The Breadcrumb Content Block has a setting for "Show Current Page", which can be turned off. That would get rid of the duplicate "Norway" titles.
Autch...yea that might provide a solution to some. I have to admit not to me as my titles are somewhat different Norway has something like "Norway - Land of the Vikings" (which would be rather simple...compared to "New Zealand > North Island" which has "New Zealand's North Island - Te Ika-a-Māui" as a title)...but then I also have the "color marking of the actual chosen link" active on my website, so I suppose people might still be able to get from the breadcrumb and slightly long gallery title to the actual link in the menu...
The Design Picker, for example, suffers from the problem of having too many Designs that are almost all identical with only small variations and end up confusing many users.
I have to admit I agree.
Is there by the way somewhere a site that describes the different designs in detail - could be in some sort of spreadsheet-format, just to say "I need feature X, Y and Z" what designs fulfill my needs (and what else do they offer me feature wise)?
But in my opinion there is even more important stuff with the Design Picker than reducing the number of designs, as for example making it possible to fully customize a new design (while still having the old one active) in all details before activating the new design. (And yes I would add a change request for this one to the proper site, if only I had as much as a vote left ;-))
First I'm super happy Aaron that you are having this dialogue with everyone, thank you so much.
My focus goes to limiting the length of the visible gallery description, and here's my take:
- You acknowledged that 90% of the user base has 1-line descriptions. If that's the case, then suddenly why do we have a limit being put on this field? We're talking only about 10% of the users, and what portion of that base complained?
- Of the 10%, what percent is happy with showing all description? If someone really didn't want to show more than 1-3 lines, they would reduce them.
- Why is SM redesigning this element where only 10% of the base is affected, and the other 90% already follow the guideline you think is best - and these users didn't need a redesign of the description element to achieve that.
- In Legacy, gallery description was the ONLY place one could write description for a gallery - at all. Period. And, HTML was THE method recommended for formatting content in gallery descriptions. There was no limit to the volume of the content. In the transition from Legacy to New, we were told gallery descriptions would transfer to New, but, the HTML, if it wasn't up to snuff, would break. New would impose harsher coding standards. (And, yes it did, I am living proof of that in that I had to re-do tons of HTML.) Nowhere along the way was there ever a hint or overt statement that ""Putting advanced HTML into a Gallery Description has never been a basic customization (for New SmugMug)".
Aaron, please, do not re-write history about the use of HTML in the description field. This is gasp-able as to being incorrect: "Putting advanced HTML into a Gallery Description has never been a basic customization (for New SmugMug). Up until you shared your Description today, the only time I've seen HTML used in a Gallery Description was to add text formatting or add a link. The Gallery Description was never intended to be used for adding divisions and other layout altering elements..."
So what is really going on? I think the truth is embedded in this: "Yes, people built entire pages in Legacy SmugMug doing this, but that was an awful experience and is one of the reasons why we added HTML content blocks and Pages to New SmugMug, to get away from HTML in the Description," and I think the "awful" was a Smugmug experience, not an end-user/account owner experience."
I would rather Smugmug put this forward - here's a little speech I wrote for Smugmug:
- "We have to change the function of the description and remove HTML, or limit the use of it for this field. We have to ask users to move substantive gallery description content to HTML blocks. The new system has problems with the legacy gallery description functionality and is part of what we are dismantling in the long run. We're sorry to ask you to do this, but HTML blocks will better serve you. The target date for this is 12/31/17, at which time we'll put in place a change that drops the viewable limit of the gallery description to 1-3 lines, that offers a "see more" option. Between now and then HTML may or may not work perfectly, similar to how HTML was affected all throughout the transition from Legacy to New prior to the full launch. Thank you for your patience and support as we work through this transition. We're very much aware that for for some 5-10% of our user base, this change may be involve time and some pain."
As you can see from what I've written here, the stated logic and reasoning for the design change for gallery description is something I am moved to fight - and that's not right, I don't want to fight! Fight shouldn't be my default reaction - but it happens because something in the logic is not right. On the other hand, I can definitely get behind my own speech in terms of support for this design change. Hard but necessary changes are something I can definitely move with.
Lucky me, I actually did move tons of HTML content to HTML blocks, out of descriptions, when I had to re-write the bad code, so I wouldn't have that much work. I can empathize with Allen's having to do tons more work, though, so I wrote my speech to give him TIME.
... the SmugMug community is much larger than the small subset of vocal users here on dgrin ... [This discussion] does help me shape the questions that we ask as we hold focus groups, share the preview with Pro Photographers and get additional feedback.
Of course you want to go beyond the Dgrin community. That just makes sense. But I do trust your focus groups and test users will work through the double-crop exercise (1:1 or 4:3 for thumbnails and many:few for cover photos) from a single source photo, at least conceptually, if that's the direction you are going. Not so much for the mechanics as for evaluating the usability of the results for the two functions these two crops serve.
Autch...yea that might provide a solution to some. I have to admit not to me as my titles are somewhat different Norway has something like "Norway - Land of the Vikings" (which would be rather simple...compared to "New Zealand > North Island" which has "New Zealand's North Island - Te Ika-a-Māui" as a title)...but then I also have the "color marking of the actual chosen link" active on my website, so I suppose people might still be able to get from the breadcrumb and slightly long gallery title to the actual link in the menu...
Sorry if I wasn't clear. The Gallery Title displayed in the Gallery Header will be the same text as was in the Breadcrumb Content Block. What's in your Nav Menu has no impact on which text is displayed.
I have to admit I agree.
Is there by the way somewhere a site that describes the different designs in detail - could be in some sort of spreadsheet-format, just to say "I need feature X, Y and Z" what designs fulfill my needs (and what else do they offer me feature wise)?
No, the screenshots and preview were meant to give you an idea of which design had which features, though in reality, once you get to the Customizer, you can change all of that. The designs were built with the Design Picker so everything can end up being replicated.
But in my opinion there is even more important stuff with the Design Picker than reducing the number of designs, as for example making it possible to fully customize a new design (while still having the old one active) in all details before activating the new design. (And yes I would add a change request for this one to the proper site, if only I had as much as a vote left ;-))
It's one of our short-term goals to make customizing a new design much easier. Though it might not entirely fix what you're hoping to have fixed, but it'll start to.
- You acknowledged that 90% of the user base has 1-line descriptions. If that's the case, then suddenly why do we have a limit being put on this field? We're talking only about 10% of the users, and what portion of that base complained?
If I understand this correctly, you're encouraging us to do what's best for the majority of our users and not worry about the details for the smaller % that would want it differently?
- Of the 10%, what percent is happy with showing all description? If someone really didn't want to show more than 1-3 lines, they would reduce them.
In theory, yes. It would make these design decisions much easier. In reality, though, people have used Descriptions to put information that helps run their business, and we want to help photographers run their business.
- Why is SM redesigning this element where only 10% of the base is affected, and the other 90% already follow the guideline you think is best - and these users didn't need a redesign of the description element to achieve that.
That's actually a very good question. If it was up to us, the Description would be one line with a "read more". We expanded it to 3 lines to put a little bit of a buffer, and then anything longer (<10%) gets the "Read More". We should just leave it at that and call it a day, but you know here at SmugMug we care about each and every one of you. We're never going to stop caring about each of you, but from a Design perspective, we may need to start focusing on the majority so we can roll out new features more quickly and iterate on them. It's how we'd like to operate, but you guys here at dgrin would prefer we incorporated things that impact as little as 1 user, so it's a tough call.
- In Legacy, gallery description was the ONLY place one could write description for a gallery - at all. Period. And, HTML was THE method recommended for formatting content in gallery descriptions. There was no limit to the volume of the content.
There's more truth to this statement than you realize. While I don't want to get into the discussion of Description length right now (since we're still allowing it to be as long as you want), I do want to point out that you specifically stated "formatting content in gallery descriptions." Formatting content. The Description is meant to Describe your gallery via some amount of text, and the HTML was allowed for you to add formatting to that text. It was never intended to add Design elements to your page, which is what it eventually evolved into and we finally put a stop to in New SmugMug.
Aaron, please, do not re-write history about the use of HTML in the description field. This is gasp-able as to being incorrect: "Putting advanced HTML into a Gallery Description has never been a basic customization (for New SmugMug). Up until you shared your Description today, the only time I've seen HTML used in a Gallery Description was to add text formatting or add a link. The Gallery Description was never intended to be used for adding divisions and other layout altering elements..."
So what is really going on? I think the truth is embedded in this: "Yes, people built entire pages in Legacy SmugMug doing this, but that was an awful experience and is one of the reasons why we added HTML content blocks and Pages to New SmugMug, to get away from HTML in the Description," and I think the "awful" was a Smugmug experience, not an end-user/account owner experience."
My intent was not to re-write history. My intent was, as a long-time Legacy SmugMug user, was to describe the history. The field is called "Gallery Description" not "Gallery HTML". If we use the dictionary to help define this, it means "a written representation of a gallery" -- text to describe what the photos are about. The intent of this field was not to build an entire page with divisions, spans, layout formatting, etc. HTML was allowed for text formatting.
If we follow the history further, Legacy SmugMug had no way to build a simple Page. You could only create Galleries. However, photographers wanted pages that described who they were, what products were available, what services were allowed. Because there was no such thing as a "Page" someone realized that you could take advantage of the Gallery Description allowing HTML, and realized you could build pages by using the Description. So there was an unintended evolution: Gallery Description became a place where you could use Advanced HTML to build a custom page.
This meant that, to your visitors, they could get a beautifully created page that described the content they were looking for, but was an AWFUL experience for you, the paying customer/account owner. You had to know HTML, you had to figure out how to format it. It worked, but it was really bad and not a good experience for you, the account owner.
New SmugMug came along and one of the goals was to fix this problem. Get away with the need to know HTML and to figure out how to format it and replace it with "Pages" and Content Blocks that could be dragged and customized. Gallery Description could return to its purpose: a written representation of your gallery.
As you can see from what I've written here, the stated logic and reasoning for the design change for gallery description is something I am moved to fight - and that's not right, I don't want to fight! Fight shouldn't be my default reaction - but it happens because something in the logic is not right. On the other hand, I can definitely get behind my own speech in terms of support for this design change. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/mwink.gif" border="0" alt="" > Hard but necessary changes are something I can definitely move with.
Thank you for being willing to accept that things evolve and change over time. Obviously we always want to be making the experience better for you. I'm not saying we're going to limit the use of HTML (though we probably should), nor are we going to decrease the amount of text you can put in a Description (though we probably should), but you will see us start moving our Designs into a direction that keeps these edge cases contained so that SmugMug sites remain beautiful. Where's the logic in having 95% of peoples sites look worse, just so we can keep a feature that 5% of people use? The logic is to fix the site for 95% of our customers, and work with the remaining 5%. The Read More is a perfect example. We're not breaking anything for those 5%, we're just starting to put limits so that people can react accordingly.
Of course you want to go beyond the Dgrin community. That just makes sense. But I do trust your focus groups and test users will work through the double-crop exercise (1:1 or 4:3 for thumbnails and many:few for cover photos) from a single source photo, at least conceptually, if that's the direction you are going. Not so much for the mechanics as for evaluating the usability of the results for the two functions these two crops serve.
Definitely. And I'm glad I opened it up to dgrin first, because now I can specifically ask these kinds of questions when we hold them! to dgrin!
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChancyRat - You acknowledged that 90% of the user base has 1-line descriptions. If that's the case, then suddenly why do we have a limit being put on this field? We're talking only about 10% of the users, and what portion of that base complained?
If I understand this correctly, you're encouraging us to do what's best for the majority of our users and not worry about the details for the smaller % that would want it differently?
The smaller % already had it good. The majority already did it right. There has to be another reason SM is trying to fix what wasn't broken.
The smaller % already had it good. The majority already did it right. There has to be another reason SM is trying to fix what wasn't broken.
The first thing you read when you come to SmugMug is "Stunning Photo Websites." If you look at the screenshots I posted, comparing the gallery styles, you'll see that a Long Description pushing the content down, hiding the images, hiding titles/captions, etc, is not stunning. I've been hearing it from you guys here on dgrin too, about having titles and captions and comments pushed off the page. And we've been hearing that clients can't find the buy button, or there's bugs with the buttons overlapping long descriptions. So there was a lot broken. If we look at those broken things, the new Gallery Header fixes them. The only downside is that the 5-10% that had long Descriptions get a different experience. We haven't destroyed their experience, just changed it, and based on your feedback, we're probably going to change it slightly so that they'll also be happy.
Where's the logic in having 95% of peoples sites look worse, just so we can keep a feature that 5% of people use? The logic is to fix the site for 95% of our customers, and work with the remaining 5%. The Read More is a perfect example. We're not breaking anything for those 5%, we're just starting to put limits so that people can react accordingly.
What is causing 95% of people's sites to look worse, regarding length of gallery description, when 90% of the users have 1-line descriptions? If 90% are doing one-liners in the existing system which facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here. If 5-10% use and want to add more text, and the current system facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here ... Aaron, not proceeding with this change DOES accommodate the other 5-10%. The 90% are already accommodated.
Don't you think a missing bit of truth here is, SM wants to stop people from adding narrative? Is this merely a cost saving measure? Fixing costs?
Don't you think a missing bit of truth here is, SM wants to stop people from adding narrative? Is this merely a cost saving measure? Fixing costs?
I want to be extremely clear, so I'm going to use lots of text formatting: ABSOLUTELY NOT. None of these design changes are meant to stop narrative. They're meant to make your galleries look better, because, lets be honest, when you look at the comparisons that I posted above, your galleries look much better with this new design. Your galleries look better with a cover photo and they look better with the new header. And it paves the way for a lot of additional, useful, requested features. In the future you'll see us do some fun, awesome, nice things with this new header, that aren't possible with the current one.
I like what you are coming up with here, but count me as against use of the feature image for the cover photo. The aspect ratios for the cover photo and for the gallery thumbnail are entirely different. It's bad enough that the gallery thumbnail is an arbitrary chop (albeit with options, I concede), but an image that may suit as a cover photo will seldom work as the gallery thumb.
Have you considered letting us select two images for each gallery, not just a feature image but also a second to be used for the cover image?
I want to be extremely clear, so I'm going to use lots of text formatting: ABSOLUTELY NOT. None of these design changes are meant to stop narrative. They're meant to make your galleries look better, because, lets be honest, when you look at the comparisons that I posted above, your galleries look much better with this new design. Your galleries look better with a cover photo and they look better with the new header. And it paves the way for a lot of additional, useful, requested features. In the future you'll see us do some fun, awesome, nice things with this new header, that aren't possible with the current one.
It's good to hear there isn't a cost saving measure driving this.
But there's still something else going on. Can you address this:
What is causing 95% of people's sites to look worse, regarding length of gallery description, when 90% of the users have 1-line descriptions? If 90% are doing one-liners in the existing system which facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here. If 5-10% use and want to add more text, and the current system facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here ... Aaron, not proceeding with this change DOES accommodate the other 5-10%. The 90% are already accommodated.
Basically Smug has invested time and energy into tweaking a function that is already working 100% perfectly for 90% of the users. And of the remaining 10%, some portion of them are totally happy with long descriptions exactly where they are. So in putting in a limit, you're now making a select group (of only 10% of the users) very unhappy. That is the biggest impact of this change, as far as I can tell. It's not about making the majority of SM sites look better - 90% of them already match what you want to see. Right??
Something is out of balance here. The only way I can see through it is, if SM honestly does not have to dismantle the HTML function of descriptions as part of dismantling the Legacy back end, then un-do the impact on the percentage of people who want to write and see long descriptions, and make sure the tool can be turned on or off, and if on, choose a number of lines. But - see - this doesn't make sense to me because 90% of SM users aren't affected one way or the other, they already do what you want. So a small percentage who like to see 3 lines, will turn on that function, and the rest will turn it off so they can go back to doing it they way they wanted. After all is said and done this is a LOT of work for little gain for a small percentage.
I don't have a strong opinion on this (though I don't like the gallery title being moved down below the breadcrumb and the cover photo definitely might not be the same as the featured photo), I think it's important to remember that the gallery description is a pretty unique field and smugmug shouldn't forget how important it might be to some people with customized sites.
An HTML or text block isn't nearly as useful because you can either put the same one on every gallery or you need each gallery to be unique (making further customization impractical). In other words, if I wanted a different picture or whatever at the top of each gallery, html in the gallery description is really the only practical way (that I can think of) to do it. Sure, I could add a single photo content block to every gallery, but then all my galleries would be unique and I wouldn't be able to customize "all galleries" every time i find a tweak to make.
I personally use simple 1-line gallery descriptions, but removing html or making other destructive changes to the gallery description capabilities ignores all the other creative possibilities. No, those other uses aren't "gallery descriptions" by the dictionary definition. But how else would you place different html or text on every gallery without having to make each one unique?
Smugmug's quest for stunning photo websites is great, but it can't be one size fits all. Never stop letting customers decide what's stunning to them. Trust me, if you allow any amount of customization, I can make an ugly website! Finally, the changes might look great on your site but they might look like crap with on mine. Keep options open and don't force changes because they "look better."
It's good to hear there isn't a cost saving measure driving this.
But there's still something else going on.
Chancy, I think you've honed in on one very small comment I made that may have been confusing, and then it's been pulling your focus away and eating away at you. My apologies for that. This release does NOT change the HTML that is allowed in the Description. We are not "dismantling it" as you state, it's unchanged.
Smugmug's quest for stunning photo websites is great, but it can't be one size fits all. Never stop letting customers decide what's stunning to them. Trust me, if you allow any amount of customization, I can make an ugly website! Finally, the changes might look great on your site but they might look like crap with on mine. Keep options open and don't force changes because they "look better."
I concur with that, but there also needs to be limitations so that things actually work. One of those limitations may be that you can't put different images at the top of your gallery, other than the Cover Photo (though this is yet another reason why a separate Cover Photo and Feature Photo image would make sense, and we've also placed this on the consideration block).
In reality, if you've decided you really want to do this, there is a away and that's to make each gallery custom. We have to build SmugMug so that it's easy to use for everyone, and making it complicated because 0.01% of our users want a very specific item, isn't the right decision. If we make this change, you all still have a way to do these things, we're not limiting you from doing it. Yes, it will be harder for you, but that's the decision you make by wanting something very custom and unique. In the meantime, the remaining 99.99% will have a system that is easy to use.
Lastly, I want to make it clear: I have no intention of completely removing HTML from the Descriptions. I do think we should limit the set of white-listed tags that can be used, limiting them to the formatting tags. Layout tags, like DIVs and SPANs would not be allowed but formatting like STYLE, A links, BOLD, ITALICS, FONT SIZE, COLOR, etc, would be allowed. At this time, though, we have taken no steps to implement this limitation, this is merely my own opinion.
Lastly, I want to make it clear: I have no intention of completely removing HTML from the Descriptions. I do think we should limit the set of white-listed tags that can be used, limiting them to the formatting tags. Layout tags, like DIVs and SPANs would not be allowed but formatting like STYLE, A links, BOLD, ITALICS, FONT SIZE, COLOR, etc, would be allowed. At this time, though, we have taken no steps to implement this limitation, this is merely my own opinion.
Why? Just to break customizations once and not piecemeal as smugmug evolves? Not sure I understand the reason for doing it at all. 99% of your users will never even consider putting html in a gallery description. The remainder that might do it COULD someday have a customization break? And you want to prevent that? Or, is it that someone might make an ugly website and you want to prevent that?
There's a giant list of feature requests and I've never seen "remove html from gallery descriptions" on it. Why even take the time to consider it?
Why? Just to break customizations once and not piecemeal as smugmug evolves?
There's a giant list of feature requests and I've never seen "remove html from gallery descriptions" on it. Why even take the time to consider it?
Yes, because the longer we allow it the more users could have their sites broken at a later date. I'd rather limit it to a smaller #. Dave, you make my Product Manager heart sing, because that's exactly why it was just my opinion and not something we're acting on: there's so many other more important things that we want to work on.
I'm expressed my opinion here here because I want people to stop and think "even though they allow it right now, maybe I shouldn't do this" so that in the future they're not left with the situation Allen is in. It SUCKS for him and it tears at my heart that we'd have to put him through that.
....
Here's how it looks when I paste in your Description:
...
So it looks like your taking a wide description and popping the "more" up in a very narrow box.
No wonder it's all stacked up. Seems to me logic would say to use the original width in popup.
Why is the text so small in the popup compared to the original?
Yes, because the longer we allow it the more users could have their sites broken at a later date. I'd rather limit it to a smaller #. Dave, you make my Product Manager heart sing, because that's exactly why it was just my opinion and not something we're acting on: there's so many other more important things that we want to work on.
I'm expressed my opinion here here because I want people to stop and think "even though they allow it right now, maybe I shouldn't do this" so that in the future they're not left with the situation Allen is in. It SUCKS for him and it tears at my heart that we'd have to put him through that.
The problem just came 10X because EVERY gallery will have to be made "Just This Gallery". It was so
much easier in gallery settings changing description because you can change it in every
gallery keeping them default. Now the big question!!! I'm assuming nothing in the description will
change including html so it can be copied out and put in the html box as you have said.
Allen,
I'm playing with your CSS and it looks like if we use the following, it will work without you needing to change any of your Gallery Descriptions, nor needing to make each gallery custom. You'd add it into your theme's CSS and you shouldn't need to do anything else to your descriptions. This will work as long as we leave HTML as it is in the Descriptions (which, we have no plans to take action on at the moment, though you run the risk of us changing it at some point in the future).
/* Set the new description to allow Allen's divs to display on one row, instead of in 3 rows */
.sm-gallery-cover-description {
display: flex !important;
}
/* Move the bird jump div to the right side of the header, but subtract the 200px for the gallery buttons.
You'll need to adjust this since I have it set for "Buy Photos" and slideshow button, but you might have different buttons */
.birdjump {
position: absolute !important;
right: 200px !important;
}
/* Move the map this button to the center */
.sm-gallery-cover-description center {
position: relative;
margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto;
left: -100px;
}
Combine this with the code for more lines (or we add the Toggle to "Show Full Description"), and you're set!
Thanks, I thought about using flex but was trying what I have first. Your screen shot looks great! Big relief and would save macho of time.
Is that were the buttons end up, to the right of the description? I wish they were going on the right end of the title line, lots of room. Think that would be a much better place and not interfere with the description. I hid all buttons except BUY because they robbed description width.
I'll have to add flow down rules from specific top folder otherwise it could affect all site galleries. .sm-page-parentnode-Qm7v4 .sm-page-gallery-album ......... {...}
Guess I won't be able to play with this exact class names until the "change" happens? I'll try it with current classes. I added @mobile rule to hide map button < 840.
Is that were the buttons end up, to the right of the description? I wish they were going on the right end of the title line, lots of room. Think that would be a much better place and not interfere with the description.
Great question. The design team experimented with the buttons in a number of positions and ultimately felt that at the bottom was least obtrusive, fit the best, and didn't seem to just be 'floating' on the page. Of course we can whip up some CSS for ya if you'd prefer them higher.
I spent some time last night looking at pictures and thinking about the double-cropping issue for thumbnails and cover images. I've got some panorama shots what would look killer good as cover images across the the top of a gallery, even though no square section would produce a particularly informative thumbnails. Please don't deny these poor panoramas their digital destiny!
A couple of quick updates and some follow-up questions:
Updates:
- Cover Photo and Feature Photo will be separated. Cover Photo will be set in Gallery Settings, just like Feature Photo is.
- Turning Cover Photo ON or OFF will be done in Gallery Settings, not in the Customizer. Though, choosing whether or not to display the Cover Breadcrumb will remain in the Customizer.
Follow-Up Questions:
What is it about the "Read More" on long descriptions that you don't like?
- Is it the that you don't like the overlay?
- Is the "read more" hard to see?
- Do you feel that your clients and viewers who have taken the time to read the entire description, up until that point, won't click read more?
- Something else?
It is definitely hard to see (on your particular page). Not a problem for those who can tweak css, of course. But I'd certainly suggest to provide opacity and color options for regular users.
I almost want to say that I expect to see the Read More UNDER the last line of text.. but I understand that functionally it kills limited vertical space.
..."clients and viewers who have taken the time to read the entire description, up until that point, won't click read more"
Viewers may also not read even the 1-3 lines, much less the "read more" option.
Also viewers may never click read more, just because. "Read more" is just another click, when clicking should be minimal. In thise case they won't know what they're missing. I want viewers' eyes to at least register the volume available to read, and then decide whether or not to scroll down and not read, or read some - and maybe all - before they do scroll down to the video. My belief is that the content of what I write is really important to be able to appreciate the video or photo (mostly video). I usually want or need folks to read in conjunction with viewing, so I never want the writing to be hidden. This is my take on what it takes to be 'beautiful'.
If gallery content is going to be hidden, when I don't want it to be, I'll re-do it as an HTML block. It would be much easier, obviously, if the content could remain in the gallery description, because then I don't have to isolate to "just this gallery". In fact it's a great argument that to protect the integrity of "all gallery formatting options," keeping full descriptions visible should be protected as an option. Or - as I think you're doing, adding the option to turn full visibility on or off. (You've been talking to Allen about this and I haven't been following, but I assume whatever you're designing for him is something everyone can use, code-wise.)
Ok, I confess I have NOT read all the prior comments, though I tried to skim. I looked at the same. One concern I have is how the cover photo will look in different aspects. But my question is a bit on a tangent.
Has Smugmug considered providing a way for users to preview such changes before they occur, for their gallery (or if it is there I missed it). Something like a ?Show=New123 parameter or some such.
I am not suggesting it be another "you decide when to opt in" as that can get to be ridiculous over time with combinations.
Just a "30 days before we put up a change we will let you see a real, live preview of your code". Basically defer your implementation 30 days so people can test and... maybe solve their own issues with customizations, but maybe catch killer issues before you force them to "on for everyone".
I realize there are some technical challenges in this, but I think if it's not a "you decide when to turn it on" the really bad ones go away. And I wouldn't say do this for every change, just ones that are visually significant and likely to impact a lot of CSS/HTML people have written.
A couple of quick updates and some follow-up questions:
Updates:
- Cover Photo and Feature Photo will be separated. Cover Photo will be set in Gallery Settings, just like Feature Photo is.
- Turning Cover Photo ON or OFF will be done in Gallery Settings, not in the Customizer. Though, choosing whether or not to display the Cover Breadcrumb will remain in the Customizer.
Follow-Up Questions:
What is it about the "Read More" on long descriptions that you don't like?
- Is it the that you don't like the overlay?
- Is the "read more" hard to see?
- Do you feel that your clients and viewers who have taken the time to read the entire description, up until that point, won't click read more?
- Something else?
Huzzah for the first two!
The "read more" situation seems to me to be very dependent on the nature of the gallery.
Sometimes a long description just adds more background information and the "read more" button would be fine. An example might be the following, although I'd likely rewrite the first few lines to indicate more of what was coming: https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Browser/Sierra-Nevada/West-Walker-River-Area/ For the specific issue addressed in the last paragraph, I'd probably also update the captions for the individuals videos to include some reference to the Vimeo videos at the end of the gallery. In a case like this, I'd only be worried about the transition, the time from when the new design goes live to when I'd tweaked every thing to work. During that transition, it would be nice to have the whole description visible, as it now. Afterwards, I'd likely have a cover photo and a rewitten description and be very comfortable with the "read more".
Sometimes, though, seeing the whole description is a larger part of the context of page. The following smart gallery, which is part of the more "technical" chunk of my site, might be an example. This gallery is not a picture story like most of my others. It's a pictorial reference gallery. Look here: https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Browser/Families/Ferns/ Since it's a SM-style gallery, it will never have a cover photo and the description will always be present on the page. Here, as in all cases where there's no cover photo, I still think the right approach is to be able to turn off the "read more" and enable full description display.
(Added later: If it not obvious from the above, in that pictorial reference gallery, the description has reference information. It's not unreasonable to want to look back at the description after reading a caption or looking at the keywords for a given picture. "Now what was a lycophyte again?" Hence my desire to have it always visible. This is a specialized situation, of course, but perhaps there are other situations where there is information in the description that the viewer may want or need to refer back to.)
(Perhaps other users can indicate other examples on their sites where the function of the gallery and gallery description is such that the description really wants to be there whole from the start and to remain visible, whole, while the user is looking at the images ... or perhaps cases where full descriptions would be real helpful during the transition.)
As for visibility of the "read more", I don't see your scrim in the examples, but I trust you will work that one to get it right. Is it a block scrim (like you use on thumbnails when the caption covers the image) or just a little darkening under each letter (like Microsoft uses on the Win 7 desktop)? As much as it pains me to say it, I like the Microsoft approach.
Updates:
- Cover Photo and Feature Photo will be separated. Cover Photo will be set in Gallery Settings, just like Feature Photo is.
- Turning Cover Photo ON or OFF will be done in Gallery Settings, not in the Customizer. Though, choosing whether or not to display the Cover Breadcrumb will remain in the Customizer.
Excellent, thank you!
I have no problem with limiting the lines shown in the description, a read more indication works for me.
Comments
I have to admit I agree.
Is there by the way somewhere a site that describes the different designs in detail - could be in some sort of spreadsheet-format, just to say "I need feature X, Y and Z" what designs fulfill my needs (and what else do they offer me feature wise)?
But in my opinion there is even more important stuff with the Design Picker than reducing the number of designs, as for example making it possible to fully customize a new design (while still having the old one active) in all details before activating the new design. (And yes I would add a change request for this one to the proper site, if only I had as much as a vote left ;-))
My focus goes to limiting the length of the visible gallery description, and here's my take:
- You acknowledged that 90% of the user base has 1-line descriptions. If that's the case, then suddenly why do we have a limit being put on this field? We're talking only about 10% of the users, and what portion of that base complained?
- Of the 10%, what percent is happy with showing all description? If someone really didn't want to show more than 1-3 lines, they would reduce them.
- Why is SM redesigning this element where only 10% of the base is affected, and the other 90% already follow the guideline you think is best - and these users didn't need a redesign of the description element to achieve that.
- In Legacy, gallery description was the ONLY place one could write description for a gallery - at all. Period. And, HTML was THE method recommended for formatting content in gallery descriptions. There was no limit to the volume of the content. In the transition from Legacy to New, we were told gallery descriptions would transfer to New, but, the HTML, if it wasn't up to snuff, would break. New would impose harsher coding standards. (And, yes it did, I am living proof of that in that I had to re-do tons of HTML.) Nowhere along the way was there ever a hint or overt statement that ""Putting advanced HTML into a Gallery Description has never been a basic customization (for New SmugMug)".
I would rather Smugmug put this forward - here's a little speech I wrote for Smugmug:
- "We have to change the function of the description and remove HTML, or limit the use of it for this field. We have to ask users to move substantive gallery description content to HTML blocks. The new system has problems with the legacy gallery description functionality and is part of what we are dismantling in the long run. We're sorry to ask you to do this, but HTML blocks will better serve you. The target date for this is 12/31/17, at which time we'll put in place a change that drops the viewable limit of the gallery description to 1-3 lines, that offers a "see more" option. Between now and then HTML may or may not work perfectly, similar to how HTML was affected all throughout the transition from Legacy to New prior to the full launch. Thank you for your patience and support as we work through this transition. We're very much aware that for for some 5-10% of our user base, this change may be involve time and some pain."
As you can see from what I've written here, the stated logic and reasoning for the design change for gallery description is something I am moved to fight - and that's not right, I don't want to fight! Fight shouldn't be my default reaction - but it happens because something in the logic is not right. On the other hand, I can definitely get behind my own speech in terms of support for this design change.
Lucky me, I actually did move tons of HTML content to HTML blocks, out of descriptions, when I had to re-write the bad code, so I wouldn't have that much work. I can empathize with Allen's having to do tons more work, though, so I wrote my speech to give him TIME.
Of course you want to go beyond the Dgrin community. That just makes sense. But I do trust your focus groups and test users will work through the double-crop exercise (1:1 or 4:3 for thumbnails and many:few for cover photos) from a single source photo, at least conceptually, if that's the direction you are going. Not so much for the mechanics as for evaluating the usability of the results for the two functions these two crops serve.
No, the screenshots and preview were meant to give you an idea of which design had which features, though in reality, once you get to the Customizer, you can change all of that. The designs were built with the Design Picker so everything can end up being replicated.
It's one of our short-term goals to make customizing a new design much easier. Though it might not entirely fix what you're hoping to have fixed, but it'll start to.
If I understand this correctly, you're encouraging us to do what's best for the majority of our users and not worry about the details for the smaller % that would want it differently?
In theory, yes. It would make these design decisions much easier. In reality, though, people have used Descriptions to put information that helps run their business, and we want to help photographers run their business.
That's actually a very good question. If it was up to us, the Description would be one line with a "read more". We expanded it to 3 lines to put a little bit of a buffer, and then anything longer (<10%) gets the "Read More". We should just leave it at that and call it a day, but you know here at SmugMug we care about each and every one of you. We're never going to stop caring about each of you, but from a Design perspective, we may need to start focusing on the majority so we can roll out new features more quickly and iterate on them. It's how we'd like to operate, but you guys here at dgrin would prefer we incorporated things that impact as little as 1 user, so it's a tough call.
There's more truth to this statement than you realize. While I don't want to get into the discussion of Description length right now (since we're still allowing it to be as long as you want), I do want to point out that you specifically stated "formatting content in gallery descriptions." Formatting content. The Description is meant to Describe your gallery via some amount of text, and the HTML was allowed for you to add formatting to that text. It was never intended to add Design elements to your page, which is what it eventually evolved into and we finally put a stop to in New SmugMug.
My intent was not to re-write history. My intent was, as a long-time Legacy SmugMug user, was to describe the history. The field is called "Gallery Description" not "Gallery HTML". If we use the dictionary to help define this, it means "a written representation of a gallery" -- text to describe what the photos are about. The intent of this field was not to build an entire page with divisions, spans, layout formatting, etc. HTML was allowed for text formatting.
If we follow the history further, Legacy SmugMug had no way to build a simple Page. You could only create Galleries. However, photographers wanted pages that described who they were, what products were available, what services were allowed. Because there was no such thing as a "Page" someone realized that you could take advantage of the Gallery Description allowing HTML, and realized you could build pages by using the Description. So there was an unintended evolution: Gallery Description became a place where you could use Advanced HTML to build a custom page.
This meant that, to your visitors, they could get a beautifully created page that described the content they were looking for, but was an AWFUL experience for you, the paying customer/account owner. You had to know HTML, you had to figure out how to format it. It worked, but it was really bad and not a good experience for you, the account owner.
New SmugMug came along and one of the goals was to fix this problem. Get away with the need to know HTML and to figure out how to format it and replace it with "Pages" and Content Blocks that could be dragged and customized. Gallery Description could return to its purpose: a written representation of your gallery.
Thank you for being willing to accept that things evolve and change over time. Obviously we always want to be making the experience better for you. I'm not saying we're going to limit the use of HTML (though we probably should), nor are we going to decrease the amount of text you can put in a Description (though we probably should), but you will see us start moving our Designs into a direction that keeps these edge cases contained so that SmugMug sites remain beautiful. Where's the logic in having 95% of peoples sites look worse, just so we can keep a feature that 5% of people use? The logic is to fix the site for 95% of our customers, and work with the remaining 5%. The Read More is a perfect example. We're not breaking anything for those 5%, we're just starting to put limits so that people can react accordingly.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Definitely. And I'm glad I opened it up to dgrin first, because now I can specifically ask these kinds of questions when we hold 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
The smaller % already had it good. The majority already did it right. There has to be another reason SM is trying to fix what wasn't broken.
The first thing you read when you come to SmugMug is "Stunning Photo Websites." If you look at the screenshots I posted, comparing the gallery styles, you'll see that a Long Description pushing the content down, hiding the images, hiding titles/captions, etc, is not stunning. I've been hearing it from you guys here on dgrin too, about having titles and captions and comments pushed off the page. And we've been hearing that clients can't find the buy button, or there's bugs with the buttons overlapping long descriptions. So there was a lot broken. If we look at those broken things, the new Gallery Header fixes them. The only downside is that the 5-10% that had long Descriptions get a different experience. We haven't destroyed their experience, just changed it, and based on your feedback, we're probably going to change it slightly so that they'll also be happy.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
What is causing 95% of people's sites to look worse, regarding length of gallery description, when 90% of the users have 1-line descriptions? If 90% are doing one-liners in the existing system which facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here. If 5-10% use and want to add more text, and the current system facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here ... Aaron, not proceeding with this change DOES accommodate the other 5-10%. The 90% are already accommodated.
Don't you think a missing bit of truth here is, SM wants to stop people from adding narrative? Is this merely a cost saving measure? Fixing costs?
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Have you considered letting us select two images for each gallery, not just a feature image but also a second to be used for the cover image?
Yep -- that's on the consideration block right now, since basically 100% of you (10 out of 10) have mentioned this.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
It's good to hear there isn't a cost saving measure driving this.
But there's still something else going on. Can you address this:
What is causing 95% of people's sites to look worse, regarding length of gallery description, when 90% of the users have 1-line descriptions? If 90% are doing one-liners in the existing system which facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here. If 5-10% use and want to add more text, and the current system facilitates that, there is nothing to fix here ... Aaron, not proceeding with this change DOES accommodate the other 5-10%. The 90% are already accommodated.
Basically Smug has invested time and energy into tweaking a function that is already working 100% perfectly for 90% of the users. And of the remaining 10%, some portion of them are totally happy with long descriptions exactly where they are. So in putting in a limit, you're now making a select group (of only 10% of the users) very unhappy. That is the biggest impact of this change, as far as I can tell. It's not about making the majority of SM sites look better - 90% of them already match what you want to see. Right??
Something is out of balance here. The only way I can see through it is, if SM honestly does not have to dismantle the HTML function of descriptions as part of dismantling the Legacy back end, then un-do the impact on the percentage of people who want to write and see long descriptions, and make sure the tool can be turned on or off, and if on, choose a number of lines. But - see - this doesn't make sense to me because 90% of SM users aren't affected one way or the other, they already do what you want. So a small percentage who like to see 3 lines, will turn on that function, and the rest will turn it off so they can go back to doing it they way they wanted. After all is said and done this is a LOT of work for little gain for a small percentage.
An HTML or text block isn't nearly as useful because you can either put the same one on every gallery or you need each gallery to be unique (making further customization impractical). In other words, if I wanted a different picture or whatever at the top of each gallery, html in the gallery description is really the only practical way (that I can think of) to do it. Sure, I could add a single photo content block to every gallery, but then all my galleries would be unique and I wouldn't be able to customize "all galleries" every time i find a tweak to make.
I personally use simple 1-line gallery descriptions, but removing html or making other destructive changes to the gallery description capabilities ignores all the other creative possibilities. No, those other uses aren't "gallery descriptions" by the dictionary definition. But how else would you place different html or text on every gallery without having to make each one unique?
Smugmug's quest for stunning photo websites is great, but it can't be one size fits all. Never stop letting customers decide what's stunning to them. Trust me, if you allow any amount of customization, I can make an ugly website!
Dave
I concur with that, but there also needs to be limitations so that things actually work. One of those limitations may be that you can't put different images at the top of your gallery, other than the Cover Photo (though this is yet another reason why a separate Cover Photo and Feature Photo image would make sense, and we've also placed this on the consideration block).
In reality, if you've decided you really want to do this, there is a away and that's to make each gallery custom. We have to build SmugMug so that it's easy to use for everyone, and making it complicated because 0.01% of our users want a very specific item, isn't the right decision. If we make this change, you all still have a way to do these things, we're not limiting you from doing it. Yes, it will be harder for you, but that's the decision you make by wanting something very custom and unique. In the meantime, the remaining 99.99% will have a system that is easy to use.
Lastly, I want to make it clear: I have no intention of completely removing HTML from the Descriptions. I do think we should limit the set of white-listed tags that can be used, limiting them to the formatting tags. Layout tags, like DIVs and SPANs would not be allowed but formatting like STYLE, A links, BOLD, ITALICS, FONT SIZE, COLOR, etc, would be allowed. At this time, though, we have taken no steps to implement this limitation, this is merely my own opinion.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Why? Just to break customizations once and not piecemeal as smugmug evolves? Not sure I understand the reason for doing it at all. 99% of your users will never even consider putting html in a gallery description. The remainder that might do it COULD someday have a customization break? And you want to prevent that? Or, is it that someone might make an ugly website and you want to prevent that?
There's a giant list of feature requests and I've never seen "remove html from gallery descriptions" on it. Why even take the time to consider it?
Dave
Yes, because the longer we allow it the more users could have their sites broken at a later date. I'd rather limit it to a smaller #. Dave, you make my Product Manager heart sing, because that's exactly why it was just my opinion and not something we're acting on: there's so many other more important things that we want to work on.
I'm expressed my opinion here here because I want people to stop and think "even though they allow it right now, maybe I shouldn't do this" so that in the future they're not left with the situation Allen is in. It SUCKS for him and it tears at my heart that we'd have to put him through that.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
No wonder it's all stacked up. Seems to me logic would say to use the original width in popup.
Why is the text so small in the popup compared to the original?
My Website index | My Blog
so it flows down from top folder to all galleries. I've already hid some elements for small screens that
don't play well.
http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2016-Birding/Birding-2016-January/HTML-Box-Description-Test/n-nd6CmZ
I'm hoping the buy button will move up to the end of he title line.
The problem just came 10X because EVERY gallery will have to be made "Just This Gallery". It was so
much easier in gallery settings changing description because you can change it in every
gallery keeping them default. Now the big question!!! I'm assuming nothing in the description will
change including html so it can be copied out and put in the html box as you have said.
My Website index | My Blog
I'm playing with your CSS and it looks like if we use the following, it will work without you needing to change any of your Gallery Descriptions, nor needing to make each gallery custom. You'd add it into your theme's CSS and you shouldn't need to do anything else to your descriptions. This will work as long as we leave HTML as it is in the Descriptions (which, we have no plans to take action on at the moment, though you run the risk of us changing it at some point in the future).
/* Set the new description to allow Allen's divs to display on one row, instead of in 3 rows */ .sm-gallery-cover-description { display: flex !important; } /* Move the bird jump div to the right side of the header, but subtract the 200px for the gallery buttons. You'll need to adjust this since I have it set for "Buy Photos" and slideshow button, but you might have different buttons */ .birdjump { position: absolute !important; right: 200px !important; } /* Move the map this button to the center */ .sm-gallery-cover-description center { position: relative; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; left: -100px; }Combine this with the code for more lines (or we add the Toggle to "Show Full Description"), and you're set!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Your screen shot looks great! Big relief and would save macho of time.
Is that were the buttons end up, to the right of the description? I wish they were going on
the right end of the title line, lots of room. Think that would be a much better place and not interfere
with the description. I hid all buttons except BUY because they robbed description width.
I'll have to add flow down rules from specific top folder otherwise it could affect all site galleries.
.sm-page-parentnode-Qm7v4 .sm-page-gallery-album ......... {...}
Guess I won't be able to play with this exact class names until the "change" happens?
I'll try it with current classes. I added @mobile rule to hide map button < 840.
My Website index | My Blog
Great question. The design team experimented with the buttons in a number of positions and ultimately felt that at the bottom was least obtrusive, fit the best, and didn't seem to just be 'floating' on the page. Of course we can whip up some CSS for ya if you'd prefer them higher.
That's the best bet until the design is all set and pushed live. I'll do my best to give you all a heads 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
Updates:
- Cover Photo and Feature Photo will be separated. Cover Photo will be set in Gallery Settings, just like Feature Photo is.
- Turning Cover Photo ON or OFF will be done in Gallery Settings, not in the Customizer. Though, choosing whether or not to display the Cover Breadcrumb will remain in the Customizer.
Follow-Up Questions:
What is it about the "Read More" on long descriptions that you don't like?
- Is it the that you don't like the overlay?
- Is the "read more" hard to see?
- Do you feel that your clients and viewers who have taken the time to read the entire description, up until that point, won't click read more?
- Something else?
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 almost want to say that I expect to see the Read More UNDER the last line of text.. but I understand that functionally it kills limited vertical space.
tailoredportraits.com
Viewers may also not read even the 1-3 lines, much less the "read more" option.
Also viewers may never click read more, just because. "Read more" is just another click, when clicking should be minimal. In thise case they won't know what they're missing. I want viewers' eyes to at least register the volume available to read, and then decide whether or not to scroll down and not read, or read some - and maybe all - before they do scroll down to the video. My belief is that the content of what I write is really important to be able to appreciate the video or photo (mostly video). I usually want or need folks to read in conjunction with viewing, so I never want the writing to be hidden. This is my take on what it takes to be 'beautiful'.
If gallery content is going to be hidden, when I don't want it to be, I'll re-do it as an HTML block. It would be much easier, obviously, if the content could remain in the gallery description, because then I don't have to isolate to "just this gallery". In fact it's a great argument that to protect the integrity of "all gallery formatting options," keeping full descriptions visible should be protected as an option. Or - as I think you're doing, adding the option to turn full visibility on or off. (You've been talking to Allen about this and I haven't been following, but I assume whatever you're designing for him is something everyone can use, code-wise.)
Has Smugmug considered providing a way for users to preview such changes before they occur, for their gallery (or if it is there I missed it). Something like a ?Show=New123 parameter or some such.
I am not suggesting it be another "you decide when to opt in" as that can get to be ridiculous over time with combinations.
Just a "30 days before we put up a change we will let you see a real, live preview of your code". Basically defer your implementation 30 days so people can test and... maybe solve their own issues with customizations, but maybe catch killer issues before you force them to "on for everyone".
I realize there are some technical challenges in this, but I think if it's not a "you decide when to turn it on" the really bad ones go away. And I wouldn't say do this for every change, just ones that are visually significant and likely to impact a lot of CSS/HTML people have written.
Huzzah for the first two!
The "read more" situation seems to me to be very dependent on the nature of the gallery.
Sometimes a long description just adds more background information and the "read more" button would be fine. An example might be the following, although I'd likely rewrite the first few lines to indicate more of what was coming: https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Browser/Sierra-Nevada/West-Walker-River-Area/ For the specific issue addressed in the last paragraph, I'd probably also update the captions for the individuals videos to include some reference to the Vimeo videos at the end of the gallery. In a case like this, I'd only be worried about the transition, the time from when the new design goes live to when I'd tweaked every thing to work. During that transition, it would be nice to have the whole description visible, as it now. Afterwards, I'd likely have a cover photo and a rewitten description and be very comfortable with the "read more".
Sometimes, though, seeing the whole description is a larger part of the context of page. The following smart gallery, which is part of the more "technical" chunk of my site, might be an example. This gallery is not a picture story like most of my others. It's a pictorial reference gallery. Look here: https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Browser/Families/Ferns/ Since it's a SM-style gallery, it will never have a cover photo and the description will always be present on the page. Here, as in all cases where there's no cover photo, I still think the right approach is to be able to turn off the "read more" and enable full description display.
(Added later: If it not obvious from the above, in that pictorial reference gallery, the description has reference information. It's not unreasonable to want to look back at the description after reading a caption or looking at the keywords for a given picture. "Now what was a lycophyte again?" Hence my desire to have it always visible. This is a specialized situation, of course, but perhaps there are other situations where there is information in the description that the viewer may want or need to refer back to.)
(Perhaps other users can indicate other examples on their sites where the function of the gallery and gallery description is such that the description really wants to be there whole from the start and to remain visible, whole, while the user is looking at the images ... or perhaps cases where full descriptions would be real helpful during the transition.)
As for visibility of the "read more", I don't see your scrim in the examples, but I trust you will work that one to get it right. Is it a block scrim (like you use on thumbnails when the caption covers the image) or just a little darkening under each letter (like Microsoft uses on the Win 7 desktop)? As much as it pains me to say it, I like the Microsoft approach.
I have no problem with limiting the lines shown in the description, a read more indication works for me.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com