Allen I know there is such a tab now - I am frequently using it. But in the beginning this tab was to be removed when the new features were supposed to be rolled out...until thankfully we could convince leftquark and some more smug mug staff of leaving this kind of option available
We're getting close to rolling this out and we have added an option to get HTML embeddable code.
Yes, yes, yes!
Acadiana Al
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
Late to the party, but did the question get answered about navigation to previous and next photo in the get-a-link? That's very handy.
I also may have missed it, but is there a "copy" for the link? How is the link picked up to be pasted in elsewhere (in the regular desktop-with-mouse situation)?
One thing I find incredibly annoying on the current system is that the "return to gallery" is often not successful and is invariably slow. What I really want to do is (and I am in collage landscape mode FWIW) pick an image, get a link, pick another image, get another link.
What happens is I pick an image, click it to get to the get-a-link icon, copy, then "return to gallery". Sometimes it returns, sometimes it comes up blank, almost all times it is not blank it mis-positions so I am not at the same point in the scrolling collage I left.
If there's anything you can do to make the transit from collage to get-a-link back to collage more reliable it would be very helpful.
I also would strongly urge, plead, beg you to make it default, so once I pick a size, it defaults to that size until I change. When I'm collecting a bunch of links (e.g. for a forum post) they are almost always all the same size. Having to select from a dropdown (especially if I ever use a tablet or phone) each time would be very annoying.
Finally, and probably months too late -- did you ever consider a context menu for this instead of having to leave collage-landscape to full screen at all?
Late to the party, but did the question get answered about navigation to previous and next photo in the get-a-link? That's very handy.
As of now you'll have to close out of the Share Panel and then re-open it on the next photo. In the future we'll most likely enable the arrow keys so you can switch between photos within the panel
I also may have missed it, but is there a "copy" for the link? How is the link picked up to be pasted in elsewhere (in the regular desktop-with-mouse situation)?
We've added text that says to press "Cmd + C" or "Cntrl + C to copy". There is no longer a "Copy" button. We'd love to have a copy button but web-browsers don't let us have this ability (due to security concerns). In the past we and other websites have done it using Flash, but with the removal of flash, there unfortunately is no way to do it
One thing I find incredibly annoying on the current system is that the "return to gallery" is often not successful and is invariably slow. What I really want to do is (and I am in collage landscape mode FWIW) pick an image, get a link, pick another image, get another link.
What happens is I pick an image, click it to get to the get-a-link icon, copy, then "return to gallery". Sometimes it returns, sometimes it comes up blank, almost all times it is not blank it mis-positions so I am not at the same point in the scrolling collage I left.
If there's anything you can do to make the transit from collage to get-a-link back to collage more reliable it would be very helpful.
The new Share Panel is an overlay on top of the already loaded image, so returning the selected image should be instantaneous as we're just closing the overlay and not returning you to load a gallery page.
I also would strongly urge, plead, beg you to make it default, so once I pick a size, it defaults to that size until I change. When I'm collecting a bunch of links (e.g. for a forum post) they are almost always all the same size. Having to select from a dropdown (especially if I ever use a tablet or phone) each time would be very annoying.
This is something we'd like to do in the future but at initial release you'll have to select from the drop-down menu every time. I concur that remembering the size can be quite the time saver. In light of Old SmugMug being retired and wanting to get a few new things out with the Share Panel, we want to release it as it is right now and then learn and add to it in the future. I'm sure a number of feature requests will come out of this initial release and we'll try to get to as many as we can.
Finally, and probably months too late -- did you ever consider a context menu for this instead of having to leave collage-landscape to full screen at all?
Collage Landscape can get difficult because we want to always ensure that your photos are the center of attention. Loading buttons or menus all over your images can distract from the photo and we prefer not to use bloated menu's to access features since they become bloated and are hard to find. With that said, we do have some updates in the pipeline that would surface some of these features without having to open the lightbox to access them.
As of now you'll have to close out of the Share Panel and then re-open it on the next photo. In the future we'll most likely enable the arrow keys so you can switch between photos within the panel...
Just saying 'thanks' for all the hard work and good things happening to Smugmug UI. I was resistant to change at first but am becoming comfortable now and enjoy the new interface, especially the Organizer. I understand there are always those who are unhappy but I feel the great majority of users are happy. It is just a matter of getting to understand the new interface and learning where the tools are. Just don't make it too complicated and convoluted for the average user.
Acadiana Al
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
As of now you'll have to close out of the Share Panel and then re-open it on the next photo. In the future we'll most likely enable the arrow keys so you can switch between photos within the panel
The new Share Panel is an overlay on top of the already loaded image, so returning the selected image should be instantaneous as we're just closing the overlay and not returning you to load a gallery page.
The most serious issue I have is the lack of positional context while selecting multiple images. I think it is just plain broken in many cases, and since your new link is off the expanded (not collage) view, it will still be broken?
The issue is I want to get from a position in the scrolling collage landscape to the link and back to the same spot.
What happens is that almost invariably on the return it either (a) goes blank, loads the headers but no image, or (b) shows the image but when closed returns to the top of the scroll. It (almost?) never goes back to the same spot in the scroll.
On the other hand if I click an image in collage landscape, get the full screen version, close with the X (having NOT selected the get-a-link button), the scoll stays in place just fine.
I just tried both Chrome and IE and it failed both ways -- once it returned to the top of the scroll, once it returned to a header-only blank screen, no image(s).
So.... will the change to an overlay mean that it will reliably return now? If so, great.
We've added text that says to press "Cmd + C" or "Cntrl + C to copy". There is no longer a "Copy" button. We'd love to have a copy button but web-browsers don't let us have this ability (due to security concerns). In the past we and other websites have done it using Flash, but with the removal of flash, there unfortunately is no way to do it
Can you at least make it pre-select the text to copy (including after selecting the size if one changes it).
This is something we'd like to do in the future but at initial release you'll have to select from the drop-down menu every time. I concur that remembering the size can be quite the time saver. In light of Old SmugMug being retired and wanting to get a few new things out with the Share Panel, we want to release it as it is right now and then learn and add to it in the future. I'm sure a number of feature requests will come out of this initial release and we'll try to get to as many as we can.
OK, I hope this really says "we didn't think of that and we are too late in the delivery process to make changes", because if you are still changing other things, this CAN'T be hard. Maybe 5 lines of code max?
Seriously, I'm sympathetic that you are doing a lot of other things, but this is a thing that is arguably not broken, and where you are taking away not adding features overall (ok, maybe you are adding better mobile access to be fair). One might argue that if you do not have time to do this right, leave the old one in place until you do. I think many of us old-timers just are getting weary that every change (good or neutral) seems to be accompanied by loss of functionality we use.
Making it work on a cell phone is no excuse to making it take twice as many mouse clicks on a desktop (really it's no the number of clicks but reliably clicking the right size when you are doing things quickly is a lot harder on a drop down than a static page with buttons).
The most serious issue I have is the lack of positional context while selecting multiple images. I think it is just plain broken in many cases, and since your new link is off the expanded (not collage) view, it will still be broken?
The issue is I want to get from a position in the scrolling collage landscape to the link and back to the same spot.
What happens is that almost invariably on the return it either (a) goes blank, loads the headers but no image, or (b) shows the image but when closed returns to the top of the scroll. It (almost?) never goes back to the same spot in the scroll.
On the other hand if I click an image in collage landscape, get the full screen version, close with the X (having NOT selected the get-a-link button), the scoll stays in place just fine.
I just tried both Chrome and IE and it failed both ways -- once it returned to the top of the scroll, once it returned to a header-only blank screen, no image(s).
So.... will the change to an overlay mean that it will reliably return now? If so, great.
There's a couple issues here but I'll address your main concern first: You'll be returned to exactly where you had scrolled after opening the Share Panel.
Some technical details:
The old Get-a-Link is a separate page. When you click on it you navigate away from the gallery to its page, and clicking "Return to Gallery" requires the entire gallery / images to be reloaded. It was written before Collage style galleries existed and "Return to Gallery" takes you back to the gallery URL and not to the Image URL. If you're in a SmugMug style gallery, on the other hand, "Return to Gallery" takes you back to the image URL. Had "Return to Gallery" worked this way for Collage style galleries, your scroll position would remain intact, however, we don't do that because the Image URL for a collage gallery opens in Lightbox view.
When in Collage Landscape, you access the Share or Get-a-Link by first opening the Lightbox. This is to make it so that your photos in Collage Landscape remain the center of attention and don't get cluttered with Share, Download, Buy, tools, info, etc links. Access to those tools for Collage Landscape galleries is through the lightbox. Are you saying you're able to get to "Get-a-Link" without first opening the Lightbox?
Since LB and the new Share panel are overlays, you'll be returned to where you had scrolled to!
I'm not sure why you're getting a header-only (no images) blank screen. That sounds like a connection issue. I ran a number of tests on several sites, including yours, and was always returned to the gallery with everything loading. Could you give me a few URL examples if you see this again so I can look deeper? Are you using Chrome by any chance?
Sorry for the long answer. The short answer is "yep, you should be happy with this" (other than having to open LB first).
Can you at least make it pre-select the text to copy (including after selecting the size if one changes it).
Yep - that's how it works! Once you select a size, the textbox with the link is automatically highlighted. All you have to do is press cntrl + C and you're set.
OK, I hope this really says "we didn't think of that and we are too late in the delivery process to make changes", because if you are still changing other things, this CAN'T be hard. Maybe 5 lines of code max?
Seriously, I'm sympathetic that you are doing a lot of other things, but this is a thing that is arguably not broken, and where you are taking away not adding features overall (ok, maybe you are adding better mobile access to be fair). One might argue that if you do not have time to do this right, leave the old one in place until you do. I think many of us old-timers just are getting weary that every change (good or neutral) seems to be accompanied by loss of functionality we use.
Making it work on a cell phone is no excuse to making it take twice as many mouse clicks on a desktop (really it's no the number of clicks but reliably clicking the right size when you are doing things quickly is a lot harder on a drop down than a static page with buttons).
Often things seem "easy" but there's a lot more going on than we realize, even when you have a technical web development background. Without going into details, remembering your size is a lot more than just a few lines of code but it is on my roadmap for the Share panel.
I've been a SmugMug customer for 8 years so I totally understand that we all want new features without losing the features we had. SmugMug is 13 years old and that means some of the tools we've been using year after year are ... years old. These tools slow development and often break as we continue to grow SmugMug. Old SmugMug tools like the Get-a-Link need to be replaced and when that times comes, we evaluate how effective and useful they are.
In order for a product to remain useful and successful it needs to have widespread adoption across all of its customer base. Yes, a small percentage of users may love Feature X but if the large population isn't using it, it often creates a larger burden than it serves. We're constantly monitoring our tools to find out which ones people use the most and how often they use them. Sometimes we have to make the difficult decision to remove a feature that (some people love but) aren't being used by a large population of SmugMuggers.
When we built the new Share Panel we looked at the way that the majority of our customers used the Get-a-Link tool and built that first. We want to get these improvements out, both for you (mobile sharing, better integration with collage, adding HTML5 embeddable slideshow code, etc) and for us (so that we can shutdown old code that is slowing development). As you mentioned, we also have to balance features with our roadmap and our resources. If you look at UserVoice there are so many feature requests. We want to work on a lot of really exciting things, but if we stop to make sure every single one is perfect, we'll never release anything. We want to release new features, learn how you use them and iterate, and the best way to do that is to release them and then learn!
I know I've written a novel here, but I wanted to give you a little insight into our decision making process so that you know we spend a lot of time thinking about this. We're passionate photographers that use SmugMug every day and we want to make it better for not only you, but for us too!
I'm not sure why you're getting a header-only (no images) blank screen. That sounds like a connection issue. I ran a number of tests on several sites, including yours, and was always returned to the gallery with everything loading. Could you give me a few URL examples if you see this again so I can look deeper? Are you using Chrome by any chance?
I see this problem too, more often than not. I'm using Microsoft Edge. It happens on all URLs on my site (at least all for which I've used share, and since I place photos on my blog I use share often).
I don't believe it's a connection problem on my end; I have a reliable connection (Verizon FIOS, contracted at 75Mbps up and down, just ran a speed test and verified 84.14 Mbps down and 91.47 Mbps up).
I see this problem too, more often than not. I'm using Microsoft Edge. It happens on all URLs on my site (at least all for which I've used share, and since I place photos on my blog I use share often).
I'm looking forward to the updated "Get a Link"!
--- Denise
This happens on my site as well. Usually I'm going back and forth from viewing an image/getting a link (from within the organizer), and when I return to gallery (wish it was return to organizer), I get a blank screen. Happens constantly, as a default behavior. I am in a gallery with maybe 2000 images, so I always thought it was a size issue.
When in Collage Landscape, you access the Share or Get-a-Link by first opening the Lightbox. This is to make it so that your photos in Collage Landscape remain the center of attention and don't get cluttered with Share, Download, Buy, tools, info, etc links. Access to those tools for Collage Landscape galleries is through the lightbox. Are you saying you're able to get to "Get-a-Link" without first opening the Lightbox?
No, it is through lightbox (I just didn't know the name, that's why I said something about full screen).
Yep - that's how it works! Once you select a size, the textbox with the link is automatically highlighted. All you have to do is press cntrl + C and you're set.
Often things seem "easy" but there's a lot more going on than we realize, even when you have a technical web development background. Without going into details, remembering your size is a lot more than just a few lines of code but it is on my roadmap for the Share panel.
I will take your word for it, but it seems hard to believe preserving (cookie or whatever) a dropdown's default is just not that hard.
However, I also see that go-live was imminent, so it's also moot.
We want to work on a lot of really exciting things, but if we stop to make sure every single one is perfect, we'll never release anything. We want to release new features, learn how you use them and iterate, and the best way to do that is to release them and then learn!
I think there's an aspect to this that Smugmug continues to miss. And Adobe just had egg all over its face for a similar issue in their last CC update.
When you design for the low end user (who I recognize are the vast, vast majority), it becomes very easy to overlook the functionality used by the power users. I suspect I am not that unusual among the "old guard" in that I continue to use a desktop for managing my site, and working with its links to other sites. Is having better mobile display good? Absolutely. Is having it be a more uniform look and feel a good thing across platforms? Absolutely again.
But when you take something and say "only 5% of our users make use of that feature" and so kick it to the side of the road, it is worth checking if that 5% is the long term power users. In some cases (not myself) it is people who may be providing code or advice to others and so there's a secondary effect that ripples down.
Is this particular one that case -- maybe not. In fact the overlay vs. page reload is a big benefit to offset the minor loss of functionality. But I think the comments reflect the general "pander to the masses let the niche users cope" attitude that has been a bit frustrating for folks here. We really, really do appreciate that you are adding features. And we really, really do appreciate your participation here and so it is always with trepidation that I am critical here of those comments.
But there is a 2 year trend toward "dumbing down" Smugmug that accompanies things like mobile access. That's certainly the case for something like Lightroom's new import dialog, but it was SO dumb they had a revolt. Smugmug's dumbing down seems more slow, yet more methodical.
I see this almost everywhere by the way, with companies bracing for the continued increase in (mostly) computer illiterate users. Windows keeps hiding useful stuff under wizards, linux pushes people to GUI, icons and tiles substitute for what used to be complex decisions users made in commands or dialogs. It's not bad that it becomes more easily accessible; it is bad when those tools and decisions replaced are removed, not just supplemented.
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!
You know, I more or less have no problem with removing the link to the entire gallery from the "Get a Link" window, since I can manage (even though it was kinda convenient as it was before - for example it allowed me to get the link for the whole gallery without leaving lightbox), but I think you're forgetting one thing here - that the people who may be browsing our galleries where sharing is enabled might not be as "technical" as to realize that the link to the whole gallery is actually what they see in their URL bar when they're browsing the thumbnails. By removing the easy to understand and "non-technical" option to get a link to the whole gallery, you've effectively took away the ability to share the whole gallery from such people. Not the best decision from the general usability point of view, I'd say.
When you design for the low end user (who I recognize are the vast, vast majority), it becomes very easy to overlook the functionality used by the power users.
But when you take something and say "only 5% of our users make use of that feature" and so kick it to the side of the road, it is worth checking if that 5% is the long term power users. In some cases (not myself) it is people who may be providing code or advice to others and so there's a secondary effect that ripples down.
But I think the comments reflect the general "pander to the masses let the niche users cope" attitude that has been a bit frustrating for folks here. We really, really do appreciate that you are adding features. And we really, really do appreciate your participation here and so it is always with trepidation that I am critical here of those comments.
But there is a 2 year trend toward "dumbing down" Smugmug that accompanies things like mobile access. That's certainly the case for something like Lightroom's new import dialog, but it was SO dumb they had a revolt. Smugmug's dumbing down seems more slow, yet more methodical.
I see this almost everywhere by the way, with companies bracing for the continued increase in (mostly) computer illiterate users. Windows keeps hiding useful stuff under wizards, linux pushes people to GUI, icons and tiles substitute for what used to be complex decisions users made in commands or dialogs. It's not bad that it becomes more easily accessible; it is bad when those tools and decisions replaced are removed, not just supplemented.
At least keep the idea in your thoughts.
I really appreciate your open mind in all of this Ferguson! You're completely right in all of it and it's something that we keep in our thoughts every day. If there's a person that understands how powerful SmugMug is, I'm right up there. I dabble in almost everything with my photography: beautiful landscapes, weddings, clients, coupons, events, customization, crazy code, etc. It's how SmugMug found me in the first place. All of these Power features are things that I love to use as well.
Ultimately it comes down to Responsibility. You've trusted us with your priceless memories and that's not something we take lightly. I don't know where I'd put my photos if there wasn't a SmugMug. I wish we could say that our loyal power users can sustain us forever, however, we have to realize that the photography landscape is changing every day and we have to adapt if we're going to continue keeping a roof over your photos. There just aren't enough of you power users around to do that, so we have to make sure that SmugMug is usable by the masses, while also still being a powerful tool for the advanced power users. We're not planning on dumbing SmugMug down so much that it loses its powerful features, but you will see us try to make SmugMug easier to use, and sometimes that means offering less options. After all, I hate seeing things like "it took me years to learn how to use it" ... it should never take that long to understand SmugMug, even if you are a power user.
It comes down to Balance: balancing features with ease of use and we'll continue to do our best to walk the fine line and come out successful. It's part of the reason why I started this thread: I wanted to show you the direction we were going, and find out which features were important (and potentially missing). Much of the feedback that was provided here went into our decision making as we drove this to release (example: the HTML button).
Lastly, I want you to always feel like you can be open with your comments on here. I'll do my best to explain our rationale but part of the reason why we have dGrin is so we can get customer feedback and we're always open to hearing it! Keep it coming.
Hi guys just signed up and made an account and hope to stay around the forums for a while now.
I have questions about the feeds link now it's gone but first a bit of background
I'm not to savvy when it comes to the coding of websites (it makes my head spin) but I'm very specific to the things I want and normally end up doing tonnes of research to get things the way I like them.
I've spent along time trying to get my homepage the way I like it, I used to have a slider but was never happy with it. I've tried various free unofficial Smugmug Wordpress plugins but was never happy with the design or never trusted the plugin would be supported a month down the line.
What I wanted was to display a number of recent images that updated dynamically from Smugmug. I discovered only yesterday that I could use the rss feeds link to do this. I even went a paid for a plugin that would assist me to do this and display the images the way I wanted them. Its not even 24 hours and now the options for the recent feed links are gone
1/ So long story short going forward will my homepage keep pulling images from Smugmug?
2/ Can I generate these recent image RSS feeds myself?
3/ If so can anyone point me to some tutorials that explain how to do this?
Thanks for your help and I hope I'm not making a mountain out of a mole hill
... I used to have a slider but was never happy with it
I can't speak to most of what you ask about, but for this bit, you might check this custom code from Nicholas Sherlock, who wrote it for the New Smug world:
1/ So long story short going forward will my homepage keep pulling images from Smugmug?
2/ Can I generate these recent image RSS feeds myself?
3/ If so can anyone point me to some tutorials that explain how to do this?
1. RSS feeds aren't going away, so if you've grabbed the link to it previously, or grab it now, it'll still work.
2. If you go into the Customizer (customize -> content and design) and then click "Settings", you can then the SmugMug footer to the full footer. Once on, you'll see a link to the RSS feeds. If you prefer the mini footer, you can turn it back on after grabbing the links.
3. The help page linked in the official post should describe it, as well as searching help.smugmug.com for RSS. I apologize, I would give you the direct link but I'm away from the computer at the moment and wanted to respond right away
3. The help page linked in the official post should describe it, as well as searching help.smugmug.com for RSS. I apologize, I would give you the direct link but I'm away from the computer at the moment and wanted to respond right away
You can find the share help page here. The last section on it covers feeds.
Lastly, I want you to always feel like you can be open with your comments on here. I'll do my best to explain our rationale but part of the reason why we have dGrin is so we can get customer feedback and we're always open to hearing it! Keep it coming.
Thank you, and thank you for participating. There have been periods of relative silence in the past when the peasants were rising up with flames and pitchforks, and I think that always does harm.
I do want to try to add a bit of perspective (i.e. my own). I was the chief architect in writing software in 1983 (and years forward) that survived in commercial use in large companies to 2014. There may be a bit out there, but I think the last big one (for unrelated reasons) went belly up and may have been the last user. Throughout much of that life and several jobs, I would get dragged back into supporting it.
It is AWFUL to try to support code that old. Even if it's code you designed. Even if (for its time) it was well designed. Awful. Time consuming, restricts your options.
Code, like leftovers in your fridge, needs to be refreshed periodically or it begins to stink, and eventually will poison you.
I get it. I applaud it.
There's code, and then there's functionality. We tend to confuse functionality with process. Process, look and feel, the steps we follow to achieve a function tend to be where many complain (including me, admittedly). "But I used to click 3 buttons now I have 1 button and a drop down -- whine, whine, whine". If you read many of the postings here (again, including mine at times) that is the sense of them. Frankly while I do not want to give up the inbred American right to whine -- that's not very relevant.
What's scary is core functionality, the ability to achieve a result regardless of steps.
You took a lot of that away in 2013, and I get the security/stability issues of javascript. Really I do. There were really, seriously persuasive issues there.
But I sense there's a trend in the dumbing down process to get rid of features because they are not widely used, and maintaining them as you write new code is hard.
And I say: Tough. Man up. (Or Woman Up). (Is it Person Up?)
I keep using Windows because despite hiding functionality under increasingly perverse and deceptive wizards and burying it by moving it into powershell or netsh or whatever... the functionality stays there. I can't think of much I really lose, no matter how much I hate the UI changes.
And I love Linux, because in most cases they develop for the command line first, then do a GUI, so the functionality most power users love stays there.
It's about design and getting the directive in early in the process. Someone in management has to say "and when you do this grand new thing make sure everything they could do before is there somewhere, even if not nearly the same way, just in there somewhere". Be reluctant, not anxious, to give up on that. If it's part of the mission from day one, it can be done.
When the directive is "if we find people complain we will add it later as a new feature request", well, guess what -- it becomes hard to add, because the design did not anticipate it. Every step along the path makes that "add later" more expensive and difficult. This is about philosophy - commit to it early and it costs almost nothing but creativity, something I think Smugmug has plenty of if directed.
Truly, while we will whine when you move a button from one side of the panel to another, and claim our would ended, we will move on. And we will scream when the function of that button moves somewhere else entirely, not as easy to get to with our aging memories. But we will all stay around.
But when the button drops on the floor and is kicked aside so someone's cell phone works better, and it starts to happen regularly, we'll be looking for alternatives eventually. Even if someone has to make a new one.
Truly, while we will whine when you move a button from one side of the panel to another, and claim our would ended, we will move on. And we will scream when the function of that button moves somewhere else entirely, not as easy to get to with our aging memories. But we will all stay around.
But when the button drops on the floor and is kicked aside so someone's cell phone works better, and it starts to happen regularly, we'll be looking for alternatives eventually. Even if someone has to make a new one.
While it may not always feel like it, we have dGrin, User Voice, and the Support Heroes around because we want to give customers a place to show they care and an avenue where they can complain. We are always listening, including here in this thread right now. We’ll continue to improve. You won’t personally love every change we make, though we wish we could make that happen. We appreciate the passion, and we REALLY appreciate that our customers are willing to tell us what they want. We're passionate photographers, too, who use SmugMug every day and we want to continue to offer an advanced product as well as one that everyone can use.
I think there is a distinction to be made between making interfaces and processes simpler, and removing powerful but confusing features. We haven’t done much of the latter, but we always strive to focus on the former. Simplifying UI so it is accessible to everyone is the goal. If we can keep the advanced features for the power users, that’s awesome and what we strive for.
In this particular instance, on the Share Panel, more changes will be made (including adding a gallery link, being able to navigate between photos using the next/previous buttons, etc). We will continue to build to our direct customer requests though, and this particular feature is a direct result of a lot of conversations with customers and feature requests from customers.
How can i post a picture on a forum ? if i follow your steps only a clickable link appear when i paste to forum .....and i want the PHOTO to show up not a clickable link !!!
I just embedded a slideshow in my Wordpress site. Everything looks good except clicking on the images does not bring the user back to my Smugmug gallery. Interestingly, a right-click shows my SM message which is kind of confusing when embedded on another site. Here's the Wordpress site with the slideshow (toward the middle of the post): http://northendwaterfront.com/2015/11/new-columbus-park-trellis-lights-enter-testing-phase-take-the-brightness-poll
Thanks, Matt
I thought we weren't going to be able to embed slideshows on other sites anymore, just on pages here. Mine on my blog stopped working some time ago, so I replaced it with a gallery link. My badge is still working, however. It used to be that we had to set a click-to link with Html. I do see your slideshow using my phone, though the captions cover half the image. Well, clearly I'll be looking for someone else's answer too.
I just embedded a slideshow in my Wordpress site. Everything looks good except clicking on the images does not bring the user back to my Smugmug gallery. Interestingly, a right-click shows my SM message which is kind of confusing when embedded on another site. Here's the Wordpress site with the slideshow (toward the middle of the post): http://northendwaterfront.com/2015/11/new-columbus-park-trellis-lights-enter-testing-phase-take-the-brightness-poll
Thanks, Matt
Comments
We're getting close to rolling this out and we have added an option to get HTML embeddable code.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
My Website index | My Blog
Yes, yes, yes!
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
I also may have missed it, but is there a "copy" for the link? How is the link picked up to be pasted in elsewhere (in the regular desktop-with-mouse situation)?
One thing I find incredibly annoying on the current system is that the "return to gallery" is often not successful and is invariably slow. What I really want to do is (and I am in collage landscape mode FWIW) pick an image, get a link, pick another image, get another link.
What happens is I pick an image, click it to get to the get-a-link icon, copy, then "return to gallery". Sometimes it returns, sometimes it comes up blank, almost all times it is not blank it mis-positions so I am not at the same point in the scrolling collage I left.
If there's anything you can do to make the transit from collage to get-a-link back to collage more reliable it would be very helpful.
I also would strongly urge, plead, beg you to make it default, so once I pick a size, it defaults to that size until I change. When I'm collecting a bunch of links (e.g. for a forum post) they are almost always all the same size. Having to select from a dropdown (especially if I ever use a tablet or phone) each time would be very annoying.
Finally, and probably months too late -- did you ever consider a context menu for this instead of having to leave collage-landscape to full screen at all?
We've added text that says to press "Cmd + C" or "Cntrl + C to copy". There is no longer a "Copy" button. We'd love to have a copy button but web-browsers don't let us have this ability (due to security concerns). In the past we and other websites have done it using Flash, but with the removal of flash, there unfortunately is no way to do it
The new Share Panel is an overlay on top of the already loaded image, so returning the selected image should be instantaneous as we're just closing the overlay and not returning you to load a gallery page.
This is something we'd like to do in the future but at initial release you'll have to select from the drop-down menu every time. I concur that remembering the size can be quite the time saver. In light of Old SmugMug being retired and wanting to get a few new things out with the Share Panel, we want to release it as it is right now and then learn and add to it in the future. I'm sure a number of feature requests will come out of this initial release and we'll try to get to as many as we can.
Collage Landscape can get difficult because we want to always ensure that your photos are the center of attention. Loading buttons or menus all over your images can distract from the photo and we prefer not to use bloated menu's to access features since they become bloated and are hard to find. With that said, we do have some updates in the pipeline that would surface some of these features without having to open the lightbox to access 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
Just saying 'thanks' for all the hard work and good things happening to Smugmug UI. I was resistant to change at first but am becoming comfortable now and enjoy the new interface, especially the Organizer. I understand there are always those who are unhappy but I feel the great majority of users are happy. It is just a matter of getting to understand the new interface and learning where the tools are. Just don't make it too complicated and convoluted for the average user.
Smugmug: Bayou Oaks Studio
Blog: Journey to the Light
"Serendipity...the faculty of making happy, unexpected discoveries by accident." .... Horace Walpole, 1754 (perhaps that 'lucky shot' wasn't really luck at all!)
The issue is I want to get from a position in the scrolling collage landscape to the link and back to the same spot.
What happens is that almost invariably on the return it either (a) goes blank, loads the headers but no image, or (b) shows the image but when closed returns to the top of the scroll. It (almost?) never goes back to the same spot in the scroll.
On the other hand if I click an image in collage landscape, get the full screen version, close with the X (having NOT selected the get-a-link button), the scoll stays in place just fine.
I just tried both Chrome and IE and it failed both ways -- once it returned to the top of the scroll, once it returned to a header-only blank screen, no image(s).
So.... will the change to an overlay mean that it will reliably return now? If so, great.
If not... can you make it so?
Can you at least make it pre-select the text to copy (including after selecting the size if one changes it).
With regard to defaulting the size....
OK, I hope this really says "we didn't think of that and we are too late in the delivery process to make changes", because if you are still changing other things, this CAN'T be hard. Maybe 5 lines of code max?
Seriously, I'm sympathetic that you are doing a lot of other things, but this is a thing that is arguably not broken, and where you are taking away not adding features overall (ok, maybe you are adding better mobile access to be fair). One might argue that if you do not have time to do this right, leave the old one in place until you do. I think many of us old-timers just are getting weary that every change (good or neutral) seems to be accompanied by loss of functionality we use.
Making it work on a cell phone is no excuse to making it take twice as many mouse clicks on a desktop (really it's no the number of clicks but reliably clicking the right size when you are doing things quickly is a lot harder on a drop down than a static page with buttons).
Some technical details:
The old Get-a-Link is a separate page. When you click on it you navigate away from the gallery to its page, and clicking "Return to Gallery" requires the entire gallery / images to be reloaded. It was written before Collage style galleries existed and "Return to Gallery" takes you back to the gallery URL and not to the Image URL. If you're in a SmugMug style gallery, on the other hand, "Return to Gallery" takes you back to the image URL. Had "Return to Gallery" worked this way for Collage style galleries, your scroll position would remain intact, however, we don't do that because the Image URL for a collage gallery opens in Lightbox view.
When in Collage Landscape, you access the Share or Get-a-Link by first opening the Lightbox. This is to make it so that your photos in Collage Landscape remain the center of attention and don't get cluttered with Share, Download, Buy, tools, info, etc links. Access to those tools for Collage Landscape galleries is through the lightbox. Are you saying you're able to get to "Get-a-Link" without first opening the Lightbox?
Since LB and the new Share panel are overlays, you'll be returned to where you had scrolled to!
I'm not sure why you're getting a header-only (no images) blank screen. That sounds like a connection issue. I ran a number of tests on several sites, including yours, and was always returned to the gallery with everything loading. Could you give me a few URL examples if you see this again so I can look deeper? Are you using Chrome by any chance?
Sorry for the long answer. The short answer is "yep, you should be happy with this" (other than having to open LB first).
Yep - that's how it works! Once you select a size, the textbox with the link is automatically highlighted. All you have to do is press cntrl + C and you're set.
Often things seem "easy" but there's a lot more going on than we realize, even when you have a technical web development background. Without going into details, remembering your size is a lot more than just a few lines of code but it is on my roadmap for the Share panel.
I've been a SmugMug customer for 8 years so I totally understand that we all want new features without losing the features we had. SmugMug is 13 years old and that means some of the tools we've been using year after year are ... years old. These tools slow development and often break as we continue to grow SmugMug. Old SmugMug tools like the Get-a-Link need to be replaced and when that times comes, we evaluate how effective and useful they are.
In order for a product to remain useful and successful it needs to have widespread adoption across all of its customer base. Yes, a small percentage of users may love Feature X but if the large population isn't using it, it often creates a larger burden than it serves. We're constantly monitoring our tools to find out which ones people use the most and how often they use them. Sometimes we have to make the difficult decision to remove a feature that (some people love but) aren't being used by a large population of SmugMuggers.
When we built the new Share Panel we looked at the way that the majority of our customers used the Get-a-Link tool and built that first. We want to get these improvements out, both for you (mobile sharing, better integration with collage, adding HTML5 embeddable slideshow code, etc) and for us (so that we can shutdown old code that is slowing development). As you mentioned, we also have to balance features with our roadmap and our resources. If you look at UserVoice there are so many feature requests. We want to work on a lot of really exciting things, but if we stop to make sure every single one is perfect, we'll never release anything. We want to release new features, learn how you use them and iterate, and the best way to do that is to release them and then learn!
I know I've written a novel here, but I wanted to give you a little insight into our decision making process so that you know we spend a lot of time thinking about this. We're passionate photographers that use SmugMug every day and we want to make it better for not only you, but for us too!
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 don't believe it's a connection problem on my end; I have a reliable connection (Verizon FIOS, contracted at 75Mbps up and down, just ran a speed test and verified 84.14 Mbps down and 91.47 Mbps up).
I'm looking forward to the updated "Get a Link"!
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
This happens on my site as well. Usually I'm going back and forth from viewing an image/getting a link (from within the organizer), and when I return to gallery (wish it was return to organizer), I get a blank screen. Happens constantly, as a default behavior. I am in a gallery with maybe 2000 images, so I always thought it was a size issue.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
And indeed that seems now to be happening.
You guys always blame the connection, but it is not that, it's done it for ages.
However, it is a moot point now as it doesn't happen with the new one.
That works nice.
I will take your word for it, but it seems hard to believe preserving (cookie or whatever) a dropdown's default is just not that hard.
However, I also see that go-live was imminent, so it's also moot.
I think there's an aspect to this that Smugmug continues to miss. And Adobe just had egg all over its face for a similar issue in their last CC update.
When you design for the low end user (who I recognize are the vast, vast majority), it becomes very easy to overlook the functionality used by the power users. I suspect I am not that unusual among the "old guard" in that I continue to use a desktop for managing my site, and working with its links to other sites. Is having better mobile display good? Absolutely. Is having it be a more uniform look and feel a good thing across platforms? Absolutely again.
But when you take something and say "only 5% of our users make use of that feature" and so kick it to the side of the road, it is worth checking if that 5% is the long term power users. In some cases (not myself) it is people who may be providing code or advice to others and so there's a secondary effect that ripples down.
Is this particular one that case -- maybe not. In fact the overlay vs. page reload is a big benefit to offset the minor loss of functionality. But I think the comments reflect the general "pander to the masses let the niche users cope" attitude that has been a bit frustrating for folks here. We really, really do appreciate that you are adding features. And we really, really do appreciate your participation here and so it is always with trepidation that I am critical here of those comments.
But there is a 2 year trend toward "dumbing down" Smugmug that accompanies things like mobile access. That's certainly the case for something like Lightroom's new import dialog, but it was SO dumb they had a revolt. Smugmug's dumbing down seems more slow, yet more methodical.
I see this almost everywhere by the way, with companies bracing for the continued increase in (mostly) computer illiterate users. Windows keeps hiding useful stuff under wizards, linux pushes people to GUI, icons and tiles substitute for what used to be complex decisions users made in commands or dialogs. It's not bad that it becomes more easily accessible; it is bad when those tools and decisions replaced are removed, not just supplemented.
At least keep the idea in your thoughts.
I cannot reproduce any of the collage landscape positioning issues now, so that's great news.
You know, I more or less have no problem with removing the link to the entire gallery from the "Get a Link" window, since I can manage (even though it was kinda convenient as it was before - for example it allowed me to get the link for the whole gallery without leaving lightbox), but I think you're forgetting one thing here - that the people who may be browsing our galleries where sharing is enabled might not be as "technical" as to realize that the link to the whole gallery is actually what they see in their URL bar when they're browsing the thumbnails. By removing the easy to understand and "non-technical" option to get a link to the whole gallery, you've effectively took away the ability to share the whole gallery from such people. Not the best decision from the general usability point of view, I'd say.
I really appreciate your open mind in all of this Ferguson! You're completely right in all of it and it's something that we keep in our thoughts every day. If there's a person that understands how powerful SmugMug is, I'm right up there. I dabble in almost everything with my photography: beautiful landscapes, weddings, clients, coupons, events, customization, crazy code, etc. It's how SmugMug found me in the first place. All of these Power features are things that I love to use as well.
Ultimately it comes down to Responsibility. You've trusted us with your priceless memories and that's not something we take lightly. I don't know where I'd put my photos if there wasn't a SmugMug. I wish we could say that our loyal power users can sustain us forever, however, we have to realize that the photography landscape is changing every day and we have to adapt if we're going to continue keeping a roof over your photos. There just aren't enough of you power users around to do that, so we have to make sure that SmugMug is usable by the masses, while also still being a powerful tool for the advanced power users. We're not planning on dumbing SmugMug down so much that it loses its powerful features, but you will see us try to make SmugMug easier to use, and sometimes that means offering less options. After all, I hate seeing things like "it took me years to learn how to use it" ... it should never take that long to understand SmugMug, even if you are a power user.
It comes down to Balance: balancing features with ease of use and we'll continue to do our best to walk the fine line and come out successful. It's part of the reason why I started this thread: I wanted to show you the direction we were going, and find out which features were important (and potentially missing). Much of the feedback that was provided here went into our decision making as we drove this to release (example: the HTML button).
Lastly, I want you to always feel like you can be open with your comments on here. I'll do my best to explain our rationale but part of the reason why we have dGrin is so we can get customer feedback and we're always open to hearing it! Keep it coming.
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 have questions about the feeds link now it's gone but first a bit of background
I'm not to savvy when it comes to the coding of websites (it makes my head spin) but I'm very specific to the things I want and normally end up doing tonnes of research to get things the way I like them.
I've spent along time trying to get my homepage the way I like it, I used to have a slider but was never happy with it. I've tried various free unofficial Smugmug Wordpress plugins but was never happy with the design or never trusted the plugin would be supported a month down the line.
What I wanted was to display a number of recent images that updated dynamically from Smugmug. I discovered only yesterday that I could use the rss feeds link to do this. I even went a paid for a plugin that would assist me to do this and display the images the way I wanted them. Its not even 24 hours and now the options for the recent feed links are gone
1/ So long story short going forward will my homepage keep pulling images from Smugmug?
2/ Can I generate these recent image RSS feeds myself?
3/ If so can anyone point me to some tutorials that explain how to do this?
Thanks for your help and I hope I'm not making a mountain out of a mole hill
My website - http://theramblingphotographer.ie/
I can't speak to most of what you ask about, but for this bit, you might check this custom code from Nicholas Sherlock, who wrote it for the New Smug world:
http://www.sherlockphotography.org/Customisations/Before-and-after
1. RSS feeds aren't going away, so if you've grabbed the link to it previously, or grab it now, it'll still work.
2. If you go into the Customizer (customize -> content and design) and then click "Settings", you can then the SmugMug footer to the full footer. Once on, you'll see a link to the RSS feeds. If you prefer the mini footer, you can turn it back on after grabbing the links.
3. The help page linked in the official post should describe it, as well as searching help.smugmug.com for RSS. I apologize, I would give you the direct link but I'm away from the computer at the moment and wanted to respond right away
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
SmugMug Support Hero
Thank you, and thank you for participating. There have been periods of relative silence in the past when the peasants were rising up with flames and pitchforks, and I think that always does harm.
I do want to try to add a bit of perspective (i.e. my own). I was the chief architect in writing software in 1983 (and years forward) that survived in commercial use in large companies to 2014. There may be a bit out there, but I think the last big one (for unrelated reasons) went belly up and may have been the last user. Throughout much of that life and several jobs, I would get dragged back into supporting it.
It is AWFUL to try to support code that old. Even if it's code you designed. Even if (for its time) it was well designed. Awful. Time consuming, restricts your options.
Code, like leftovers in your fridge, needs to be refreshed periodically or it begins to stink, and eventually will poison you.
I get it. I applaud it.
There's code, and then there's functionality. We tend to confuse functionality with process. Process, look and feel, the steps we follow to achieve a function tend to be where many complain (including me, admittedly). "But I used to click 3 buttons now I have 1 button and a drop down -- whine, whine, whine". If you read many of the postings here (again, including mine at times) that is the sense of them. Frankly while I do not want to give up the inbred American right to whine -- that's not very relevant.
What's scary is core functionality, the ability to achieve a result regardless of steps.
You took a lot of that away in 2013, and I get the security/stability issues of javascript. Really I do. There were really, seriously persuasive issues there.
But I sense there's a trend in the dumbing down process to get rid of features because they are not widely used, and maintaining them as you write new code is hard.
And I say: Tough. Man up. (Or Woman Up). (Is it Person Up?)
I keep using Windows because despite hiding functionality under increasingly perverse and deceptive wizards and burying it by moving it into powershell or netsh or whatever... the functionality stays there. I can't think of much I really lose, no matter how much I hate the UI changes.
And I love Linux, because in most cases they develop for the command line first, then do a GUI, so the functionality most power users love stays there.
It's about design and getting the directive in early in the process. Someone in management has to say "and when you do this grand new thing make sure everything they could do before is there somewhere, even if not nearly the same way, just in there somewhere". Be reluctant, not anxious, to give up on that. If it's part of the mission from day one, it can be done.
When the directive is "if we find people complain we will add it later as a new feature request", well, guess what -- it becomes hard to add, because the design did not anticipate it. Every step along the path makes that "add later" more expensive and difficult. This is about philosophy - commit to it early and it costs almost nothing but creativity, something I think Smugmug has plenty of if directed.
Truly, while we will whine when you move a button from one side of the panel to another, and claim our would ended, we will move on. And we will scream when the function of that button moves somewhere else entirely, not as easy to get to with our aging memories. But we will all stay around.
But when the button drops on the floor and is kicked aside so someone's cell phone works better, and it starts to happen regularly, we'll be looking for alternatives eventually. Even if someone has to make a new one.
While it may not always feel like it, we have dGrin, User Voice, and the Support Heroes around because we want to give customers a place to show they care and an avenue where they can complain. We are always listening, including here in this thread right now. We’ll continue to improve. You won’t personally love every change we make, though we wish we could make that happen. We appreciate the passion, and we REALLY appreciate that our customers are willing to tell us what they want. We're passionate photographers, too, who use SmugMug every day and we want to continue to offer an advanced product as well as one that everyone can use.
I think there is a distinction to be made between making interfaces and processes simpler, and removing powerful but confusing features. We haven’t done much of the latter, but we always strive to focus on the former. Simplifying UI so it is accessible to everyone is the goal. If we can keep the advanced features for the power users, that’s awesome and what we strive for.
In this particular instance, on the Share Panel, more changes will be made (including adding a gallery link, being able to navigate between photos using the next/previous buttons, etc). We will continue to build to our direct customer requests though, and this particular feature is a direct result of a lot of conversations with customers and feature requests from customers.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
that does not link back and expose our site.
Instead of this fully exposed link back to the gallery
https://mobirds.smugmug.com/BirdPhotos/Al-Smith/i-QRGFDFn/0/S/Ivory%20Gull-S.jpg
Box > Anonymous Photo link
https://cdn.smugmug.com/photos/i-QRGFDFn/0/S/Ivory%20Gull-S.jpg
My Website index | My Blog
But I agree it might be nice to be able to grab them even for public galleries, though I prefer it still use my custom domain and not smugmug's.
If a button does get added make it persistent!
Actually, all the shared photo links expose your site name, public or unlisted.
Unlisted shows on your site.
Public shows the whole path.
My Website index | My Blog
Fair enough. I guess I prefer people to find my site, but not be able to access other photos when I have the gallery unlisted.
I can see why some might want to remain even more anonymous, it just never bothered me. But fair point.
SmugMug Support Hero
http://northendwaterfront.com/2015/11/new-columbus-park-trellis-lights-enter-testing-phase-take-the-brightness-poll
Thanks, Matt
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