Thanks for acknowledging that the 'turn off' button is not only not "dead simple", it simply does not work. If you'd done that a week or so ago, people might not be so frustrated. It's indescribably annoying to putz with unwanted broken features while the folks who forced them upon you pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
But I'm not happy that it showed up on my site at all. I'm with John on this - let me opt in to new features on my own time. If I miss something, so be it. I'd rather miss a feature than have something I don't want on my site suddenly appear.
Denise,
I totally agree with you, but I've given up wasting my breath trying to convince SM.
They seem dead set on forcing new features on us by default (square thumbs, iphone interface, facebook, etc) that its not worth arguing over anymore.
As long as they give me an easy "off" button and some kind of warning that its coming (beforehand, so I can be prepared to turn it off) then I'm about as happy as I think I'll get.
What I find utterly contradictory in the behavior is that they don't do this with products.
Imagine the uproar from Pros if every new product automatically appeared for sale at cost until the Pro got around to editing their pricing structure.
Obviously they know this would be a problem, so why not take the same approach with new features too?
The tweet and facebook buttons are not the first thing I didn't want to use. In fact the first was the square thumbs - which I was able to get rid of by always starting with a set of default settings. There are more, just can't remember them at the moment.
Hey Denise - to get rid of square thumbs, do you always have to pick a Quick Setting when creating a new gallery?
I hate that 2 years after introducing the Square Thumbs SmugMug still has not offered a true "default gallery settings" option so that I can turn them off *by default*.
That is -- I want to create a New Gallery -- name it, and that's it. My settings should be set to my default settings, not SmugMug's. I shouldn't have to click anything else. Also, if I use a third-party tool to upload that may not support Quick Settings, I either have to manually fix the gallery settings, or I can't change them at all.
Hey Denise - to get rid of square thumbs, do you always have to pick a Quick Setting when creating a new gallery?
I hate that 2 years after introducing the Square Thumbs SmugMug still has not offered a true "default gallery settings" option so that I can turn them off *by default*.
That is -- I want to create a New Gallery -- name it, and that's it. My settings should be set to my default settings, not SmugMug's. I shouldn't have to click anything else. Also, if I use a third-party tool to upload that may not support Quick Settings, I either have to manually fix the gallery settings, or I can't change them at all.
Yeah, Smugmug has simply never gotten around to any sort of default settings for galleries that would let you just create a gallery with non-square thumbs without using a quick setting. I asked for it the day square thumbs came out because I hate that they changed my default gallery to square thumbs and I never want square thumbs.
So, instead of creating my galleries in Smugmug, I just create my galleries in StarExplorer which offers a series of checkboxes for the various gallery settings right in the screen where I'm specifying the name of the gallery (before I've created it) and it remembers my previous settings. So, I always get galleries with rectangular thumbs that don't cut off people's heads in portrait shots. Oh, and btw, StarExplorer lets me create multiple galleries all at once with the same settings and all I have to do is type multiple gallery names into an edit box. Hundreds of clicks fewer than creating them in Smugmug.
Yeah, Smugmug has simply never gotten around to any sort of default settings for galleries that would let you just create a gallery with non-square thumbs without using a quick setting. I asked for it the day square thumbs came out because I hate that they changed my default gallery to square thumbs and I never want square thumbs.
So, instead of creating my galleries in Smugmug, I just create my galleries in StarExplorer which offers a series of checkboxes for the various gallery settings right in the screen where I'm specifying the name of the gallery (before I've created it) and it remembers my previous settings. So, I always get galleries with rectangular thumbs that don't cut off people's heads in portrait shots. Oh, and btw, StarExplorer lets me create multiple galleries all at once with the same settings and all I have to do is type multiple gallery names into an edit box. Hundreds of clicks fewer than creating them in Smugmug.
Not sure I understand the real issue here - we give you the ability to create a quicksetting that you want - thumbs or original, all the settings and you can apply that setting when you create a gallery:
My point is that there are lots of ways to create galleries: plug-ins for Lightroom, Aperture, Picasa and iPhoto; Star*Explorer, SmugBrowser, etc. And let's not forget automatically created galleries by Eye-Fi cards. I'll admit that I haven't checked in a while, but don't think Quick Settings is supported in any/all of those places.
Further -- much like Twitter/Facebook buttons, it would be nice if this was something we could opt-IN for, not out of.
And lastly, it'd be nice if we didn't have to remember to always drop down that menu. Like I said in my post above -- type a Gallery Name, maybe pick a Category, then hit Save. Along with numerous other settings that I *always* want, why can't I make one of my Quick Settings the default for any new gallery I create, regardless of the tool? In MySQL terms, you'd have to add a single boolean field to the Quick Settings table for IsDefault, and then just check that when you create a new gallery.
Compare this to Themes, where *we* get to choose the Default. We should get to choose the default Quick Settings. Because our default may be different than SmugMug Default.
Not sure I understand the real issue here - we give you the ability to create a quicksetting that you want - thumbs or original, all the settings and you can apply that setting when you create a gallery:
Am I missing something
Seven issues:
When you first came out with square thumbs and forced it as the default, you were effectively saying to those of us who don't like square thumbs: "I know you've been creating galleries with rectangular thumbs for years, but now we've decided that we like square thumbs better so if you still want rectangular thumbs, then you need to follow these extra steps every single time you create a new gallery". Now, how is that customer-friendly? You forced us to add steps to our workflow to keep getting the same results we were.
As has been said elsewhere, many other tools for creating galleries don't support quick settings so that solution doesn't work there. You have to create the gallery there and then go back to Smugmug to fix it. Or, not use the other tool to create the gallery.
The Quick Settings UI is absolutely horrible. As you know, I'm a fairly sophisticated user and I routinely get confused when trying to manage quick settings and things get messed up. If it was easy and reliable to use, I might be less resistant to use it and rely on it.
When you go to create a gallery, there's no easy way to review what's in a quick setting. You have to "remember" what everything is set to in order to be sure everything is set how you want.
The whole user flow that's based on create gallery, upload photos, THEN go to gallery settings to see if the gallery is set up appropriately is just completely backwards to my workflow. I want to specify all the settings I want for the gallery and then create it once with all those appropriate settings. Then, and only then, will I upload photos to it. You're current workflow of create, upload, then modify settings is optimized for the newbie user who doesn't modify s settings and keeps most or all galleries at Smugmug defaults. It is not optimized at all for someone who likes to look at the settings and verify/tweak for each gallery they create. Quick settings don't allow verify/tweak either. Star Explorer's gallery creating UI is not that pretty, but it's darn efficient and matches my workflow exactly as I simply specify gallery name, category and all other gallery settings right in one screen BEFORE creating the gallery. It also lets me create multiple galleries all with the same settings by just typing more than one gallery name. You guys could drastically streamline the task of creating multiple galleries with a custom set of gallery settings by implementing some of these concepts.
Quick settings require forethought to create the right quick setting before you go to create the gallery. While that could be done for one setting (like square thumbs), it isn't a general solution that usually works for me.
I manage a couple Smugmug sites for non-profits. We have numerous people uploading on behalf of the non-profit via the assistant capabilty. It's hard enough for me to get these other uploaders to pick the right category. I cannot get them to pick a quick setting. I'd like to have a common set of settings for all new galleries they create (including rectangular thumbs). The ONLY way I know of to make that happen is to have default settings for new galleries that the galleries these assistants create would inherit (unless they explicitly chose something different). As it is now, all galleries get created with square thumbs and I have to manually go fix them after the fact.
#1 Hear hear!
#2 Hey, that's just what I said! Oh... heh.
#3-6 Preach it, brother!
#7 OH MAN, that is where I ran into this problem the most. I eventually just gave up. :-{
We have some plans in place that should address these points - and that's why the uservoice item is marked as 'planned' Thanks guys especially for the detailed feedback.
I should add that square thumbs look really dorky with most portrait images of people because they crop off people's heads. This happens not only if you set your galleries to square thumbs, but happens in the slideshow thumbnail ribbon and there's nothing one can do to change the slideshow at all. That's the main reason I avoid square thumbs. When I upload 1000 photos across 25 galleries for an event, I'm not going to manually set the thumbnail crop on all the photos to keep from cropping off people's heads.
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I'd love to 'like' your photos by the way
http://alacranera.smugmug.com/Happenings/2010-Matsuri/11401312_G3osy#801894377_ZTdic
Nice stuff you have.
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Denise,
I totally agree with you, but I've given up wasting my breath trying to convince SM.
They seem dead set on forcing new features on us by default (square thumbs, iphone interface, facebook, etc) that its not worth arguing over anymore.
As long as they give me an easy "off" button and some kind of warning that its coming (beforehand, so I can be prepared to turn it off) then I'm about as happy as I think I'll get.
What I find utterly contradictory in the behavior is that they don't do this with products.
Imagine the uproar from Pros if every new product automatically appeared for sale at cost until the Pro got around to editing their pricing structure.
Obviously they know this would be a problem, so why not take the same approach with new features too?
Hey Denise - to get rid of square thumbs, do you always have to pick a Quick Setting when creating a new gallery?
I hate that 2 years after introducing the Square Thumbs SmugMug still has not offered a true "default gallery settings" option so that I can turn them off *by default*.
That is -- I want to create a New Gallery -- name it, and that's it. My settings should be set to my default settings, not SmugMug's. I shouldn't have to click anything else. Also, if I use a third-party tool to upload that may not support Quick Settings, I either have to manually fix the gallery settings, or I can't change them at all.
So, instead of creating my galleries in Smugmug, I just create my galleries in StarExplorer which offers a series of checkboxes for the various gallery settings right in the screen where I'm specifying the name of the gallery (before I've created it) and it remembers my previous settings. So, I always get galleries with rectangular thumbs that don't cut off people's heads in portrait shots. Oh, and btw, StarExplorer lets me create multiple galleries all at once with the same settings and all I have to do is type multiple gallery names into an edit box. Hundreds of clicks fewer than creating them in Smugmug.
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Not sure I understand the real issue here - we give you the ability to create a quicksetting that you want - thumbs or original, all the settings
Am I missing something
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Further -- much like Twitter/Facebook buttons, it would be nice if this was something we could opt-IN for, not out of.
And lastly, it'd be nice if we didn't have to remember to always drop down that menu. Like I said in my post above -- type a Gallery Name, maybe pick a Category, then hit Save. Along with numerous other settings that I *always* want, why can't I make one of my Quick Settings the default for any new gallery I create, regardless of the tool? In MySQL terms, you'd have to add a single boolean field to the Quick Settings table for IsDefault, and then just check that when you create a new gallery.
Compare this to Themes, where *we* get to choose the Default. We should get to choose the default Quick Settings. Because our default may be different than SmugMug Default.
Get it?
Note: I originally requested this feature about 2 years ago, in one of those monolithic Feature Request threads:
http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=923772&highlight=default+quick#post923772
And then maybe a year later (stupid UserVoice doesn't include timestamps, grrrr), I posted it on the new SmugMug Feature Request forum:
http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug/suggestions/299234-give-us-the-ability-to-save-default-settings-for-n?ref=title
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#1 Hear hear!
#2 Hey, that's just what I said! Oh... heh.
#3-6 Preach it, brother!
#7 OH MAN, that is where I ran into this problem the most. I eventually just gave up. :-{
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