New: Share Panel
leftquark
Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 3,784 Many Grins
Sharing your SmugMug photos just got a little bit easier. We've replaced the klunky old "Share" menu with a brand new Share panel. Clicking the "Share" button now launches a Sharing panel, containing a number of sharing options.
You can see a few screenshots of the new Panel here.
Clicking share will allow you to:
From the "Photo" tab:
- Get a link directly to any size of the photo.
- Once you pick a size, the link is automatically highlighted; all you need to do is press Ctrl + C or Cmd + C to copy.
- You can convert the link into HTML code that can be embedded in blogs, forums and more, by clicking the "HTML" button.
From the "Social" tab:
- Share to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or via email.
- If you are not logged into the Social Media site, you'll be asked to login, then can share directly to them.
- Visitors no longer have access to the email options. Sharing via email is for logged in accounts only (Owners, Assistants, Shared w/Me users) only since the page was designed for site owners. Visitors can copy a link and send it via their favorite email program.
From the "Slideshow" tab:
- Generate an HTML5 embeddable slideshow, which can be embedded in blogs.
- Control captions, navigation buttons and other options just by selecting the options.
From the "Cart" tab:
- Get a link that will direct visitors right into the Shopping Cart, where they can begin purchasing products.
Other notes:
- This new Share panel is mobile friendly and you'll see the share icon when you view your photo in the lightbox.
- For a little while the "Share" icon changed ... it's now back to its original icon
- Loading the share panel and returning to your photos does not require page reloads. Yay for improving the speed!
- The Social and Slideshow options are not available on mobile, since they're built into most smartphone web-browsers.
Impact on Collecting:
The option to "Collect" a photo into a new location has been moved to the "Tools" (the wrench) menu (previously was in "Share"). Since the Tools option is only available to owners and assistants, it is no longer possible to collect photos from one account to another. If you're managing two SmugMug accounts, you'll have to upload the photo to both accounts.
As always, we're here to answer any questions you may have or visit the help pages. Feel free to leave comments, thoughts, and feature requests here in this thread.
You can see a few screenshots of the new Panel here.
Clicking share will allow you to:
From the "Photo" tab:
- Get a link directly to any size of the photo.
- Once you pick a size, the link is automatically highlighted; all you need to do is press Ctrl + C or Cmd + C to copy.
- You can convert the link into HTML code that can be embedded in blogs, forums and more, by clicking the "HTML" button.
From the "Social" tab:
- Share to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or via email.
- If you are not logged into the Social Media site, you'll be asked to login, then can share directly to them.
- Visitors no longer have access to the email options. Sharing via email is for logged in accounts only (Owners, Assistants, Shared w/Me users) only since the page was designed for site owners. Visitors can copy a link and send it via their favorite email program.
From the "Slideshow" tab:
- Generate an HTML5 embeddable slideshow, which can be embedded in blogs.
- Control captions, navigation buttons and other options just by selecting the options.
From the "Cart" tab:
- Get a link that will direct visitors right into the Shopping Cart, where they can begin purchasing products.
Other notes:
- This new Share panel is mobile friendly and you'll see the share icon when you view your photo in the lightbox.
- For a little while the "Share" icon changed ... it's now back to its original icon
- Loading the share panel and returning to your photos does not require page reloads. Yay for improving the speed!
- The Social and Slideshow options are not available on mobile, since they're built into most smartphone web-browsers.
Impact on Collecting:
The option to "Collect" a photo into a new location has been moved to the "Tools" (the wrench) menu (previously was in "Share"). Since the Tools option is only available to owners and assistants, it is no longer possible to collect photos from one account to another. If you're managing two SmugMug accounts, you'll have to upload the photo to both accounts.
As always, we're here to answer any questions you may have or visit the help pages. Feel free to leave comments, thoughts, and feature requests here in this thread.
dGrin Afficionado
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
0
Comments
And thanks for adding the ability to generate <a href= html.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
We put a lot of thought into how much feature parity we would include with this new Share Panel and the BB code was one of the harder decisions. We want to make SmugMug easier to use and we also want to be forward thinking with our releases. We've been spending a lot of time looking into upgrading dGrin to new forum software and it became clear that all of the forum software options are moving away from BB code and instead using HTML code. Since it looks like it's becoming less and less used, we opted to keep the options simpler and focused on options that will be around years from now.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Hi all,
I've been a long time user of smugmug and ADV. Now when I want to show images in a post on ADV I have to click every time to select the size and then copy and then paste. I used to be able to just right arrow and copy the image links in series. Can I have the old system back. It will take hours to post a ride report now
Cheers.
Lee.
I use Smugmug on a daily basis to share the results of professional shoots with my clients.
I got a link and emailed it to them so that they can then access the gallery of the shots I have taken just for them.
Today I went to share a gallery and the option had disappeared, to be replaced by a series of options to share individual images and to social media.
Have you decided to completely abandon your loyal base of professional users? No email, no notification. I had to wait ten minutes in line to " Chat" to a rather unhelpful hero who couldn't see what I was annoyed about.
Dont change things just for the sake of being seen to be constantly updating. On this occasion as far as Im concerned you have thrown the baby out with the bath water and taken a serious backward step in functionality and I will be reviewing my decision to whether to stay a user or jump ship. It feels that you have turned your back on professional users in favour of the Tweeters and Facebookers.
Hi Adrian,
As the Product Manager behind the new Share panel I wanted to share with you a bit about why we made these decisions. Like you, I'm also a photographer and I deal with clients on a daily basis (and am gearing up for a big holiday push). I mention this so that you know I understand where you are coming from.
The old "Get-a-Link" panel is very old. In order to improve SmugMug we have to replace old tools with new ones, the same way that we replace an old car with a new one or an old camera with a newer model: we get the same functionality, it's just different, and newer. We spent a lot of time looking into how people use the Get-a-Link page, what features they were using and what features they weren't using. We also looked at ways in which we could speed up the amount of time it takes to get links on SmugMug.
The old Get-a-Link tool was cluttered with options. If you wanted to get a Gallery link, for example, you had to open the tool, click on the Gallery tab, then sift through the options to find the right link and copy that. There were things like "Feeds" which most users didn't even understand. Although people eventually figured out how to use it, it wasn't easy to use.
When we built the new Share panel we wanted to make sure it was easy to use and quick to generate links. The links to the Gallery and to the Lightbox can be obtained much quicker from the URL bar than from opening a tool. Because it's both easier and quicker, we decided to keep the new Share Panel simple, and did not include those options.
Here's an example if I want to get the Gallery URL:
As it is today:
1) Click on the URL bar
2) Press Cmd + C to copy.
As it was with the Get-a-Link tool:
1) Click on "Share"
2) Click on "Get-a-Link"
3) Wait for Get-a-Link page to load
4) Click on "Gallery" tab
5) Click on "Gallery URL" and highlight
6) Press Cmd + C to copy
if I wanted to return to the gallery, I'd have to:
7) Click on "Return to Gallery"
8) Wait for Gallery to reload.
That's 4-6 additional steps, plus all the additional time for the 2 pages to load.
We felt that getting the URL from the address bar was a much better experience for everyone. It's Professional, simple, quick, and most people are familiar with the URL bar.
We could certainly add a "Gallery" tab as we've had in the past, but that would add additional clutter to the panel that we're looking to avoid. All the functionality of the Get-a-Link page is still there, just tuned up and sped up.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
1) Allow you to use the left/right arrow keys to navigate between photos.
2) Remember the size you last selected each time, so you don't have to re-select it.
Stay tuned!
Lastly, I know this is not a very good solution in the interim, however, I did want to mention it since it might help. The old Get-a-Link tool is still active, 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, it's a bit difficult to put together. 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://.smugmug.com/gallery/getalink.mg?AlbumID=&AlbumKey=& ImageID=&ImageKey=&show=forum&Page=1
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
The only time I really used a "gallery" link from the old get a link tool was to share videos. Typically when sharing a video I want to share a lightbox link. I never really want to link straight to the video file itself like the new share panel does. And from a smugmug style gallery, there's no easy way to get to the lightbox for a video to get a link from the address bar.
I'm still trying to figure out how the new share panel is really better than the old get a link tool. Like most things in new smug, it just takes more clicks to get the same thing as before.
Dave
Anyway.. Sorry to paste from another thread, but as it's more relevant here:
I hope these features would be ready soon! The quick 'Get a Link' page is the key reason why I hopped from a competitor to SmugMug! I share my photos individually on websites and forums, so the old 'Get a Link' was very easy to hop between photos and different types of links/sizes on one page. I was able to generate as many as 15 photo links per minute on the old screen - the links are already there. The new panel (without the quick left/right arrows and 'Copy' button), it takes a minutes just to grab one link as a lot of re-selection needs to be done before the link appears.
I tried to do this, but I can't find the imageID in the source. I can grab the ImageKey from the URL bar. Can this be done only on a particular page? If so, what is it?
Thanks for your helpful input Richard.
Its funny every time I have been to Madrid everyone has usually been so polite and accommodating.
Thank you for coming back to me.
Unlike you I do not deal with the general public but Advertising agencies and design groups around the world. Often working to very tight deadlines. Yesterday I had to send a link to a gallery with was very urgent. When I clicked on the share button as normal, all the functionality that I was used to had gone, replaced by a dumbed down option box primevally for sharing a single image or posting to Facebook or twitter. I didn't know that copying the URL would give me the same result, I was on a page where I could see all my other galleries and make changes to those galleries, I wasn't sure whether copying the URL would send my client to exactly the same page with exactly the same view and options.
Maybe I'm stupid, but an email from smug mug telling me about the changes and how to achieve the same result as the old share button would have been polite at the very least.
It effects my workflow because it was familiar and I was used to navigating especially when under pressure and up against a deadline. It may be a shorter process now but not when I'm not informed and told how to achieve the same outcome by those that just remove the feature.
It just seems that Smugmug is continually moving away from offering a professional service to professional photographers to a depository for the Facebook generation so that they can share their pictures on any social media outlet.
All I want is a replacement for the old Apple mobile me gallery. Somewhere I can store low res images for art directors to view their shots online before they arrive on DVD or over the wire. that is simple easy to navigate and not continually changing. Just saying!
When in SmugMug style, you can easily open the lightbox by pressing the "a" key on your keyboard. Then you could copy the lightbox link from your address bar. Note that if you've already clicked on the video player, key presses are sent to that instead of the page, so you may have to click anywhere on the site background to refocus the key presses to the page instead of the video player.
SmugMug Support Hero
Well, you can say all that you want, but taking the BBcode option away was in my mind a bad decision. Many photo sharing websites still use it and the option to just copy paste one link that showed the photo and then by clicking the photo brought you back to the SmugMug entry was very valuable and used a lot (by me as well as others). See the example below, even this forum still uses BBcode
I don't think it's very difficult to provide this option again that we've been using for so many years. Just one more checkbox like the one for HTML code will do.
It's not easy to move my > 6000 pictures with links on several websites to another hosting site so as a responsible company you should be very careful to take functionality away that existing customers have been using. If you do take it away you're in my mind just misusing your near monopoly of long established users.
I hope my plea will be supported by others, so feel free to add your thoughts on this issue
P.S. as you can see this is my first post on this forum. I was so upset about this change that I became a member just to vent my frustration here. I've been a SmugMug user for many years and I feel left out in the cold due to this change and the email answers I got from SmugMug support on this issue.
My SmugMug
I quoted this from another thread (the announcement of the new share function) and could not have said it better so it's better I just copy it here so the credits can go where credit is due.
Changing the process is OK, we have to get used to a new workflow. However removing functionality is something different, I feel "robbed" and don't even have the opportunity to go to the police and declare it.
I just checked, the syntax for the HTML code is very similar to the BBcode, how difficult is it to create that second checkbox and create the BBcode string. I'm not a software developer but I can hardly imagine it takes a lot of work given it's already done for the HTML code.
My SmugMug
Ok
What gives???
I can't post an image using the new SmugMug uploader???
All, I can post is a link????
Yesterday it worked???
Now I can't even delete the post????
The only choices I have are size and HTML. When would one use the HTML check box?
Nether work.
Sam
I'm a little confused by your reference to the SmugMug Uploader. Are you having an issue with uploads?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Anyway, the new share panel looks great, just add the BBcode option again
Hmmm, that doesn't work.
To say it with Mark Twain: "The report of the death of BBcode is greatly exaggerated"
My SmugMug
This is a mid 1950's car, I hope SmugMug still supports showing pictures of such old stuff
My SmugMug
When i click on the share button a new (to me) share dialog box appears.
This provides an options for "photo" "social" "slideshow"
Under Share....photo I can choose size and have an option to check the HTML box.
I chose an image size, did not check the HTML box, copied the image link and pasted it into a forum post.
A link address (I think that's what it is) appears but no image.
Why can't I simply copy the link and have an image appear in a post?
Here is an image link copy and paste: No pretty picture.
http://www.samlinvillephotography.com/Galleries/MotorSports/Porsche-Rennsport-Reunion-V/i-25KmQgQ/0/X2/Porsche%20919_6516-X2.jpg
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Is this new? I didn't have to do this before?
Inquiring minds want to know.................
Sam
You guys seriously need to fix this ASAP. I use the Get a Link interface in my SM galleries to blog 80+ images at a time, and if I have to open and close each one to do it I'm seriously going to lose my mind. It's absolutely going to put a hard stop on me using SM.
Who thought rolling out this half-assed interface was a good idea?
Ultimately it came down to the fact that there are very easy workarounds for not having a direct BBcode option. Instead of confusing our customers with extra options, the decision was made to keep the Share Panel simpler. For forum users, the extra button click has been moved to the forums. Instead of clicking a "BBCode" button on the Share Panel, all you have to do is click the "Insert Image" button here on the forums:
I know it's a different workflow, and we all hate to change up our routines, the amount of effort required to embed a photo into forums hasn't changed. Am I missing something? I admit I'm human and I'm always open to being told I'm wrong!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations