look at it and their eyes would glaze over.

We'll do something better, easier, and more usable, I hope.

darryl

Andy wrote:

Release notes, Darryl

Well, sure. Except that who knows about the Release Notes? There's links buried in the "Keep in touch" section of the Pro documentation and in the Pro FAQ. Sometimes they show up in the News. But otherwise, they're not really that well-known.

I'm just saying, a link from UserVoice to the Release Notes would be swell. Since the default option is to be notified by UserVoice when your Feature Requests are responded to by admins (and presumably when they're marked "complete"), it'd be nice after clicking-through to see *HOW* the requests were completed.

darryl

Andy wrote:

It's way to complicated for the average JoeCustomer. You'll do fine with it but most folks would look at it and their eyes would glaze over.

We'll do something better, easier, and more usable, I hope.

I'm not advocating that you necessarily try to have customers use JIRA directly. As Doc mentioned, most bug reports from customers are not in any shape to be directly entered into a bug database. (OS and Browser versions? Steps to Reproduce? Example URL?)

My main point was that any bug tracking system, properly used, should help you track bugs through the very end of their life-cycle, which includes 1) following up here on DGrin if that's where the bug was found/discussed, and 2) making sure all bugs fixed in a release get documented in the Release Notes.

#2 is more important than #1.

darryl

darryl wrote:

Thanks Doc. I recall seeing mention of it in somebody else's thread a while back ago, but it was never an issue for me until you guys "fixed" the Customize Gallery / Thumbnail bug and I tried it out.

Re: thumbnail changes not affecting videos, this goes back to when Square Thumbs first reared their ugly heads:

http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=800986&postcount=9

I just tried the bulk Adjust Thumbnails tool, which now does show Videos, lets me select one and choose Original. When I click Save, it puts up the standard "We're working on your thumbnails", but some 3-4 minutes later, it's still Square.

So not only does Customize Gallery -> Thumbnails not work on videos, Bulk Adjust Thumbnails does not. Just wanted to be clear.

(Same gallery as before, Doc.)

Andy

darryl wrote:

Well, sure. Except that who knows about the Release Notes? There's links buried in the "Keep in touch" section of the Pro documentation and in the Pro FAQ. Sometimes they show up in the News. But otherwise, they're not really that well-known.

I'm just saying, a link from UserVoice to the Release Notes would be swell. Since the default option is to be notified by UserVoice when your Feature Requests are responded to by admins (and presumably when they're marked "complete"), it'd be nice after clicking-through to see *HOW* the requests were completed.

You put one there, thank you. I'll try and remember next time.

darryl

To bring this thread back...

One thing that Facebook does right -- they don't use square thumbs.

Please let us get rid of square thumbs in a bulk fashion!