PREVIEW: Upcoming Changes to "Get a Link" / Share

leftquark

[Update, 3:40pm on 2015-09-30: Updated screenshots based on some changes we made during development]

Hey all,
Most of us post photos for the sake of sharing them with our friends, family, or the world, and I know you are all passionate about the Share menu, and more specially the "Get a Link" tool. We're making some changes to this tool and I wanted to give you all a heads up, as well as gather feedback on the new tool before we release it.

Why are you Changing Share/Get a Link?
There's a few reasons: the first of which, this tool is very old and needs some love. The "Get a Link" tool still uses the Old SmugMug style page and has a lot of options that a strong majority of our customers are not using. We want to simplify it and make it easier for you to access the sharing tools that you want. Also, as Flash continues to die, we want to eliminate it from SmugMug as well.

Lastly, we want to make it work on mobile. I've received a lot of requests for this and I think this will make you all quite happy.

Ok, so what's it going to look like?



The "Share" icon has been updated with a new look. All of SmugMug will eventually be updated to use this share icon.


Clicking the Share icon will launch a new panel. No longer will you be taken to a special "Get a Link" page. There is no sub-menu anymore; the panel launches immedaitely. Sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Email can be done from this panel. Additionally, you can get a link to a specific photo side, create an HTML5 Embeddable slideshow, or get a link to the shopping store.

"Collect" has been moved to the Tools menu (the wrench).


Use the "Photo" tab to get a link to a specific size photo.


Click the "HTML" checkbox to generate HTML embeddable code, to be used on blogs, websites, and more.


Use the "Social" tab to share to Social Networks, or send an email to anyone you'd like.


Use "Slideshow" to get code to embed a slideshow into a blog or other webpage. Select from the given options to customize how it looks. This slideshow uses HTML5. No more Flash (cheers!)


Use the "Cart" to get a link directly to the photo store.


If the particular photo has the shopping cart turned OFF, the "Cart" tab is not shown.


Clicking on the Social Media links will launch a window that will let you share the photo directly to that network.


On mobile devices, the Share button is visible from within the Lightbox.



On mobile devices, all of the options are the same, with the exception that the Embeddable Slideshow is not viable, since the code and the form to create it are complicated on a small device.

What's Happening to "Collect"?
We're moving "Collect" to the "Tools" (wrench tab). It will still work as it always has*, but it can be accessed now from the tools menu.
*: Since "Tools" is only accessible to logged in site owners, it will no longer be possible to collect photos across accounts. We looked at the usage of cross-account collecting and it was extremely low. I realize losing this feature will impact some of you but removing this will simplify the site and also removes some of the roadblocks that slow our ability to release new features.

Will the Old "Get a Link" tool still work?
It will, at least for the time being! At some point all of the Old SmugMug tools will be disabled but for now the old Get-a-Link tool will work. I won't be able to announce ahead-of-time when the tool will be retired, so use of this is at your own risk but it will live on for a little bit longer. For those of you that love the tool and still want to use it, you can, however, we won't be providing links to it. You'll need to know the string to make it work, and you'll have to pull the AlbumID, AlbumKey, ImageID, and ImageKey's out of the source code of the page. To do this, open a page's source code and just do a text find on "AlbumID", etc.

Then fill out: http://nickname.smugmug.com/gallery/getalink.mg?AlbumID=<ALBUMID>&AlbumKey=<ALBUMKEY>&ImageID=<IMAGEID>&ImageKey=<IMAGEKEY>&show=forum&Page=1

Allen

The "old" "Get a Link" tool allowed us to advance thru the photos to collect more links.
Looks like now we'll have to go to every photo to get it's link.


Why is the i-xxxxxxx different then in the browser URL? Is this not the photo ID?
get a link
i-QgJrVC6/0/L/IMG_1485_7D1-5-L.jpg
in browser URL
i-gv35BLd

Can will still add the text to the share icon? When will nerds learn that those tiny icons, if
they can see them, that some visitors have no any idea what they are.

Will this still be available when Flash is removed? 100's of my blog posts use it.
http://cdn.smugmug.com/swfs/badge/flashbadge.swf? ....&feedType=&BadgeHost=cdn.smugmug.com....

The Photo Booth

Will the share icon be visible to everyone, or will we still be able to turn it off in gallery settings? If we DO turn it off in gallery settings (for our guests), will it still be visible to us (site owners)?

Depending on the answers to those questions, I am pleased there will be a way to get a direct link to a photo via mobile.

Is this expected to go live before October 15?

Mark

leftquark

Allen wrote: »

Why is the i-xxxxxxx different then in the browser URL? Is this not the photo ID?
get a link
i-QgJrVC6/0/L/IMG_1485_7D1-5-L.jpg
in browser URL
i-gv35BLd

Those are 2 completely different images. Where do you see that they go to the same photo?

Allen wrote: »

Can will still add the text to the share icon? When will nerds learn that those tiny icons, if
they can see them, that some visitors have no any idea what they are.

Yep -- the icon is the only thing changing; and your CSS to add the word "Share" should still work.

Allen wrote: »

Will this still be available when Flash is removed? 100's of my blog posts use it.
http://cdn.smugmug.com/swfs/badge/flashbadge.swf? ....&feedType=&BadgeHost=cdn.smugmug.com....

We don't want to break old links, since we know you all have been sharing them for years. For a while we intend to keep those links working for the flash version. At some point we may redirect them to the non-Flash slideshows, but our intent is to keep your links working.

The Photo Booth wrote: »

Will the share icon be visible to everyone, or will we still be able to turn it off in gallery settings? If we DO turn it off in gallery settings (for our guests), will it still be visible to us (site owners)?

You'll still be able to enable or disable the Share button in the gallery settings, just like you can do now! And it will work similarly, if OFF, it will be displayed to you, as the site owner only.

The Photo Booth wrote: »

Is this expected to go live before October 15?

It's possible that it could but it all depends upon how much feedback we receive and how quickly it goes through QA.

Allen

leftquark wrote: »

Those are 2 completely different images. Where do you see that they go to the same photo?...

You're right. Checked another and they are the same.

denisegoldberg

It looks like the Photo link is the equivalent of the Photo link tab on the old Share... Get a link page. Is that correct?

The reason I ask is that when I embed photos in my blog I almost always use the Embeddable links tab in the current Share... Get a link page. It looks like in the new world I will need to construct the <a href= statement. I know, I know, I can construct it - but are you really removing the easy single click to get the combination of gallery and photo URL?

--- Denise

BigRed

leftquark wrote: »

Clicking on the Social Media links will launch a window that will let you share the photo directly to that network.

For users who have turned OFF Social Sharing Links in their Account Settings, will this panel display only the single email icon? And will it display all four icons when we're logged in?

P.S. Let me be the first to THANK YOU for the heads-up on such upcoming changes, and for being open to feedback.

leftquark

denisegoldberg wrote: »

It looks like the Photo link is the equivalent of the Photo link tab on the old Share... Get a link page. Is that correct?

The reason I ask is that when I embed photos in my blog I almost always use the Embeddable links tab in the current Share... Get a link page. It looks like in the new world I will need to construct the <a href= statement. I know, I know, I can construct it - but are you really removing the easy single click to get the combination of gallery and photo URL?

I have a hard time saying that things won't work as you'd like them, especially when it involves features that used to exist ... and to someone I really respect and want to keep happy ... but you are correct, the Embed code will go away.

The simple answer is that most websites these days have removed the need for HTML code: you paste in a link, and they do the rest. We're trying to simplify SmugMug and remove some of the cluttered features that a majority of SM'ers aren't using. As the web progresses and websites become easier to build we're seeing some of our tools become no longer necessary. We wanted to simplify Get-a-Link and take advantage of the auto-expanding links.

If you paste the URL to your photo into Facebook, Twitter, Google, and WordPress, they'll all automatically convert that into the <a href="..."><img src="..."></img></a> code. The Social Networks have their own system for doing it, while WordPress and many other sites use the oEmbed technology that we comply with. I use this on my own WordPress blog, for example, and it works great: I don't have to switch to HTML view and I don't have to do much other than grab a URL. Unfortunately it looks like Blogger/Blogspot don't support oEmbed links.

We've actually been looking into adding support for this into DGrin, although we've held off because we have some bigger DGrin upgrades that we'd rather put our efforts into. One option that we looked into, which would actually work pretty well in your case, would be to use a service like Embed.ly, which creates beautiful cards out of your photos/titles/captions. All you have to do is paste the link into http://embed.ly/code and it'll generate code for you.

With all this said, I'll take this back to the team and we'll discuss embeddable links one more time.

BigRed wrote: »

For users who have turned OFF Social Sharing Links in their Account Settings, will this panel display only the single email icon? And will it display all four icons when we're logged in?

Turning off the "Show Sharing Options" setting in the Gallery Settings will disable the share button completely.
Turning off the "Social Sharing Links" setting in the Account Settings will disable the 3 Social Sharing buttons and leave just the single email icon.

As the site owner, would you prefer we ignored the "Social Sharing Links" and show you them? Or would you prefer we honor it and leave just the email button?

denisegoldberg

leftquark wrote: »

I have a hard time saying that things won't work as you'd like them, especially when it involves features that used to exist ... and to someone I really respect and want to keep happy ... but you are correct, the Embed code will go away.

...

If you paste the URL to your photo into Facebook, Twitter, Google, and WordPress, they'll all automatically convert that into the <a href="..."><img src="..."></img></a> code. The Social Networks have their own system for doing it, while WordPress and many other sites use the oEmbed technology that we comply with. I use this on my own WordPress blog, for example, and it works great: I don't have to switch to HTML view and I don't have to do much other than grab a URL. Unfortunately it looks like Blogger/Blogspot don't support oEmbed links.

We've actually been looking into adding support for this into DGrin, although we've held off because we have some bigger DGrin upgrades that we'd rather put our efforts into. One option that we looked into, which would actually work pretty well in your case, would be to use a service like Embed.ly, which creates beautiful cards out of your photos/titles/captions. All you have to do is paste the link into http://embed.ly/code and it'll generate code for you.

With all this said, I'll take this back to the team and we'll discuss embeddable links one more time.

Thanks for the update. I just tried Embed.ly in my blog and that doesn't come close to doing what I want. I just looked at your blog, and that behavior doesn't meet my needs either. The in-place enlarging of the photo is better than what blogger does, but it still isn't what I want to see. I like that clicking on the photo in my blog takes the viewer to lightbox. From there they can jump into the gallery or use the back button to return to my blog. You can see the behavior from any of the photos in my blog (linked in my signature).

I would love if you would add the embeddable links back in the new interface. That said, I do understand your desire to simplify the interface. If I need to I will construct the HTML myself; I just wonder how many others are also using the embeddable links.

--- Denise

dberthia

Unless I'm missing it, I see no way to get a link to the Gallery itself. Is it in there somewhere? Should we just be copying the URL from the address bar?

Lille Ulven

I am with denisegoldberg on the embeddable links Sure I could write the html myself too, but getting it right from the tool is pretty good as it means I only have to add the code for the title below the photo

So +1 for getting embeddable links

leftquark

dberthia wrote: »

Unless I'm missing it, I see no way to get a link to the Gallery itself. Is it in there somewhere? Should we just be copying the URL from the address bar?

Yep! No need to go into the Share Menu, click on a gallery option, then copy the URL, when it's up in the address bar already. Much simpler / less clicks!

Lille Ulven wrote: »

I am with denisegoldberg on the embeddable links

We'll see what we can do. No promises but we'll try to come up with a solution.

BigRed

leftquark wrote: »

Turning off the "Show Sharing Options" setting in the Gallery Settings will disable the share button completely.
Turning off the "Social Sharing Links" setting in the Account Settings will disable the 3 Social Sharing buttons and leave just the single email icon.

As the site owner, would you prefer we ignored the "Social Sharing Links" and show you them? Or would you prefer we honor it and leave just the email button?

Thanks for asking! Although it isn't a strong opinion, I'd prefer to see the social icons when I'm logged in, so I can share occasional updates to Facebook/Google+. I was glad to see that New Smugmug (at least in the sandbox) already works that way. In Legacy, I had to control the visibility with CSS.

ChancyRat

Where is the link to the lightbox view? That was the only one I used, because it allowed visitors to x out and into the gallery directly.

Lille Ulven

leftquark wrote:

We'll see what we can do. No promises but we'll try to come up with a solution.

Thanks, leftquark I hope you'll find a solution for it, especially since the embedded coding contains some extra information that is not in the link...

Just an idea: Maybe it could be done as a radio-button in the photo-link section? You already have the "choose a size"-curtain, so a line below could be like:
I would like to have:
(a) just the link please
(b) the link as embedded code for a blog ([a href...])
(c) the link as embedded code for a website (<a href...>)
The default choice would be (a) and if something else is chosen the result in the result box would change accordingly.
That way it wouldn't take up 17 new tabs and it would be easy to use (I guess)

leftquark

ChancyRat wrote: »

Where is the link to the lightbox view? That was the only one I used, because it allowed visitors to x out and into the gallery directly.

Part of the clutter of the Old Get-a-Link tool is that it provided links that can be obtained from other places, often much easier than by going into the Share > Get-a-Link. Lightbox links can be obtained by clicking on the photo and opening it into LB, then grabbing that from the URL. The only exception to this is if you opened it from a Multiple Photos Content Block, in which case there is no URL. I'll have to think about this case.

Lille Ulven wrote: »

Thanks, leftquark I hope you'll find a solution for it, especially since the embedded coding contains some extra information that is not in the link...

Just an idea: Maybe it could be done as a radio-button in the photo-link section? You already have the "choose a size"-curtain, so a line below could be like:
I would like to have:
(a) just the link please
(b) the link as embedded code for a blog ([a href...])
(c) the link as embedded code for a website (<a href...>)
The default choice would be (a) and if something else is chosen the result in the result box would change accordingly.
That way it wouldn't take up 17 new tabs and it would be easy to use (I guess)

I imagine it would be a toggle, like you mentioned, that would change the direct link into an HTML link. Most blog code these days have converted over to HTML style tags, so we're looking at only doing the <a href...>. The link would go to the lightbox while the image would reference whatever size you selected. Most likely we would drop the "alt=..." text.

BigRed

dberthia wrote: »

Unless I'm missing it, I see no way to get a link to the Gallery itself. Is it in there somewhere? Should we just be copying the URL from the address bar?

leftquark wrote: »

Yep! No need to go into the Share Menu, click on a gallery option, then copy the URL, when it's up in the address bar already. Much simpler / less clicks!

Is that gallery URL a permalink now? Or is it subject to link breakage if I subsequently reorganize my hierarchy (new path)?

Ditto for links to Pages?

denisegoldberg

leftquark wrote: »

I imagine it would be a toggle, like you mentioned, that would change the direct link into an HTML link. Most blog code these days have converted over to HTML style tags, so we're looking at only doing the <a href...>. The link would go to the lightbox while the image would reference whatever size you selected. Most likely we would drop the "alt=..." text.

Why? Isn't that a recommended tag on an <img src= statement?

If you add the embedded code back and remove the alt tag I will still need to edit the HTML.

--- Denise

Lille Ulven

leftquark while most blogs might have been changed to use the HTML tags, most Forums have not :-( (at least none of those that I visit occasionally has changed to HTML tags)
So I just messed up where to use option (b) and (c), it should have been Blog/website for (c) and Forum for (b) - sorry for the confusion.

And yes I would agree with denisegoldberg again: Please leave the title and alt attributes for the <img>-tag and the <a href> -tag as they are now, else it would really get messy getting those in place afterwards.

PS: Thanks for the preview - I hope you don't regret it - I think it really helps us to see (a) where smug is going in the future and (b) makes it probably easier to have some votes going on regarding features that might be removed in a newer version, at least we can say "please, we need this" and you can re-think/reconsider it before we are missing things deeply.

leftquark

Lille Ulven wrote: »

PS: Thanks for the preview - I hope you don't regret it - I think it really helps us to see (a) where smug is going in the future and (b) makes it probably easier to have some votes going on regarding features that might be removed in a newer version, at least we can say "please, we need this" and you can re-think/reconsider it before we are missing things deeply.

Glad you guys like the preview! I hope by now you've learned that we really do care about our customers here at SmugMug (it's one of the reasons why I fell in love with SM 9 years ago and left my rocket science job to come work here). We're not going to be able to preview all new features, but for revamping features that currently exist, like this one, I think it makes perfect sense to get your feedback and find out what's really important to you.

We've added a toggle in to switch the "Photo" links from the pure JPG link into an HTML embeddable link. We're going to just stick with HTML as the BBCode style is really dying out (Forums like this, which use vBulletin, still support it, though vBulletin itself is dying and the software most people are turning to has switched to HTML style tags). In a perfect world we could support everything but I'd rather avoid UI clutter by excluding dying technologies. At least it will be easy to convert "<" into "[" and ">" into "]". Not ideal, but not awful either.

I'll post some updated screenshots shortly (most likely tomorrow). We've made a few other changes based on design feedback from our own team as well.

agallia

Kudos!

leftquark wrote: »

Glad you guys like the preview! I hope by now you've learned that we really do care about our customers here at SmugMug...

Just tried the embed and buy photo links and seemed to work beautifully in my Wordpress blog. Thanks for a great, easy to use tool. Kudos!

denisegoldberg

agallia wrote: »

Just tried the embed and buy photo links and seemed to work beautifully in my Wordpress blog. Thanks for a great, easy to use tool. Kudos!

I believe what you just used was the previously existing "get a link" - not the changes that are noted in this preview.

--- Denise

leftquark

I've updated the screenshots in the initial post to incorporate some of your feedback:
- Social links moved to their own "Social" tab.
- "HTML" option converts Photo links into HTML embeddable code.
- "Sell" tab renamed to "Cart"
- If "Social Sharing Options" is turned OFF in your Account Settings, the entire "Social" tab will not be displayed. It will display for account owners.
- Sending an email is no longer possible for visitors. Only owners can share via email.

Allen

What happened to feeds?

denisegoldberg

leftquark wrote: »

...
- "HTML" option converts Photo links into HTML embeddable code.

Thank you!

--- Denise

markderry

Looks good to me!

leftquark

Allen wrote: »

What happened to feeds?

We want the new Share menu to only contain the items that people are really using and the Feeds links usage is dying. We'll continue to offer feeds for now however their links will not be generated here in the Share menu (also removed some of the clutter of them).

They are, however, still accessible from the full SmugMug footer. If you use the mini footer and would like to grab a feed link you can temporarily turn on the full Footer, grab the link, then reset to the mini footer. Also, feed links are available in the Source Code (I think... I'm not on a computer right now to double check).

pbandj

BigRed wrote: »

Is that gallery URL a permalink now? Or is it subject to link breakage if I subsequently reorganize my hierarchy (new path)?

Ditto for links to Pages?

I didn't see that Big Red's question was answered...I'm curious about this as well...

ChancyRat

pbandj wrote: »

I didn't see that Big Red's question was answered...I'm curious about this as well...

They will break. Permalinks are not used for the URLs in SM.

leftquark

BigRed wrote: »

Is that gallery URL a permalink now? Or is it subject to link breakage if I subsequently reorganize my hierarchy (new path)?

Ditto for links to Pages?

Unless you're linking to a specific image in a gallery, if it's a public (not unlisted or private) it will not contain the Album Key's required to be able to move a folder or gallery and maintain its links.

In other words, if you move a folder, gallery or page that is public, the links will break.

Darter02

Lille Ulven wrote: »

I am with denisegoldberg on the embeddable links Sure I could write the html myself too, but getting it right from the tool is pretty good as it means I only have to add the code for the title below the photo

So +1 for getting embeddable links

I too use that feature a lot.