I need to get to Owner Share "Get A Link" on my iPhone under the Safari browser. The SmugMug mobile app doesn't allow access to that feature either.
I need the DESKTOP version of my site back for viewing on my iPhone!
I don't use safari but the android browser i use brings up a menu when i press and hold on an image. One of the options is "view image" which opens up the X2 size image in my case. The image URL shows up in the address bar and I can get a link to any size I want just by changing the end of the URL. Any chance that works on safari?
I don't use safari but the android browser i use brings up a menu when i press and hold on an image. One of the options is "view image" which opens up the X2 size image in my case. The image URL shows up in the address bar and I can get a link to any size I want just by changing the end of the URL. Any chance that works on safari?
Dave
Thanks, Dave. That WOULD be a workaround. However, the Safari browser on my iPhone doesn't work like that. When I first select an image there is an share button superimposed over the image. Clicking that share button opens up Owner Share. Within Owner Share the "Get a Link" feature is missing.
Formatting of the image on the forced mobile version of New SmugMug (on iPhone browser) is also screwed up. When I click an image it opens up MUCH larger than the screen size and then it's near impossible to scroll around to see the whole image. It's also impossible to use pinch/squeeze to reduce the size of the image to see it all within the iPhone's display.
I heard back from a SmugMug hero and she admitted there is a problem with forced mobile view. She said I was supposed to be able get the desktop view, but something is wrong. They are looking into it.
I never ever want the mobile view. I have a phone that is fully capable of displaying all aspects of a full desktop site. Yet, more and more, various sites are forcing people to view the mobile versions. Those are sites I never visit again (I remove the bookmark).
In the case of SmugMug, I'm screwed if they don't get this working the way it has worked in the past.
BTW, I tired several different ways to try to press and hold on an image and get the "view image" option and it simply doesn't work on iOS. iOS's built-in press-hold features take over.
THAT is why there MUST be some sort of menu option to access Owner Share/Get a Link.
Thanks, Dave. That WOULD be a workaround. However, the Safari browser on my iPhone doesn't work like that. When I first select an image there is an share button superimposed over the image. Clicking that share button opens up Owner Share. Within Owner Share the "Get a Link" feature is missing.
Formatting of the image on the forced mobile version of New SmugMug (on iPhone browser) is also screwed up. When I click an image it opens up MUCH larger than the screen size and then it's near impossible to scroll around to see the whole image. It's also impossible to use pinch/squeeze to reduce the size of the image to see it all within the iPhone's display.
I heard back from a SmugMug hero and she admitted there is a problem with forced mobile view. She said I was supposed to be able get the desktop view, but something is wrong. They are looking into it.
I never ever want the mobile view. I have a phone that is fully capable of displaying all aspects of a full desktop site. Yet, more and more, various sites are forcing people to view the mobile versions. Those are sites I never visit again (I remove the bookmark).
In the case of SmugMug, I'm screwed if they don't get this working the way it has worked in the past.
BTW, I tired several different ways to try to press and hold on an image and get the "view image" option and it simply doesn't work on iOS. iOS's built-in press-hold features take over.
THAT is why there MUST be some sort of menu option to access Owner Share/Get a Link.
With the new toggle buttons "Learn about New SmugMug", "Back to Old SmugMug, etc... does this mean that I now have no real reason to use 2 different browsers as I start working on the switch-over, one for Old & one for New Smug? Or is having 2 browsers open still the only way to have both Old & New open at once?
I think if you're trying to compare your Old SM site to your New SM site, then having 2 tabs or 2 windows open would help. If you're using Chrome there's an option Under "File" to open an "New Incognito Window." In Safari and Firefox it's also under File called "New Private Window". You could also use a second browser.
Incidentally, the first view New Smug is showing me is large thumbs of each category, But the categories are in the exact opposite order from how I have them showing on Old Smug.
Hmm.... when I looked at a few of your folders/galleries they looked identical. Can you send me a link to an example? We do have a bug on galleries that had "Auto-Sort" set to "None" with Sort Direction set to "Descending." In New SmugMug this translates to "Sort Method" of "Position". Since it's manually sorted, direction doesn't apply. We were accidentally flipping the direction if a user went into the New Smugmug Gallery settings (essentially re-sorting it as Ascending). We're about to release a fix for this bug. Galleries and Folders should be in the same order as they were in Old SmugMug.
As to sorting them any way I want, well, my point is that I already had them sorted the way I want, & NewSmug took them & switched them exactly the opposite of how I had them. Feeling very discouraged.
They should have been in the same order -- can you send me a few links so I can double check?
I would absolutely love to know about these things too. They're some of the first things I noticed, along with a bunch of other things, that are distressing about New SmugMug.
It seems that even for the Basic account there several features of an old Smugmug that are missing in the new one.
For each of the one below, could you tell if this is thoughtful decision, an oversight that we should not expect to be correct or I guess a bug that will be corrected someday?
1. If featured photo is not specified, it's defaults to the first image. No way to make a random photo from the gallery shown.
2. No way to show original (not squared) thumbnails in the folder that lists galleries.
3. Description of the gallery are much less important. They are not shown in the list of galleries, or even in the arrange mode.
4. "square" vs "original" thumbnails option does not really work for videos.
Thank you,
Dmitry
1. Yes, the ability to select a random feature photo has been removed. The decision for this was made before I started at SmugMug; I'll try to find out why and get back to you guys.
2. Folders, by default, use the "Grid" layout set to a 1:1 ratio. The Grid can be set to other ratios (3:2, 2:3) but they'll all be that specific ratio (everything horizontal, or everything vertical) if you have a non-basic account (which would require an upgrade). Additionally, the "Collage Landscape" display style could be used to display original aspect ratio (and it can mix portrait/landscape orientation photos).
3. While it won't be ready before the retirement of Old SmugMug, we plan on bringing Gallery Descriptions back!
4. We were discussing this the other day with the Heroes. I'll find out what the final word was.
Well, New Smug Mug may being smart about photo titles, captions, descriptions, whatever...that I've edited on Old Smug. However, it is sadly being very stupid about what it's importing (or rather, not importing) directly from metadata entered in PhotoShop. But they've got no titles. They all say "Add Title". This should absolutely be fixed before October 15. It's pretty inexcusable.
The "Title" field is something new for New SmugMug. Since Titles, Captions, and Keywords are editable in SmugMug but not re-written into your files (for various reasons, including we don't want to touch your original files) we pull them out and store them ourselves. Photos uploaded to Old SmugMug never had their title stored. Anything uploaded in the New SmugMug will have the title imported.
what about LightRoom... is New SmugMug importing those titles correctly?? Sigh.
Lightroom works great and is one way that you could update the titles on your photos (I think. I'll have to give it a try). On my own site (www.aaronmphotography.com) you'll see Titles and Captions on all of my photos; all of those were added in Lightroom and published straight to SM, where they're imported automatically.
The fact that all the important info is completely below the fold, while the number of the photo (which used to be small, above to the left, & unobtrusive) has this prominent position right below the photo, with gobs of space around it... & then the caption is invisible & way below.... AAaaaargh!! We fed that back, long long ago. Ok, I'm going now. I have to breathe.
The "problem" with having a large user base is that people have such varied thoughts on how things should look. For every person who hates having the photo # under the photo, there's another person who says it's absolutely essential.
When visiting my site on my iPhone, I am being FORCED to view the mobile version of my site. I mean, even in Safari (web browser on the iPhone), only the mobile version of my site will be displayed (and now only the NEW SmugMug version, there appears to be no way to go back to the OLD SmugMug on my iPhone). The mobile version of my site (via Safari on iPhone) looks pretty similar to the SmugMug app.
Is it a safe assumption that you haven't published your New SmugMug site yet? If so, your mobile phone is displaying the Old SmugMug mobile version. The mobile version of your New SmugMug site should look almost identical to your desktop version, except formatted to fit the screen. For example, my site viewed in mobile safari shows my background slideshow, my navigation menu, and my social icons. Meanwhile, the mobile app shows a list of all my folders/galleries, or in other words the mobile web and the mobile app look very different.
I need the DESKTOP version of my site back for viewing on my iPhone!
In the New SmugMug, your mobile view should look almost identical to the desktop view, with the exception of a few things formatted to fit better on the smaller mobile screen. While some people (perhaps yourself?) might have an iPhone 6+ with a super large screen, many of your visitors may not, and we want to make sure your site looks great on their devices as well.
Eeek.... is it just Safari that's forcing the Mobile View, or other browsers too?
The SmugMug mobile view in New SmugMug is a mobile sized version of your desktop site. This is very different from what Old SmugMug did, which just displayed a list of your categories or galleries. The New SmugMug is what you'd expect: your desktop site just fit for mobile. If you had a menu on desktop, it'll be there in mobile. If you sorted your galleries a certain way on desktop, it'll be that way on mobile.
We detect the window size and display the appropriate sized site, regardless of browser. Safari, Chrome, anything else, they'll all load the mobile version if you're on a small screen. Chrome has some built in tools that can show you what your site would look like on mobile, if you're on a desktop and curious.
In the New SmugMug, your mobile view should look almost identical to the desktop view, with the exception of a few things formatted to fit better on the smaller mobile screen. While some people (perhaps yourself?) might have an iPhone 6+ with a super large screen, many of your visitors may not, and we want to make sure your site looks great on their devices as well.
I understand the need to make customers' sites look great on mobile devices. But that's not addressing my request. Under the old SmugMug, I could force just my own site to ALWAYS show the Desktop version. My choice to turn off mobile view for my site impacted nobody else's site. Only the visitors to MY site were impacted by my decision. SmugMug provided a choice, and it was my choice to make.
In new SmugMug there is no longer a choice. You are forcing all of your users to accept the mobile formatted view whether they want it or not.
Why can't there be a setting where WE decided how our site looks on mobile devices? It's OUR site. In my case, it won't reflect poorly on SmugMug because there is no SmugMug branding on my site.
It seems a pretty simple thing to implement. If I have Mobile view turned off, then visitors to my site get the desktop view every time. Worked just fine under old SmugMug, why take it away under new SmugMug?
That said, if you do provide a version of the SmugMug app for iOS that gives me access to Owner Share/Get A Link for any size of individual photo, that will sooth some of my concerns but I would STILL like the ability turn off mobile view for my site.
Will this new SmugMug app be available before October 15?
In the meantime, can you PLEASE make it possible for me to view my OLD SmugMug site via the browser on my iPhone? October 15 hasn't arrived yet and already my ONLY choice on my iPhone is new SmugMug. Even if I turn my phone's display to landscape mode, not enough of the page is displayed for me to gain access to the blue "back to old SmugMug" button.
The SmugMug mobile view in New SmugMug is a mobile sized version of your desktop site. This is very different from what Old SmugMug did, which just displayed a list of your categories or galleries. The New SmugMug is what you'd expect: your desktop site just fit for mobile. If you had a menu on desktop, it'll be there in mobile. If you sorted your galleries a certain way on desktop, it'll be that way on mobile.
We detect the window size and display the appropriate sized site, regardless of browser. Safari, Chrome, anything else, they'll all load the mobile version if you're on a small screen. Chrome has some built in tools that can show you what your site would look like on mobile, if you're on a desktop and curious.
See bolded part of the quote. I'm sorry, but that simply isn't accurate. The desktop view of my site under new SmugMug has a "Get A Link" option under Owner Share. The mobile view of my site does NOT have a "Get A Link" option under Owner share.
In the New SmugMug, your mobile view should look almost identical to the desktop view, with the exception of a few things formatted to fit better on the smaller mobile screen.
See bolded part of the quote. I'm sorry, but that simply isn't accurate. The desktop view of my site under new SmugMug has a "Get A Link" option under Owner Share. The mobile view of my site does NOT have a "Get A Link" option under Owner share.
Mark is right; when signed onto my site on my phone (Windows 8.1), the get a link option is missing. I've included a screen shot below.
To the questions / answers below (& I probably won't be able to respond more until Mon.)... as to the first, I think I'd either have to use 2 incidents of FF (2 FireFox browser pages) open at once, or use one of FF & one of IE. Problem is, the other computer-user in our household has everything in Chrome set to open with all his pages. We never use IE, but maybe I can stand it for this project. To use 2 incidents of FF, one "incognito" tho... hmm, I don't even know where "File" is. My FF opens w/ all my bookmarks...
As to the next answer, I was talking about that page where my New SmugMug automatically opens to (since I haven't worked on it yet). On NewSmug, there's evidently nothing to replicate my whole Old Smug slideshow opening page yet, so my site instead opens to a twisted version of part of what had been my "All Galleries" page, then it has a map & other stuff from my former opening slideshow page. And I assume you'd have to be logged in to my site to see this, but it's just my New (unpublished) site's ugly current homepage: http://www.winsomeworks.com/ Several unlisted galleries are the first in the line-up. They're last in Old Smug, in the section called "Gallery Categories" under my Old Smug "All Galleries" tab. "Portfolio", "Nature", "Flowers", "Travel" are last on this New page. But in Old Smug, I have them listed first.
I probably shouldn't even be worrying about them now, because I have much bigger problems to sort out-- like just where / how to start rebuilding my site. I'm pretty darned lost. I have lots of instructions in different places, but keeping lots of them open besides having 2 instances of the site open on a very slow computer is daunting. I'm not good at seeing the whole picture as it is, & It's such a large site that I don't want to re-do things gazillions of times or screw up stuff that is already semi-presentable. Everything (even tho it's evidently been pre-set to mimic my Old site) looks so entirely different & disorienting to me, so I'm at a loss as to where to even begin getting a look I can live with. I can't even tell when I'm on a cat, sub-cat, or gallery page in New Smug because they're so similar. Then when I start even thinking about the work I went to (after 100s of hrs customizing) to get my blog to match, I about lose my mind remembering that I'll have to go thru that again too. But where to even start, with any of it....
Just tried to go "Back to New SmugMug" and got "Page Not Found". Ok...
I think if you're trying to compare your Old SM site to your New SM site, then having 2 tabs or 2 windows open would help. If you're using Chrome there's an option Under "File" to open an "New Incognito Window." In Safari and Firefox it's also under File called "New Private Window". You could also use a second browser.
Hmm.... when I looked at a few of your folders/galleries they looked identical. Can you send me a link to an example? We do have a bug on galleries that had "Auto-Sort" set to "None" with Sort Direction set to "Descending." In New SmugMug this translates to "Sort Method" of "Position". Since it's manually sorted, direction doesn't apply. We were accidentally flipping the direction if a user went into the New Smugmug Gallery settings (essentially re-sorting it as Ascending). We're about to release a fix for this bug. Galleries and Folders should be in the same order as they were in Old SmugMug.
They should have been in the same order -- can you send me a few links so I can double check?...
I understand the need to make customers' sites look great on mobile devices. But that's not addressing my request. Under the old SmugMug, I could force just my own site to ALWAYS show the Desktop version. My choice to turn off mobile view for my site impacted nobody else's site. Only the visitors to MY site were impacted by my decision. SmugMug provided a choice, and it was my choice to make.
In new SmugMug there is no longer a choice. You are forcing all of your users to accept the mobile formatted view whether they want it or not. Why can't there be a setting where WE decided how our site looks on mobile devices?
The short answer to this is Yes, there are a few things in New SmugMug that we're forcing you to do.
The longer answer is that, as Alameth has pointed out, there are some fundamental differences between what Old SmugMug and what New SmugMug are. When we set out and built Old SmugMug we thought people wanted complete control to do whatever they wanted and we wanted to enable you to do that. Over the years as the state of photography changes and the number of people with photos grows, so too do the way users want to interact with SmugMug. The number of people who want complete control over every aspect of their site and don't mind having thousands of settings has shrunk, as the number of people who just want something easy that works has grown immensely. The New SmugMug aims to provide a beautiful website where your photos look their best, and to do it as easily as possible. We've tried to improve customization with the Customizer, help you keep your photos organized with the Organizer, and made your photos look better with beautiful designs. But we've also simplified the site. We want to avoid "Option Overload", confusing options that are hard to understand for most people, or hard to use features. With simplification means that some features won't be available anymore, or if they are, simplified so that your photos remain beautiful without clutter or hard-to-use tools.
The way we chose to display the mobile vs. the desktop site depends upon the width of the browsing screen. Safari does have a way to request the desktop site but all it does is switch the User Agent (the name of the browser that gets sent to a webserver) from "iPhone" to "Macintosh". Since we don't use the User Agent to determine which site to display, nothing happens and the mobile site continues to display.
The reason we do this is for readability of a users site. Here's a mock-up of a few versions of your site on an iPhone 6:
Your Old SmugMug site forced to Desktop makes it nearly impossible for someone to click on your menu bar without having to zoom way in. This is something we wanted to avoid with the New SmugMug. Your New SmugMug site, forced into Desktop view, actually looks pretty good, but again, the menu items are too small for a visitor to click on with their finger. Instead we display it in a slightly changed Mobile view. I have to admit, the initial mobile view of your site doesn't look as stunning as your Desktop homepage, and I can see where your frustration comes from. A few small CSS tweaks can greatly improve that. Let me know if you'd like some help developing the CSS to clean things up on your mobile display.
The reason I mentioned the long explanation above is because of the need to make it easy for everyone to have a good looking mobile site. Your site, for example, will look pretty good as a mobile display. But many other peoples sites will not. For example, take a look at what my site would look like on Desktop display:
This would be unusable. We don't to allow people to accidentally turn this desktop view on. I wish we could say that every option on SmugMug is obvious to every SmugMug user but sadly that's not the case. There will always be users who don't understand what something does, and if that option can have drastic effects on the persons site, it's not an option we want to offer.
Will this new SmugMug app be available before October 15?
The new apps are undergoing extensive testing before we release them, so I cannot comment on a specific release date, however, we'd like to release them before October 15th. Please note that these new apps will not work with Old SmugMug and you'll need to be published on New SmugMug to access your photos with them. It's possible that there would be a few week period where the new apps are available and users are still in Old SmugMug (i.e. a few weeks prior to October 15).
In the meantime, can you PLEASE make it possible for me to view my OLD SmugMug site via the browser on my iPhone? October 15 hasn't arrived yet and already my ONLY choice on my iPhone is new SmugMug. Even if I turn my phone's display to landscape mode, not enough of the page is displayed for me to gain access to the blue "back to old SmugMug" button.
If you're logged out of SmugMug on your mobile device, we'll still show the Old SmugMug site. If you're trying to get to Old SmugMug while also logged in from your mobile device, there's a URL you can go to that will take you back to Old SmugMug. I'll send you a Private Message with this URL.
The desktop view of my site under new SmugMug has a "Get A Link" option under Owner Share. The mobile view of my site does NOT have a "Get A Link" option under Owner share.
You and Denise are correct. Get a Link is not available on mobile. There's still a few Legacy SmugMug tools still living in the wild and Get a Link is one of those. They don't display very well, and some of its functionality (like the "Copy Link" buttons) require flash, which doesn't work on mobile. Trying to administer your site on a small mobile screen can be very difficult some tools have been disabled and have to be accessed from a non-mobile system. The mobile site is meant more to display your photos and the rest of your site. I'll take it as a feature request to add a mobile version of Get a Link though!
On NewSmug, there's evidently nothing to replicate my whole Old Smug slideshow opening page yet
I think the simplest and easiest thing for you would be to put you in touch with one of our Heroes. I've left a message for one of our Customizers to get in touch with you. Look out for an email from them!
... On NewSmug, there's evidently nothing to replicate my whole Old Smug slideshow opening page yet, so my site instead opens to a twisted version of part of what had been my "All Galleries" page, then it has a map & other stuff from my former opening slideshow page ....
You are way over thinking all this. A few notes below.
For your NewSmug homepage. Just looked at your OldSmug. If all the boxes on Old are not on your
New homepage everything on Old can be added to New to look almost exactly the same. Delete all
that's there now then add a slideshow widget, map widget, popular photo widget, keyword widget.
Add logo and two menu widgets in header. Your menu's are simple, just a title and link same as OldSmug.
The menu might take some CSS so it looks the same as old. We can help with that.
Looked at every page you have and it should be easy to get New like Old. You have nothing that's complicated.
All you current Old category and sub-cat names will be identical on New so the breadcrumb will look the same.
You are using different banners for some categories. No problem but it will require a little CSS to do that. Again we can help.
The short answer to this is Yes, there are a few things in New SmugMug that we're forcing you to do.
The longer answer is that, as Alameth has pointed out, there are some fundamental differences between what Old SmugMug and what New SmugMug are. When we set out and built Old SmugMug we thought people wanted complete control to do whatever they wanted and we wanted to enable you to do that.
I think people can understand that, however some issues discussed above makes little sense.
Like - square only thumbnails on the folder view. I can make pictures look normal (or they way I want) in the gallery itself and on the front page where all folders are shown. However to get back the options that was available in the folder (or subgallery) page, you need to upgrade the account. I do believe you are not doing it to force people to upgrade, but there no other explanation.
Same about the "featured" photo. It used to be very logical where if no photo is selected you get a random one. Now it's completely non-trivial and non documented, that if non is selected you assign the first one. People are suggesting to create a nicely looking square thumbnail in the hidden folder and assign it to each gallery. It's adding more confusion and is non intuitive at all.
The missing cropped thumbnail for the featured photo is also a bummer.
I had custom 1x1 cropped thumbnails set in the old Smugmug and now in the new Smugmug, they are using center cropped 1x1 images (meaning the people's heads are cut off) of the same previously featured photo. This is horrible. Seems like the new design went backwards to when Smugmug first started and we needed Javascript to work around that.
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The missing cropped thumbnail for the featured photo is also a bummer.
I had custom 1x1 cropped thumbnails set in the old Smugmug and now in the new Smugmug, they are using center cropped 1x1 images (meaning the people's heads are cut off) of the same previously featured photo. This is horrible. Seems like the new design went backwards to when Smugmug first started and we needed Javascript to work around that.
I mean... it's great that people care enough to build & share extensions & workarounds of all types for these New SmugMug omissions, & I'm glad others can find them & share them, too.. but for goodness' sake, we expect more out of SmugMug when it comes to (especially) the pages of our sites that first greet people. To think that they left off such an obvious capability that we had before, & it's evidently not even getting fixed before the final Old Smug shut-down is just sad. I can't comprehend how such a visual-based kind of site doesn't have visual designers who catch these things & make sure they make sense & that the site-owners like them before roll-outs. When there's that kind of void, we then have years of people begging for a "feature" they once had as standard fare. Wouldn't it be so much easier for them to just fix it.
I mean... it's great that people care enough to build & share extensions & workarounds of all types for these New SmugMug omissions, & I'm glad others can find them & share them, too.. but for goodness' sake, we expect more out of SmugMug when it comes to (especially) the pages of our sites that first greet people.
The extension that was referenced is for site developers only - the viewers of your site will never see it.
While I know there are things in legacy that are not in new smugmug I believe the product made a huge leap forward with new smug. My site was heavily customized in legacy; when new smug became available I was able to remove almost all of the code-level customizations. I was happy with my site when I published it the first day that new smug was available and I continue to be happy with it.
Only you can decide if new smug works for you - but I've looked at your site and as Allen pointed out to you in this post I believe you should be able to convert fairly easily. Why not update your site and ask for help if you need it instead of spending time reacting to posts as you currently are?
One thing I noticed on many sites, using college style for photos. This looks really nice but I think
only if you have a few photos in a gallery. If you have a lot of photos I think you're kidding yourself
if all your photos are being seen. Do you really expect folks to sit there all the time it takes to load
photos after photos and see all your photos?
farce
when something almost just works (all the features smugmug have promised over the years but still yet to deliver)
then why go change it and remove functionality, but also what's been lost in new smug are the tools in the right place for the right.
from the simplest things - who ever thought that sticking the info box over the top of photo in 'new pretty useless smug' was intelligent placement should be sacked. The old placement to the side was perfect, still be able to see the photo and have the info.
old smug wasnt the most beautiful site, but it worked out of the box - for the customer and the photographer. New smug simply doesnt
i've spent hours and days as have my staff both when new smug launched to this forced change...and none of us can get something we like and that when is tested with customers - they like and think is an improvement.
If as some smug person said earlier in this thread that the backend of all accounts were moved to new smug two years ago - then why are we the customers being forced to move to something many of us have expressly said we dislike?
This forced change will affect my business, it's already costing me lots of money and time.
The incessant 'it's wonderful, and lovely and try it" has gone beyond irritating to the extent that a casual chat with a lawyer friend while watching football evolved into exploring the options of filing an injunction to prevent smugmug turning off old smug.
I'm all for progress and improvement, but new smug isnt an improvement - but the staff wont accept that large numbers of customers dont like it and dont want it. Why not try listening to your customers instead of just mindlessly repeating 'it's lovely just try it"
One thing I noticed on many sites, using college style for photos. This looks really nice but I think
only if you have a few photos in a gallery. If you have a lot of photos I think you're kidding yourself
if all your photos are being seen. Do you really expect folks to sit there all the time it takes to load
photos after photos and see all your photos?
I'm probably going to switch to collage for most of my galleries. If you have lots of pics in a gallery, I don't think the style matters too much--they're not going to click on page after page in SmugMug style either unless they really like what they see. Even if they like it, I doubt many will go beyond a third page. As a general rule, I think public facing galleries ought to be small. I looked at what collage does with an archive of about 1000 pics, and it looked reasonably usable--it displays the first ones immediately so you don't have to wait and it downloads in chunks, so someone who loses interest quickly doesn't get stuck with a huge hit on their bandwidth meter. So I really don't see the problem.
Is there an option to jump to a particular page? For example, someone came to view 1000 images but something came up and they walked away after seeing 200. Can there be a way for them to jump over those 200 the next time they come back to the gallery? Smugmug layout allowed that in the past.
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Is there an option to jump to a particular page? For example, someone came to view 1000 images but something came up and they walked away after seeing 200. Can there be a way for them to jump over those 200 the next time they come back to the gallery? Smugmug layout allowed that in the past.
SmugMug layout still allows the viewer to choose a page to jump to. Page selection is directly under the section of the gallery showing the thumbs.
The short answer to this is Yes, there are a few things in New SmugMug that we're forcing you to do.
The longer answer is that, as Alameth has pointed out, there are some fundamental differences between what Old SmugMug and what New SmugMug are. When we set out and built Old SmugMug we thought people wanted complete control to do whatever they wanted and we wanted to enable you to do that. Over the years as the state of photography changes and the number of people with photos grows, so too do the way users want to interact with SmugMug. The number of people who want complete control over every aspect of their site and don't mind having thousands of settings has shrunk, as the number of people who just want something easy that works has grown immensely. The New SmugMug aims to provide a beautiful website where your photos look their best, and to do it as easily as possible. We've tried to improve customization with the Customizer, help you keep your photos organized with the Organizer, and made your photos look better with beautiful designs. But we've also simplified the site. We want to avoid "Option Overload", confusing options that are hard to understand for most people, or hard to use features. With simplification means that some features won't be available anymore, or if they are, simplified so that your photos remain beautiful without clutter or hard-to-use tools.
The way we chose to display the mobile vs. the desktop site depends upon the width of the browsing screen. Safari does have a way to request the desktop site but all it does is switch the User Agent (the name of the browser that gets sent to a webserver) from "iPhone" to "Macintosh". Since we don't use the User Agent to determine which site to display, nothing happens and the mobile site continues to display.
The reason we do this is for readability of a users site. Here's a mock-up of a few versions of your site on an iPhone 6:
Your Old SmugMug site forced to Desktop makes it nearly impossible for someone to click on your menu bar without having to zoom way in. This is something we wanted to avoid with the New SmugMug. Your New SmugMug site, forced into Desktop view, actually looks pretty good, but again, the menu items are too small for a visitor to click on with their finger. Instead we display it in a slightly changed Mobile view. I have to admit, the initial mobile view of your site doesn't look as stunning as your Desktop homepage, and I can see where your frustration comes from. A few small CSS tweaks can greatly improve that. Let me know if you'd like some help developing the CSS to clean things up on your mobile display.
The reason I mentioned the long explanation above is because of the need to make it easy for everyone to have a good looking mobile site. Your site, for example, will look pretty good as a mobile display. But many other peoples sites will not. For example, take a look at what my site would look like on Desktop display:
This would be unusable. We don't to allow people to accidentally turn this desktop view on. I wish we could say that every option on SmugMug is obvious to every SmugMug user but sadly that's not the case. There will always be users who don't understand what something does, and if that option can have drastic effects on the persons site, it's not an option we want to offer.
The new apps are undergoing extensive testing before we release them, so I cannot comment on a specific release date, however, we'd like to release them before October 15th. Please note that these new apps will not work with Old SmugMug and you'll need to be published on New SmugMug to access your photos with them. It's possible that there would be a few week period where the new apps are available and users are still in Old SmugMug (i.e. a few weeks prior to October 15).
If you're logged out of SmugMug on your mobile device, we'll still show the Old SmugMug site. If you're trying to get to Old SmugMug while also logged in from your mobile device, there's a URL you can go to that will take you back to Old SmugMug. I'll send you a Private Message with this URL.
You and Denise are correct. Get a Link is not available on mobile. There's still a few Legacy SmugMug tools still living in the wild and Get a Link is one of those. They don't display very well, and some of its functionality (like the "Copy Link" buttons) require flash, which doesn't work on mobile. Trying to administer your site on a small mobile screen can be very difficult some tools have been disabled and have to be accessed from a non-mobile system. The mobile site is meant more to display your photos and the rest of your site. I'll take it as a feature request to add a mobile version of Get a Link though!
Aaron,
Sorry for taking a few days to respond. Thank you for the thorough explanation. I really appreciate you taking the time. But, sadly, what I hear you saying (regarding desktop view on mobile devices) is you "dumbed down" SmugMug so it would be attractive to a wider audience of potential customers. I can accept the business reasoning for that decision. But what I can't accept is why you have to force the "dumbing down" on everyone!
What is so difficult or unreasonable about allowing (those customers that want to) to completely turn off mobile view??
I was just looking at a gallery of recent photos on my site via the new SmugMug mobile view on my iPhone. It's horrible. A bunch of tiny thumbnails and no larger image display. You say the simple buttons on my site are too small, yet, the superimposed controls the new SmugMug places on the mobile view thumbnails is even more "fiddly" and annoying. You are covering the thumbnail view of my galleries on a mobile device with the description for the photo. What happened to the SmugMug that started this business because it was all about the photos? Why are you covering my photos with text? Why put a download icon visibly over my photo thumbnails. Those things obscure the thumbnails and without a larger view on the same page, people would have to go photo by photo (open/close, open/close, open/close) to see anything on their mobile devices when they just want to view SOME of the photos.
We aren't in the days of Palm Pilots. Modern mobile devices have powerful browsers and allow the ability to quickly pinch and zoom anywhere on the page. Even when I go to Amazon.com on my iPhone and Amazon automatically serves up the mobile version, I immediately scroll to the bottom of the page and return to the desktop view.
It is MY site. I've been paying the extra bucks to have the features I want. Now SmugMug is taking away a feature that I am and prefer. Namely, visitors ALWAYS default to the desktop view. As far as I'm concerned, there is no mobile view for my site. If the visitors to my site don't like it, that's MY problem, not SmugMug's.
The fact that my site looks pretty decent in desktop view on mobile devices is no accident. This is all highly frustrating and I'm never going to be happy about the decisions that SmugMug is making that impacts people like me. I am beginning to very much regret choosing SmugMug to host my photos in the first place. It literally feels like the company that I started out with has undergone some sort of metamorphosis and isn't the same company anymore. The SmugMug that I joined way back when would never take away features that are important to their customers.
I know viewers wouldn't see the extension...didn't mean that. I meant I'm very glad people like David take time to offer fixes, but that it's frustrating we should have a need to go fix this; SmugMug could've simply made it available. Those thumbs are some of the first things people see when they visit a lot of SmugMug sites, & the bizarre crops & inability to simply fix them isn't what most of us expect. I've seen a lot of sites with stuff like that, & just think it's a bummer & reflects poorly on SmugMug & the site owner. If it's some other photo site where you might pay $30 a yr, sure, maybe it's understandable.
As to switching-- I can read lots of stuff (forum, instructions, etc.) horizontally for a time on smartphone & also post that way, or I'll sit briefly at desktop to do so. Completely re-designing my site, & even doing the basics to make it presentable... it's just very tough w/o sitting upright at desktop to work at it. (Major back probs) Currently trying to read all the "Do's & Don'ts" & figure out where to start, & many folks have been quite helpful. Problem is, my instructions are in so many different places-- forum, messages, notes, email, pieces of paper.. yes, I'm overwhelmed. Gonna re-read Al's posts a few times & try to dig in. Yes, he's been a great great help, and so have you & others, even if many posts are directed at others trying to switch over.
I keep running into things that were easy to do on Old Smug (like just now, seeing there's no drag to arrange in gallery) or that may be tough to change later if I don't get it the way I want now, & this trips me up. But I guess the biggest thing I'm trying to sort out, but haven't yet, is this: I'd like to have just one SmugMug site like I do now (for a whole host of reasons) but hope to somehow be able to separate family/friends/snapshot/stuff in a better way (so those galleries & sub-cats aren't so obvious to the casual visitor). I'd rather that my friends/family not need passwords in general tho; just certain galleries now & then PWed is fine & I can handle that. But I feel it'd be wise to do this re-org while re-doing my site. I'd asked this question for Old Smug, but some of the privacy / viewability options have changed now, so the answers will be different. If anyone reading this has any thoughts-- fire away!
I'm not at all glued to having my site look the way it does now & will be very glad for some of the updated options, (alas, New Smug-style galleries, sadly, look very awkward to me) but if I'm going to be going into gazillions of settings anyway, I really hope to sort out the above organizational question first. Design-wise, I think I'd be glad to have my "banner", navigation, etc. on the left side instead of up top, since there are so many issues in New Smug with captions etc. being below the fold as it is. But I haven't even gotten to how to achieve that. My wkends 'til Oct. 15 are booked, so it's going to be a race. A horizontal race. Not fun.
Incidentally, where's the best place to quickly look at a bunch of sites to get a smattering of what's achievable w/o difficult customizations? One specific question that may help me think thru this too is: Are the collage-style galleries only able to be collaged horizontally? In other words, is there no way (even w/ customization) to give vertical shots' thumbs "equal footing" so to speak?
The extension that was referenced is for site developers only - the viewers of your site will never see it.
While I know there are things in legacy that are not in new smugmug I believe the product made a huge leap forward with new smug. My site was heavily customized in legacy; when new smug became available I was able to remove almost all of the code-level customizations. I was happy with my site when I published it the first day that new smug was available and I continue to be happy with it.
Only you can decide if new smug works for you - but I've looked at your site and as Allen pointed out to you in this post I believe you should be able to convert fairly easily. Why not update your site and ask for help if you need it instead of spending time reacting to posts as you currently are?
...One specific question that may help me think thru this too is: Are the collage-style galleries only able to be collaged horizontally? In other words, is there no way (even w/ customization) to give vertical shots' thumbs "equal footing" so to speak?
There are two collage styles - collage landscape, and collage portrait. Choose the one that works best for most photos in a gallery.
Captions / Titles Directly Under Photos should be option in New SmugMug
I forgot to respond to this one part-- I honestly would have to be shown real numbers on this particular thing, which to me is a highly important thing, to believe that anywhere near as many site-owners (or even visitors, for that matter) would desire seeing a number under the photo instead of seeing a caption. (especially if it means scrolling to see the caption, which it does on nearly every Smug site I've seen so far.. even where there's plenty of space for it to move up!! And that's even on a desktop--- so many use laptops now & that means lots more sites require scrolling to view captions). We're not even talking about the number then being invisible or hard to find-- It's quite visible in Old Smug (even moreso imo because it's bolder!) All we're saying is (and I've seen gazillions of people saying it, & seen no one saying they want numbers underneath) we should at very least have an option to have our caption directly under our photos. There are so many galleries in which the caption is highly important & integral. I have not one gallery in which the number makes a difference at all. I find this whole thing very depressing & putting a big damper on the switch-over. I'm afraid to even know what the captions / numbers do in New Smug mobile view.
I think if you're trying to compare your Old SM site to your New SM site...
....The "problem" with having a large user base is that people have such varied thoughts on how things should look. For every person who hates having the photo # under the photo, there's another person who says it's absolutely essential.....
Yes, just hard to tell here on DGrin which are highly customized & which are more "out-of the-box" or not difficult to customize. Ok, I was wishing for a collage style that mixes the two. I rarely have a gallery that has one or the other. Makes SmugMug look like every other photo site out there these days.
I just realized there's another issue here. On the new SmugMug versions of my site, I am seeing SmugMug branding. I pay to NOT have the SmugMug branding. Is this just a matter of settings that I have to change (again)?
Edit: If it's a simple settings change, I'm not finding it. So much for the new SmugMug being easier to use.
SmugMug layout still allows the viewer to choose a page to jump to. Page selection is directly under the section of the gallery showing the thumbs.
--- Denise
I know it is with the SmugMug layout, but on the new design, it is much "smaller" than when I had it on the old smugmut layout.
Now if we can only add the page jumping to the Collage layout, that would be awesome.
Johnny J. Chin ~ J. Chin Photography Facebook ♦ Flickr ♦ SmugMug
SmugMug referral coupon code: ix3uDyfBU6xXs
(use this for a discount off your SmugMug subscription)
I just realized there's another issue here. On the new SmugMug versions of my site, I am seeing SmugMug branding. I pay to NOT have the SmugMug branding. Is this just a matter of settings that I have to change (again)?
Edit: If it's a simple settings change, I'm not finding it. So much for the new SmugMug being easier to use. <sigh>
Edit: If it's a simple settings change, I'm not finding it. So much for the new SmugMug being easier to use. <sigh>
You just hit the nail on why we want to make SmugMug simpler. Everyone asks for more features, more options, let me choose how I want it ... but every time we go add those things it makes the site more complex for users. We're trying to make SmugMug easier and sometimes that means change or removing functionality that a good portion of customers aren't using.
Problem is, my instructions are in so many different places-- forum, messages, notes, email, pieces of paper.. yes, I'm overwhelmed. Gonna re-read Al's posts a few times & try to dig in. Yes, he's been a great great help, and so have you & others, even if many posts are directed at others trying to switch over.
This is the dichotomy that continue to be pressed upon: more and more features, more options, more control, yet it also needs to be easy. I really wish that more features could also be easy but in reality the more options are available, the harder a tool is to use. We try to balance functionality with ease-of-use. Some things become less robust in New SmugMug but many many things are easy. In fact, New SmugMug makes so many of the difficult items (or even nearly impossible items) feasible.
For every design change or feature implementation there is someone who wants it done the complete opposite. I can't even begin to tell you the number of people who have asked for us to implement features in the exact way that you find unacceptable. As a cohesive product, we move SmugMug in a direction that will continue to keep it here for (hopefully) longer than we'll all be alive. If we try to go off on random tangents we'll end up like the majority of photo companies these days who go out of business (just like as one of the leaders in this market recently announced it is shutting down).
Most of the information that would help you is contained on our help pages, or even more specifically the New SmugMug Help Center (http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/2079954). Have you watched one of the webinars or tutorial videos that I linked you? They will be even more helpful than reading articles. I can tell that you're afraid to play with the site (and I realize that some of this is because you're physically unable to ... I hope you recover quickly. Back issues are never fun!) but as Denise has said, give things a try, and you'll see how they effect the site. If you don't like it, change it back! If the tutorials, webinar, and help center aren't enough, there's always DGrin. Steve Mills, one of our best Support Heroes also reached out to you to offer you direct help. Take advantage of this -- he's amazing and can answer any question you throw at him (and I know you have many, which is why we asked him to be your Hero)!
If you have specific questions I'm more than happy to answer them, but we have to balance our responses with moving SmugMug into the future. I'm someone who needs to vent my frustrations, so feel free to use DGrin as that avenue, but going forward we're going to focus our efforts on answering any specific questions you might have in getting yourself happy with the New SmugMug!
Comments
I don't use safari but the android browser i use brings up a menu when i press and hold on an image. One of the options is "view image" which opens up the X2 size image in my case. The image URL shows up in the address bar and I can get a link to any size I want just by changing the end of the URL. Any chance that works on safari?
Dave
Thanks, Dave. That WOULD be a workaround. However, the Safari browser on my iPhone doesn't work like that. When I first select an image there is an share button superimposed over the image. Clicking that share button opens up Owner Share. Within Owner Share the "Get a Link" feature is missing.
Formatting of the image on the forced mobile version of New SmugMug (on iPhone browser) is also screwed up. When I click an image it opens up MUCH larger than the screen size and then it's near impossible to scroll around to see the whole image. It's also impossible to use pinch/squeeze to reduce the size of the image to see it all within the iPhone's display.
I heard back from a SmugMug hero and she admitted there is a problem with forced mobile view. She said I was supposed to be able get the desktop view, but something is wrong. They are looking into it.
I never ever want the mobile view. I have a phone that is fully capable of displaying all aspects of a full desktop site. Yet, more and more, various sites are forcing people to view the mobile versions. Those are sites I never visit again (I remove the bookmark).
In the case of SmugMug, I'm screwed if they don't get this working the way it has worked in the past.
BTW, I tired several different ways to try to press and hold on an image and get the "view image" option and it simply doesn't work on iOS. iOS's built-in press-hold features take over.
THAT is why there MUST be some sort of menu option to access Owner Share/Get a Link.
Thank you for attempting to offer a solution.
Mark
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Hmm.... when I looked at a few of your folders/galleries they looked identical. Can you send me a link to an example? We do have a bug on galleries that had "Auto-Sort" set to "None" with Sort Direction set to "Descending." In New SmugMug this translates to "Sort Method" of "Position". Since it's manually sorted, direction doesn't apply. We were accidentally flipping the direction if a user went into the New Smugmug Gallery settings (essentially re-sorting it as Ascending). We're about to release a fix for this bug. Galleries and Folders should be in the same order as they were in Old SmugMug.
They should have been in the same order -- can you send me a few links so I can double check?
1. Yes, the ability to select a random feature photo has been removed. The decision for this was made before I started at SmugMug; I'll try to find out why and get back to you guys.
2. Folders, by default, use the "Grid" layout set to a 1:1 ratio. The Grid can be set to other ratios (3:2, 2:3) but they'll all be that specific ratio (everything horizontal, or everything vertical) if you have a non-basic account (which would require an upgrade). Additionally, the "Collage Landscape" display style could be used to display original aspect ratio (and it can mix portrait/landscape orientation photos).
3. While it won't be ready before the retirement of Old SmugMug, we plan on bringing Gallery Descriptions back!
4. We were discussing this the other day with the Heroes. I'll find out what the final word was.
The "Title" field is something new for New SmugMug. Since Titles, Captions, and Keywords are editable in SmugMug but not re-written into your files (for various reasons, including we don't want to touch your original files) we pull them out and store them ourselves. Photos uploaded to Old SmugMug never had their title stored. Anything uploaded in the New SmugMug will have the title imported.
Lightroom works great and is one way that you could update the titles on your photos (I think. I'll have to give it a try). On my own site (www.aaronmphotography.com) you'll see Titles and Captions on all of my photos; all of those were added in Lightroom and published straight to SM, where they're imported automatically.
The "problem" with having a large user base is that people have such varied thoughts on how things should look. For every person who hates having the photo # under the photo, there's another person who says it's absolutely essential.
Is it a safe assumption that you haven't published your New SmugMug site yet? If so, your mobile phone is displaying the Old SmugMug mobile version. The mobile version of your New SmugMug site should look almost identical to your desktop version, except formatted to fit the screen. For example, my site viewed in mobile safari shows my background slideshow, my navigation menu, and my social icons. Meanwhile, the mobile app shows a list of all my folders/galleries, or in other words the mobile web and the mobile app look very different.
Alan beat me to it -- try sorting your gallery by Date Taken, Descending, so the newest is on top, and that should help!
We're hard at work on a new version of the iOS app, which will allow you to "Copy Link" on any photo.
In the New SmugMug, your mobile view should look almost identical to the desktop view, with the exception of a few things formatted to fit better on the smaller mobile screen. While some people (perhaps yourself?) might have an iPhone 6+ with a super large screen, many of your visitors may not, and we want to make sure your site looks great on their devices as well.
The SmugMug mobile view in New SmugMug is a mobile sized version of your desktop site. This is very different from what Old SmugMug did, which just displayed a list of your categories or galleries. The New SmugMug is what you'd expect: your desktop site just fit for mobile. If you had a menu on desktop, it'll be there in mobile. If you sorted your galleries a certain way on desktop, it'll be that way on mobile.
We detect the window size and display the appropriate sized site, regardless of browser. Safari, Chrome, anything else, they'll all load the mobile version if you're on a small screen. Chrome has some built in tools that can show you what your site would look like on mobile, if you're on a desktop and curious.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I understand the need to make customers' sites look great on mobile devices. But that's not addressing my request. Under the old SmugMug, I could force just my own site to ALWAYS show the Desktop version. My choice to turn off mobile view for my site impacted nobody else's site. Only the visitors to MY site were impacted by my decision. SmugMug provided a choice, and it was my choice to make.
In new SmugMug there is no longer a choice. You are forcing all of your users to accept the mobile formatted view whether they want it or not.
Why can't there be a setting where WE decided how our site looks on mobile devices? It's OUR site. In my case, it won't reflect poorly on SmugMug because there is no SmugMug branding on my site.
It seems a pretty simple thing to implement. If I have Mobile view turned off, then visitors to my site get the desktop view every time. Worked just fine under old SmugMug, why take it away under new SmugMug?
That said, if you do provide a version of the SmugMug app for iOS that gives me access to Owner Share/Get A Link for any size of individual photo, that will sooth some of my concerns but I would STILL like the ability turn off mobile view for my site.
Will this new SmugMug app be available before October 15?
In the meantime, can you PLEASE make it possible for me to view my OLD SmugMug site via the browser on my iPhone? October 15 hasn't arrived yet and already my ONLY choice on my iPhone is new SmugMug. Even if I turn my phone's display to landscape mode, not enough of the page is displayed for me to gain access to the blue "back to old SmugMug" button.
Mark
See bolded part of the quote. I'm sorry, but that simply isn't accurate. The desktop view of my site under new SmugMug has a "Get A Link" option under Owner Share. The mobile view of my site does NOT have a "Get A Link" option under Owner share.
Mark
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
As to the next answer, I was talking about that page where my New SmugMug automatically opens to (since I haven't worked on it yet). On NewSmug, there's evidently nothing to replicate my whole Old Smug slideshow opening page yet, so my site instead opens to a twisted version of part of what had been my "All Galleries" page, then it has a map & other stuff from my former opening slideshow page. And I assume you'd have to be logged in to my site to see this, but it's just my New (unpublished) site's ugly current homepage: http://www.winsomeworks.com/ Several unlisted galleries are the first in the line-up. They're last in Old Smug, in the section called "Gallery Categories" under my Old Smug "All Galleries" tab. "Portfolio", "Nature", "Flowers", "Travel" are last on this New page. But in Old Smug, I have them listed first.
I probably shouldn't even be worrying about them now, because I have much bigger problems to sort out-- like just where / how to start rebuilding my site. I'm pretty darned lost. I have lots of instructions in different places, but keeping lots of them open besides having 2 instances of the site open on a very slow computer is daunting. I'm not good at seeing the whole picture as it is, & It's such a large site that I don't want to re-do things gazillions of times or screw up stuff that is already semi-presentable. Everything (even tho it's evidently been pre-set to mimic my Old site) looks so entirely different & disorienting to me, so I'm at a loss as to where to even begin getting a look I can live with. I can't even tell when I'm on a cat, sub-cat, or gallery page in New Smug because they're so similar. Then when I start even thinking about the work I went to (after 100s of hrs customizing) to get my blog to match, I about lose my mind remembering that I'll have to go thru that again too. But where to even start, with any of it....
Just tried to go "Back to New SmugMug" and got "Page Not Found". Ok...
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
The longer answer is that, as Alameth has pointed out, there are some fundamental differences between what Old SmugMug and what New SmugMug are. When we set out and built Old SmugMug we thought people wanted complete control to do whatever they wanted and we wanted to enable you to do that. Over the years as the state of photography changes and the number of people with photos grows, so too do the way users want to interact with SmugMug. The number of people who want complete control over every aspect of their site and don't mind having thousands of settings has shrunk, as the number of people who just want something easy that works has grown immensely. The New SmugMug aims to provide a beautiful website where your photos look their best, and to do it as easily as possible. We've tried to improve customization with the Customizer, help you keep your photos organized with the Organizer, and made your photos look better with beautiful designs. But we've also simplified the site. We want to avoid "Option Overload", confusing options that are hard to understand for most people, or hard to use features. With simplification means that some features won't be available anymore, or if they are, simplified so that your photos remain beautiful without clutter or hard-to-use tools.
The way we chose to display the mobile vs. the desktop site depends upon the width of the browsing screen. Safari does have a way to request the desktop site but all it does is switch the User Agent (the name of the browser that gets sent to a webserver) from "iPhone" to "Macintosh". Since we don't use the User Agent to determine which site to display, nothing happens and the mobile site continues to display.
The reason we do this is for readability of a users site. Here's a mock-up of a few versions of your site on an iPhone 6:
Your Old SmugMug site forced to Desktop makes it nearly impossible for someone to click on your menu bar without having to zoom way in. This is something we wanted to avoid with the New SmugMug. Your New SmugMug site, forced into Desktop view, actually looks pretty good, but again, the menu items are too small for a visitor to click on with their finger. Instead we display it in a slightly changed Mobile view. I have to admit, the initial mobile view of your site doesn't look as stunning as your Desktop homepage, and I can see where your frustration comes from. A few small CSS tweaks can greatly improve that. Let me know if you'd like some help developing the CSS to clean things up on your mobile display.
The reason I mentioned the long explanation above is because of the need to make it easy for everyone to have a good looking mobile site. Your site, for example, will look pretty good as a mobile display. But many other peoples sites will not. For example, take a look at what my site would look like on Desktop display:
This would be unusable. We don't to allow people to accidentally turn this desktop view on. I wish we could say that every option on SmugMug is obvious to every SmugMug user but sadly that's not the case. There will always be users who don't understand what something does, and if that option can have drastic effects on the persons site, it's not an option we want to offer.
The new apps are undergoing extensive testing before we release them, so I cannot comment on a specific release date, however, we'd like to release them before October 15th. Please note that these new apps will not work with Old SmugMug and you'll need to be published on New SmugMug to access your photos with them. It's possible that there would be a few week period where the new apps are available and users are still in Old SmugMug (i.e. a few weeks prior to October 15).
If you're logged out of SmugMug on your mobile device, we'll still show the Old SmugMug site. If you're trying to get to Old SmugMug while also logged in from your mobile device, there's a URL you can go to that will take you back to Old SmugMug. I'll send you a Private Message with this URL.
You and Denise are correct. Get a Link is not available on mobile. There's still a few Legacy SmugMug tools still living in the wild and Get a Link is one of those. They don't display very well, and some of its functionality (like the "Copy Link" buttons) require flash, which doesn't work on mobile. Trying to administer your site on a small mobile screen can be very difficult some tools have been disabled and have to be accessed from a non-mobile system. The mobile site is meant more to display your photos and the rest of your site. I'll take it as a feature request to add a mobile version of Get a Link though!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I think the simplest and easiest thing for you would be to put you in touch with one of our Heroes. I've left a message for one of our Customizers to get in touch with you. Look out for an email from them!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
For your NewSmug homepage. Just looked at your OldSmug. If all the boxes on Old are not on your
New homepage everything on Old can be added to New to look almost exactly the same. Delete all
that's there now then add a slideshow widget, map widget, popular photo widget, keyword widget.
Add logo and two menu widgets in header. Your menu's are simple, just a title and link same as OldSmug.
The menu might take some CSS so it looks the same as old. We can help with that.
Looked at every page you have and it should be easy to get New like Old. You have nothing that's complicated.
All you current Old category and sub-cat names will be identical on New so the breadcrumb will look the same.
You are using different banners for some categories. No problem but it will require a little CSS to do that. Again we can help.
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Like - square only thumbnails on the folder view. I can make pictures look normal (or they way I want) in the gallery itself and on the front page where all folders are shown. However to get back the options that was available in the folder (or subgallery) page, you need to upgrade the account. I do believe you are not doing it to force people to upgrade, but there no other explanation.
Same about the "featured" photo. It used to be very logical where if no photo is selected you get a random one. Now it's completely non-trivial and non documented, that if non is selected you assign the first one. People are suggesting to create a nicely looking square thumbnail in the hidden folder and assign it to each gallery. It's adding more confusion and is non intuitive at all.
I had custom 1x1 cropped thumbnails set in the old Smugmug and now in the new Smugmug, they are using center cropped 1x1 images (meaning the people's heads are cut off) of the same previously featured photo. This is horrible. Seems like the new design went backwards to when Smugmug first started and we needed Javascript to work around that.
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Solved with Nicholas Sherlock's Smugmug Chrome extension.
http://origin.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/SmugMug-for-Chrome
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
While I know there are things in legacy that are not in new smugmug I believe the product made a huge leap forward with new smug. My site was heavily customized in legacy; when new smug became available I was able to remove almost all of the code-level customizations. I was happy with my site when I published it the first day that new smug was available and I continue to be happy with it.
Only you can decide if new smug works for you - but I've looked at your site and as Allen pointed out to you in this post I believe you should be able to convert fairly easily. Why not update your site and ask for help if you need it instead of spending time reacting to posts as you currently are?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
only if you have a few photos in a gallery. If you have a lot of photos I think you're kidding yourself
if all your photos are being seen. Do you really expect folks to sit there all the time it takes to load
photos after photos and see all your photos?
My Website index | My Blog
when something almost just works (all the features smugmug have promised over the years but still yet to deliver)
then why go change it and remove functionality, but also what's been lost in new smug are the tools in the right place for the right.
from the simplest things - who ever thought that sticking the info box over the top of photo in 'new pretty useless smug' was intelligent placement should be sacked. The old placement to the side was perfect, still be able to see the photo and have the info.
old smug wasnt the most beautiful site, but it worked out of the box - for the customer and the photographer. New smug simply doesnt
i've spent hours and days as have my staff both when new smug launched to this forced change...and none of us can get something we like and that when is tested with customers - they like and think is an improvement.
If as some smug person said earlier in this thread that the backend of all accounts were moved to new smug two years ago - then why are we the customers being forced to move to something many of us have expressly said we dislike?
This forced change will affect my business, it's already costing me lots of money and time.
The incessant 'it's wonderful, and lovely and try it" has gone beyond irritating to the extent that a casual chat with a lawyer friend while watching football evolved into exploring the options of filing an injunction to prevent smugmug turning off old smug.
I'm all for progress and improvement, but new smug isnt an improvement - but the staff wont accept that large numbers of customers dont like it and dont want it. Why not try listening to your customers instead of just mindlessly repeating 'it's lovely just try it"
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--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Aaron,
Sorry for taking a few days to respond. Thank you for the thorough explanation. I really appreciate you taking the time. But, sadly, what I hear you saying (regarding desktop view on mobile devices) is you "dumbed down" SmugMug so it would be attractive to a wider audience of potential customers. I can accept the business reasoning for that decision. But what I can't accept is why you have to force the "dumbing down" on everyone!
What is so difficult or unreasonable about allowing (those customers that want to) to completely turn off mobile view??
I was just looking at a gallery of recent photos on my site via the new SmugMug mobile view on my iPhone. It's horrible. A bunch of tiny thumbnails and no larger image display. You say the simple buttons on my site are too small, yet, the superimposed controls the new SmugMug places on the mobile view thumbnails is even more "fiddly" and annoying. You are covering the thumbnail view of my galleries on a mobile device with the description for the photo. What happened to the SmugMug that started this business because it was all about the photos? Why are you covering my photos with text? Why put a download icon visibly over my photo thumbnails. Those things obscure the thumbnails and without a larger view on the same page, people would have to go photo by photo (open/close, open/close, open/close) to see anything on their mobile devices when they just want to view SOME of the photos.
We aren't in the days of Palm Pilots. Modern mobile devices have powerful browsers and allow the ability to quickly pinch and zoom anywhere on the page. Even when I go to Amazon.com on my iPhone and Amazon automatically serves up the mobile version, I immediately scroll to the bottom of the page and return to the desktop view.
It is MY site. I've been paying the extra bucks to have the features I want. Now SmugMug is taking away a feature that I am and prefer. Namely, visitors ALWAYS default to the desktop view. As far as I'm concerned, there is no mobile view for my site. If the visitors to my site don't like it, that's MY problem, not SmugMug's.
The fact that my site looks pretty decent in desktop view on mobile devices is no accident. This is all highly frustrating and I'm never going to be happy about the decisions that SmugMug is making that impacts people like me. I am beginning to very much regret choosing SmugMug to host my photos in the first place. It literally feels like the company that I started out with has undergone some sort of metamorphosis and isn't the same company anymore. The SmugMug that I joined way back when would never take away features that are important to their customers.
Mark
As to switching-- I can read lots of stuff (forum, instructions, etc.) horizontally for a time on smartphone & also post that way, or I'll sit briefly at desktop to do so. Completely re-designing my site, & even doing the basics to make it presentable... it's just very tough w/o sitting upright at desktop to work at it. (Major back probs) Currently trying to read all the "Do's & Don'ts" & figure out where to start, & many folks have been quite helpful. Problem is, my instructions are in so many different places-- forum, messages, notes, email, pieces of paper.. yes, I'm overwhelmed. Gonna re-read Al's posts a few times & try to dig in. Yes, he's been a great great help, and so have you & others, even if many posts are directed at others trying to switch over.
I keep running into things that were easy to do on Old Smug (like just now, seeing there's no drag to arrange in gallery) or that may be tough to change later if I don't get it the way I want now, & this trips me up. But I guess the biggest thing I'm trying to sort out, but haven't yet, is this: I'd like to have just one SmugMug site like I do now (for a whole host of reasons) but hope to somehow be able to separate family/friends/snapshot/stuff in a better way (so those galleries & sub-cats aren't so obvious to the casual visitor). I'd rather that my friends/family not need passwords in general tho; just certain galleries now & then PWed is fine & I can handle that. But I feel it'd be wise to do this re-org while re-doing my site. I'd asked this question for Old Smug, but some of the privacy / viewability options have changed now, so the answers will be different. If anyone reading this has any thoughts-- fire away!
I'm not at all glued to having my site look the way it does now & will be very glad for some of the updated options, (alas, New Smug-style galleries, sadly, look very awkward to me) but if I'm going to be going into gazillions of settings anyway, I really hope to sort out the above organizational question first. Design-wise, I think I'd be glad to have my "banner", navigation, etc. on the left side instead of up top, since there are so many issues in New Smug with captions etc. being below the fold as it is. But I haven't even gotten to how to achieve that. My wkends 'til Oct. 15 are booked, so it's going to be a race. A horizontal race.
Incidentally, where's the best place to quickly look at a bunch of sites to get a smattering of what's achievable w/o difficult customizations? One specific question that may help me think thru this too is: Are the collage-style galleries only able to be collaged horizontally? In other words, is there no way (even w/ customization) to give vertical shots' thumbs "equal footing" so to speak?
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I forgot to respond to this one part-- I honestly would have to be shown real numbers on this particular thing, which to me is a highly important thing, to believe that anywhere near as many site-owners (or even visitors, for that matter) would desire seeing a number under the photo instead of seeing a caption. (especially if it means scrolling to see the caption, which it does on nearly every Smug site I've seen so far.. even where there's plenty of space for it to move up!! And that's even on a desktop--- so many use laptops now & that means lots more sites require scrolling to view captions). We're not even talking about the number then being invisible or hard to find-- It's quite visible in Old Smug (even moreso imo because it's bolder!) All we're saying is (and I've seen gazillions of people saying it, & seen no one saying they want numbers underneath) we should at very least have an option to have our caption directly under our photos. There are so many galleries in which the caption is highly important & integral. I have not one gallery in which the number makes a difference at all. I find this whole thing very depressing & putting a big damper on the switch-over. I'm afraid to even know what the captions / numbers do in New Smug mobile view.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Edit: If it's a simple settings change, I'm not finding it. So much for the new SmugMug being easier to use.
Mark
I know it is with the SmugMug layout, but on the new design, it is much "smaller" than when I had it on the old smugmut layout.
Now if we can only add the page jumping to the Collage layout, that would be awesome.
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One of the biggest drawback with Smugmug is the "I can't find it". <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/rolleyes1.gif" border="0" alt="" >
Anyway, go to 'Customize > Content and Design > Settings'. You can turn off the header , footer etc.
Also you can add this to your CSS to hide the "Powered by SM":
.sm-page-powered-by a { display: none; }Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
This is the dichotomy that continue to be pressed upon: more and more features, more options, more control, yet it also needs to be easy. I really wish that more features could also be easy but in reality the more options are available, the harder a tool is to use. We try to balance functionality with ease-of-use. Some things become less robust in New SmugMug but many many things are easy. In fact, New SmugMug makes so many of the difficult items (or even nearly impossible items) feasible.
For every design change or feature implementation there is someone who wants it done the complete opposite. I can't even begin to tell you the number of people who have asked for us to implement features in the exact way that you find unacceptable. As a cohesive product, we move SmugMug in a direction that will continue to keep it here for (hopefully) longer than we'll all be alive. If we try to go off on random tangents we'll end up like the majority of photo companies these days who go out of business (just like as one of the leaders in this market recently announced it is shutting down).
Most of the information that would help you is contained on our help pages, or even more specifically the New SmugMug Help Center (http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/2079954). Have you watched one of the webinars or tutorial videos that I linked you? They will be even more helpful than reading articles. I can tell that you're afraid to play with the site (and I realize that some of this is because you're physically unable to ... I hope you recover quickly. Back issues are never fun!) but as Denise has said, give things a try, and you'll see how they effect the site. If you don't like it, change it back! If the tutorials, webinar, and help center aren't enough, there's always DGrin. Steve Mills, one of our best Support Heroes also reached out to you to offer you direct help. Take advantage of this -- he's amazing and can answer any question you throw at him (and I know you have many, which is why we asked him to be your Hero)!
If you have specific questions I'm more than happy to answer them, but we have to balance our responses with moving SmugMug into the future. I'm someone who needs to vent my frustrations, so feel free to use DGrin as that avenue, but going forward we're going to focus our efforts on answering any specific questions you might have in getting yourself happy with the New SmugMug!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations