New style has difficult to uncheck hidden photo.

david-low

With the old style, we open a particular photo and check "hide" when we want it hidden, and we know that photo remains hidden because we can see the box is "checked". This serve as a reminder that the photo is not for public display.

But with the new style, after checking a particular photo to be hidden, there is no box to remind us that is has been hidden. After sometime, we may have forgotten which photo is hidden and not knowing which one to uncheck again for public display.

Is that only happen to my computer or what? If that is the case, I don't find it user friendly.

Comment pse.

jfriend

Which style are you talking about?

david-low

jfriend wrote:

Which style are you talking about?

Sorry, perhaps my question not clear. Maybe I should say after Smugmug has revamped the design.

Its under tools -> hide. After hiding, there is no prompting or box to remind us of that particular photo has been hidden. So after one month, we do not know and has forgotton which photo to unhide.

Thanks

jfriend

david-low wrote:

Sorry, perhaps my question not clear. Maybe I should say after Smugmug has revamped the design.

Its under tools -> hide. After hiding, there is no prompting or box to remind us of that particular photo has been hidden. So after one month, we do not know and has forgotton which photo to unhide.

Thanks

I'm asking which gallery view are you talking about. The new Journal view? The new Thumbnail view? If it's the Smugmug view, there is a customization that will show you a red X on each thumbnail that is hidden. See customization #22 here.

david-low

jfriend wrote:

I'm asking which gallery view are you talking about. The new Journal view? The new Thumbnail view? If it's the Smugmug view, there is a customization that will show you a red X on each thumbnail that is hidden. See customization #22 here.

Thanks for reply. Now then i realise only Smugmug view has a checked box that we can see. But surely the hide/unhide button can be make avialiable for Thumbnail and Journal as well and we don't need to toggle between different views when we want to activate the hide/unhide button.

Good idea?

jfriend

david-low wrote:

Thanks for reply. Now then i realise only Smugmug view has a checked box that we can see. But surely the hide/unhide button can be make avialiable for Thumbnail and Journal as well and we don't need to toggle between different views when we want to activate the hide/unhide button.

Good idea?

It's a bit of a UI problem. The Smugmug view has the notion of a "currently displayed image" that you can place a single checkbox by. The other views (except slideshow) all show multiple images equally. To put checkboxes in them, you'd have to put a checkbox by every thumb/image and that's kind of messy for normal admin use.

In my opinion, what they should allow you to do is to set a viewer style that everyone else gets, but let you freely use the other views for your administrative work (so you could easily use Smugmug view for admin work while using one of the other views for display purposes) without having to unlock the customize gallery, do your work, then lock it again.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

In my opinion, what they should allow you to do is to set a viewer style that everyone else gets, but let you freely use the other views for your administrative work (so you could easily use Smugmug view for admin work while using one of the other views for display purposes) without having to unlock the customize gallery, do your work, then lock it again.

This is harder than it sounds, and will add complexity to our codebase, and also for sure make more people write us asking what the heck?

I'm not saying the OP doesn't have a point, but you gotta know, we think these things through

jfriend

Andy wrote:

This is harder than it sounds, and will add complexity to our codebase, and also for sure make more people write us asking what the heck?

I'm not saying the OP doesn't have a point, but you gotta know, we think these things through

First of all, I never said it was easy. I just described a better way. Better ways aren't always easy to implement. Sometimes there's a simple way that's easy to implement and sometimes making it simple takes a lot of development to make it simple.

Second of all, do you realize that IF you want to set a fixed gallery style other than Smugmug for your viewers that admin on the site is a total pain in the rear? Try figuring out which images are marked hidden in journal view. It's just not feasible. Instead, you've got to do a whole bunch of extra steps to unhardwire your live site in gallery customization, do you admin work, then put it back, hoping nobody came in and saw it the way you didn't want to present it. It's a lot of wasted work. Clearly it could be done a better way.

I'm downright tired of the argument that you aren't adding features because you don't want to make things more complicated. That's simply melarky.

If it's an important problem, then you solve it and you do it with good UI design and nothing will get more complicated. That's just the challenge of good UI design - make clear, concise options that don't require support in order to use them. You have that in some places and you don't have it in others.

Look at keywords. They require all kinds of support in order to use them properly. There are all sorts of magic (smugmug-only) rules one must know in order to get your site to just take the industry standard IPTC keywords that I had on my images when I uploaded them. If you cared about usability or your features without support, you would have fixed that a long time ago rather than create a steady stream of confused users who can't figure out why their keywords don't index.

Where's the first place a new pro user goes to find their portfolio pricing. Hint, it's the control panel (where you find every other account-level setting) and there's no portfolio pricing there. They probably won't find it until they read a help page, ask a question of support or later accidentally find it in the gallery pricing. I could name 20 other issues like this.

So, the fact that you choose to ignore this request is really just a statement that you don't think it's important enough to work on it. Why not just be honest and say that? It's not like you aren't adding any features. You are adding them all the time. You're adding the ones that you think are important whether they require new options to display or not.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I'm downright tired of the argument that you aren't adding features because you don't want to make things more complicated. That's simply melarky.

Thanks, as ever, for your passionate argument for change, John. I'll make sure the whole team sees it.

So, the fact that you choose to ignore this request is really just a statement that you don't think it's important enough to work on it. Why not just be honest and say that?

Are you saying I'm lying? C'mon

I'm saying we do think these things through. I'm sorry you feel like we're ignoring your input and feature request. This couldn't be further from the truth, and I'm sure you really know this. I can think of a dozen changes that YOU have directly been responsible for, and I'm sure there are many, many more. I hope you won't stop.

As I said, I'm making sure the team sees your post.

jfriend

Andy wrote:

Thanks, as ever, for your passionate argument for change, John. I'll make sure the whole team sees it.

Are you saying I'm lying? C'mon

I'm saying we do think these things through. I'm sorry you feel like we're ignoring your input and feature request. This couldn't be further from the truth, and I'm sure you really know this. I can think of a dozen changes that YOU have directly been responsible for, and I'm sure there are many, many more. I hope you won't stop.

As I said, I'm making sure the team sees your post.

I'm saying that the honest answer is that you don't think this problem is important enough to find a good solution for it and I think that's what you should say rather than you will never add another feature that adds new UI that might cause a question to get asked. You are NOT dismissing every feature that requires new UI and might cause someone else to ask a question. Therefore, every feature decision is really just a priority decision. Is the importance of the feature worth the work it would take to implement it and the practical consequences of the implementation (support, testing, code complication, etc...)?

There have been hundreds of questions about the new journal view and the the retiring of the old views. You accept that burden because you're moving forward and making the product better. You added a new pro lab even though that was enormously complicated to implement and test, added a lot of complication to the pricing UI and still generates a lot of support questions. You're doing these because you decided that the issue was worth the pain. When you decide not to do something, it's the other way around, you're deciding that the issue isn't worth the work.

I did not write all this because I think this particular issue is the most important usability issue you have. I'd probably put 30 other things in front of it. But, I thought the way you answered was just not the way these decisions actually work and thus very misleading to David and anyone else reading it.

Malte

jfriend wrote:

...do you realize that IF you want to set a fixed gallery style other than Smugmug for your viewers that admin on the site is a total pain in the rear?...

Yes, I cursed over this yesterday and I think you've got a smart and reasonable request here John. Is it on uservoice?

jfriend wrote:

I'm downright tired of the argument that you aren't adding features because you don't want to make things more complicated. That's simply melarky.

I think it would be quite hard to make the use case you're describing more complicated and I think it's definately worth having a go.

Malte

Andy

Malte wrote:

Yes, I cursed over this yesterday and I think you've got a smart and reasonable request here John. Is it on uservoice?

That would be wonderful.. thanks.

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I'm saying that the honest answer is that you don't think this problem is important enough to find a good solution for it and I think that's what you should say rather than you will never add another feature that adds new UI that might cause a question to get asked. You are NOT dismissing every feature that requires new UI and might cause someone else to ask a question. Therefore, every feature decision is really just a priority decision. Is the importance of the feature worth the work it would take to implement it and the practical consequences of the implementation (support, testing, code complication, etc...)?

There have been hundreds of questions about the new journal view and the the retiring of the old views. You accept that burden because you're moving forward and making the product better. You added a new pro lab even though that was enormously complicated to implement and test, added a lot of complication to the pricing UI and still generates a lot of support questions. You're doing these because you decided that the issue was worth the pain. When you decide not to do something, it's the other way around, you're deciding that the issue isn't worth the work.

I did not write all this because I think this particular issue is the most important usability issue you have. I'd probably put 30 other things in front of it. But, I thought the way you answered was just not the way these decisions actually work and thus very misleading to David and anyone else reading it.

I guess I'm really taken aback that you feel me dishonest

I gave an answer that is really, real. Almost anything is possible, of course.

Please add it to uservoice, thanks.

david-low

I'm not totally familiar with the old style what's capable and what's not because most of the time i set to "traditional".

The new style appears to save one step of clicking (only if the viewing style is switched to Smugmug).

Perhaps every style could have the hide/unhide box only after we we enlarge that particular photo. For Thumbnail, we have to enlarge that photo. For Journal, a check box should be beside every photo. For Smugmug, remain status quo, Slide-i don't know.

The above method may entail one more click, but will not waste us another 3 sec. That way, we don't have to remember only Smugmug can see the check box. Also we don't need to switch between viewing style which inevitable involve additional click anyway.

Malte

Andy wrote:

That would be wonderful.. thanks.

http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/366248-separate-gallery-style-setting-for-administrative-purposes

Malte

jfriend

Andy wrote:

I guess I'm really taken aback that you feel me dishonest

I gave an answer that is really, real. Almost anything is possible, of course.

Please add it to uservoice, thanks.

OK, pick a different word if you don't like "honest". I never called you personally dishonest. I just don't feel like your argument about not wanting to add more features is really the real issue. The real issue is whether something is important enough to address it or not. What you're really saying is that you don't think this is important enough to fix.

jfriend

Malte wrote:

http://smugmug.uservoice.com/pages/17723-smugmug/suggestions/366248-separate-gallery-style-setting-for-administrative-purposes

Malte

Maybe Smugmug finds uservoice useful - I can't use it any more. I voted for my top three items a long time ago when uservoice was first set up. None of those items have been implemented, therefore I have no more votes left so I can't use it any more. So, it's only a measure of my top 3 items - that's it. Can't participate in anything else. That seems too bad.