Quick settings and/or Gallery Cover Image change?

Ferguson

Was there a change to how the cover image works and/or interacts with quick settings?

I have a quick setting I've been using for years. Tonight I noticed the cover image was suddenly turned on. I turned it off, and thinking I had somehow omitted the quick setting (unlikely as I use the Lightroom Plugin) I applied it -- cover image came back on. I tried saving a new copy of the quick setting after turning the cover image off. Then I went into another gallery and applied it -- cover image turned on.

I don't want a cover image, I have a banner at the top. What's up?

leftquark

We made a change today that updates the default Gallery Settings -- Gallery Cover Photo will now be set to ON for all new galleries created. This was a long overdue update -- ever since we launched Gallery Cover we've wanted it to be on by default, since it generally makes your galleries look much better.

It was not intended that applying a quick setting, that didn't specifically call out Gallery Cover Image, would toggle it. I'm working with the team to see what solutions we can implement to fix this.

Ferguson

I think it's more than that -- Either I'm not successfully updating my quick setting, or the quick setting is refusing to take "off" as a value for gallery cover.

It doesn't bother me to get a new default really, provided I can adjust it in the quick settings. The LR plugin just automatically applies that setting. What got me confused last night (and I haven't tried since) is no matter what I tried, I could not make the quick setting work.

Now to be fair -- I am not even sure I know how to update a quick setting. I made changes in the gallery, typed in the same name as the quick setting has now, and hit save on the quick setting page? Should that not do it?

I just tried the following and became totally confused what is happening:

1) Went into an old gallery and confirmed cover page was off.
2) Went to the quick settings page (having changed nothing), typed in a new unused name, hit save.
3) Went back into settings, to quick settings, applied that name just saved.

At this point it says "Cover page off" was the change -- but that wasn't actually a CHANGE? But it was off.

So same gallery I open again (cover page is still off), go to the quick setting tab and enter the normal one I use (LEF_Standard) and hit save. Confirm it is still off on the gallery (it is, but I haven't applied the quick setting yet).

So I go in and apply the one I just save/updated -- now it says it turned it on.

So I think the problem is I can't update my quick settings?

And... well, it's wrong that on the first one it called out turning it off as a change. It was already off.

Jtring

More oddities.

I opened an old gallery today that did not have a cover image. Since I decided a few edits in the description would help, I opened the Organizer, went to Settings, and did so on the Basics tab. When I saved, that gallery had a cover image! I looked back at the settings in the Organizer and saw that "Gallery Cover Image" had been toggled to "On", and, since I had not selected a cover image, it was defaulting to the feature image. Obviously one more to fix (or maybe this is the same thing).

Allen

I've created a couple new galleries and nowhere in the settings can I find "Gallery Cover Image".

Ferguson

@Allen said:
I've created a couple new galleries and nowhere in the settings can I find "Gallery Cover Image".

Appearance, 2nd item.

On my galleries it inserts a full width, about 1/3rd high image above the rest of the gallery and under my headings.

Oh... might be only in some gallery styles? I use collage landscape?

denisegoldberg

@Ferguson said:

@Allen said:
I've created a couple new galleries and nowhere in the settings can I find "Gallery Cover Image".

Appearance, 2nd item.

On my galleries it inserts a full width, about 1/3rd high image above the rest of the gallery and under my headings.

Oh... might be only in some gallery styles? I use collage landscape?

That's it - I'm pretty sure that the cover image only applies to the collage and thumbnails gallery styles.

leftquark

@denisegoldberg said:
That's it - I'm pretty sure that the cover image only applies to the collage and thumbnails gallery styles.

Correct -- the option isn't shown if you're using SmugMug, Journal or Slideshow styles. It's only available on Collage and Thumbnail styles.

Allen

My Appearance list for Collage Landscape galleries below. At least that's what the layout of the photo box says.
How do we know what the gallery is set to?

Is this it under general settings at top? Sets gallery to Smugmug style?
Design Name: Copy of SmugMug

Gallery Style
Square Thumbnails
Sort By
Sort Direction
Show Camera Info
Show Filenames
Slideshow
Enable Map Features

Ferguson

slpollett

It would appear that whenever you edit the settings on an existing gallery, it automatically turns on the cover image even when you have it off. I absolutely do NOT like this "feature". Isn't there a way I can set my default to never have a cover image without changing from the collage landscape style? Who thought that having this always default to ON was a good idea? I hate it.

Ferguson

@slpollett said:
It would appear that whenever you edit the settings on an existing gallery, it automatically turns on the cover image even when you have it off. I absolutely do NOT like this "feature". Isn't there a way I can set my default to never have a cover image without changing from the collage landscape style? Who thought that having this always default to ON was a good idea? I hate it.

I think it's a fair observation that changing the defaults is an issue for some. It's mostly an issue because it happened quietly, and you may not notice before touching galleries starts corrupting your display for viewers.

But FWIW I think there will always be defaults we do not like and SM has to be able to customer response. We can't ask them to lock down all changes all the time (I would not want to). I like that there is a quick answer for it -- the quick settings. You can then save all your personal defaults - appearance, security, etc -- and apply them to new galleries.

However, in this case, the quick settings is broken. In a couple directions apparently.

I think a change got pushed without adequate testing. Hopefully it will get unchanged shortly?

magwa

All my galleries are Collage Portrait. Whenever I add a photo to one of my existing galleries the cover image setting gets turned on automatically 50% of the time - not every time which is odd - using a random image. This is exceedingly annoying as I have no need for a cover image and it is daft for the purpose of my galleries.
When I create a new gallery, as said above, using a quick setting option as a way around does not work. Presumably as because when creating a gallery & one specifically turns off the cover image feature option before creation, it ignores the setting and a random image still appears as a cover.
Driving me potty as I have to go back into the settings every time and turn it off. I am just wondering how may of my galleries has it just appeared in without me knowing.
If the on/off button worked creating a gallery then a quick setting would work too.. please can someone fix this.
Pam

Ferguson

Something weird is going on, I've had to turn a couple off twice, not once. I just hope the ones I am not touching are not changing.

leftquark

Changing other settings in a gallery and having “Cover Photo” toggle to ON is not an intended feature — that’s a bug we’ll have to fix.

It’s quick and easy to say “not enough testing was done” but we have a great QA team who pours their heart and soul into trying to break things before we release them. Sometimes we’re just humans and miss things, especially with a product that has so many different touchpoints. We’re working to automate more of our testing in the future so we miss less things and don’t have things like this happening again.

leftquark

@Ferguson said:
So I think the problem is I can't update my quick settings?

I think in the old SmugMug, you could update a Quick Setting, however it appears that we've lost that ability. The only way I can seem to update a Quick Setting is to delete and re-create it. That's a shame. At some point, when we can prioritize it, there's a number of improvements to the gallery settings that I'd like to do:

• Entirely rethink the user experience around gallery settings. It's just too clunky right now
• Improvements to setting privacy (visibility and access)
• Improvements to smart rules
• Improvements to quick settings
• Add the option to set your own default settings, so you don't even have to apply a quick setting most of the time
• Many other improvements.

@Ferguson said:
It would appear that whenever you edit the settings on an existing gallery, it automatically turns on the cover image even when you have it off. I absolutely do NOT like this "feature".

Hopefully it will get unchanged shortly?

I've pulled in some of the Engineering team to see what we can do. Our intention was to only have this change impact new galleries when they're created. It was not intended to impact existing galleries in any way, or quick settings.

Ferguson

@leftquark said:

@Ferguson said:
So I think the problem is I can't update my quick settings?

I think in the old SmugMug, you could update a Quick Setting, however it appears that we've lost that ability. The only way I can seem to update a Quick Setting is to delete and re-create it. That's a shame. At some point, when we can prioritize it, there's a number of improvements to the gallery settings that I'd like to do:

• Entirely rethink the user experience around gallery settings. It's just too clunky right now
• Improvements to setting privacy (visibility and access)
• Improvements to smart rules
• Improvements to quick settings
• Add the option to set your own default settings, so you don't even have to apply a quick setting most of the time
• Many other improvements.

I've rewritten this a few times trying to make it sound constructive, hopefully it will be, know it is intended that way...

This is one of the problems Smugmug has: You break or remove a feature, then instead of fixing it or putting it back, the response is "we want to do a great version of that in the future". The users are left without feature X, waiting (indefinitely perhaps) for Super-X.

I know I'm still waiting on that feature parity for the android app you "improved" by removing all the automation for downloads to cache. Been what, a couple years since the promise those features would return?

Those who went through the feature losses in 2013 also know what I mean, it is a recurring theme.

Don't get me wrong... I think we all vastly value the feedback you give here, and honest opinions such as the above. But from a customer standpoint, removing that feature is an issue, removing it the way it was done is a bug. Maybe it was done on purpose, but the implementation is a bug -- you hit save, it gives no error, it does not save. Bug.

Why not fix the bug, instead of saying "live with it and sometime in the future we may give you a better version"?

Or even say "it's not a bug to indicate a successful save and not save anything". At least it confronts the issue.

Again... I sincerely appreciate your comments such as the above, but Smugmug really needs to think about the whole "we took X away, just wait, one day we will give super X".

@leftquark said:
It’s quick and easy to say “not enough testing was done” but we have a great QA team who pours their heart and soul into trying to break things before we release them. Sometimes we’re just humans and miss things, especially with a product that has so many different touchpoints. We’re working to automate more of our testing in the future so we miss less things and don’t have things like this happening again.

Probably pushing the limit on it being interpreted as constructive, but almost by definition if you deploy something that fails, it was not tested enough.

But... that's OK. Seriously, that's even good, up to a point. If you are not deploying bugs occasionally you are probably not pushing hard enough to get code out the door, there's a balance. Let programmers work until it is perfect and we would still be waiting for DOS 2.0.

But each deployment should come with a rollback plan if it goes bad, and time allocated for mitigation of bugs if they can be fixed in situ immediately.

It fits with what I'm talking about above. Smugmug just does not seem (emphasis on how it seems to users) to prioritize the loss of functionality to users very highly unless it is a show stopper.

As a user I'd much rather hear "we deployed X, found some issues, rolled it back... news to follow when we work out the bugs" than "it does not work as we thought we are looking into it" and then days later still no rollback.

it's as though someone thinks a rollback is a huge, embarrassing deal. It is not. It should be thought as good engineering that you can, and good governance that you are willing to.

I shouldn't have taken aim at the testing per se; testing cannot find everything. But I do wonder how the code is still running 4 days later.

magwa

Great, thank you the on/off and quick settings now work regarding the cover image. Not created a gallery for a few days, so done sometime since 14th

Jtring

The cover image longer turns on when you touch a gallery in the Organizer. I think that happened in the last 24 hours.

leftquark

There were 2 bugs with the update:

• Changing other account settings was toggling Cover Image to ON. That's now fixed
• Applying a Quick Setting that was created before "Gallery Cover Image" existed is causing the setting to turn ON. We'll be defaulting that back to OFF, and the fix for this is still in the works.

leftquark

@Ferguson: I don't want to skip over all the comments. I very much appreciate that you keep a really open mind and it doesn't go without notice that you spent some time making sure your message was constructive and not disruptive (I really appreciate that).

For the most part, we concur with you. Many of the features we're working on, updating, and improving get released as soon as they deliver some immediate new value that solves a major problem. That may mean, though, in the process of rebuilding the feature, some less used functionality is not immediately built. It's our plan to continue iterating until we've maintained feature parity or improved on the feature. It's not our intention to degrade a feature and then move on before restoring functionality. One such example of this is the new Checkout system that launched at the end of November: it solved the huge issue of not having a mobile-friendly checkout, but missed some of the lesser used features like paying with paypal or adding photos extras. Over the last month the team has remained focused on iteratively reintroducing all of those features and we won't be moving onto the next project until all the features of the old checkout are reintroduced or improved.

Similarly, if a new feature introduces bugs, it's also our intention to fix those bugs before moving on. The only caveat to that is that we do evaluate the severity of those bugs and how frequently that bug will be found. For example, we're immediately fixing the 2 bugs introduced here before focusing back on some of the other things we want to be building. However, the # of people who reapply a Quick Setting to an existing gallery is extremely low, so that's a bug that could have been left unfixed so that we could put our attention back on building new features (or fixing the other things we've wanted to fix that are higher priority).

Allen

In this thread
https://dgrin.com/discussion/263156/cover-photo-issues

I posted this

All of a sudden I have what looks like a cover photo showing up on some mobile galleries in a browser.
This completely destroys my navigation between galleries as the gallery description is overridden. The gallery title is even missing?
Looking thru the gallery settings I can not find a way to turn them off. Smugmug style galleries.

last good gallery http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2017-Birding/Birding-2017-December/2017-12-20-Riverlands-Migratory-Bird-Sanctuary/

It starts going bad with this gallery and newer. This is only on mobile browser. The mobile app is not showing my description anywhere but nobody uses it so don't care.
bad http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2017-Birding/Birding-2017-December/2017-12-22-Carylye-Lake-Harlequin-Duck
bad http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2018-Birding/Birding-2018-January/2018-01-10-Riverlands-Migratory-Bird-Sanctuary
bad http://www.photosbyat.com/Birds/2018-Birding/Birding-2018-January/2018-01-January-Yardbirds

Jtring

Confirmed. See the other thread https://dgrin.com/discussion/263156/cover-photo-issues

Ferguson

I tried a bad and good on my android and couldn't see a difference. I have to run out now, but later if it's not resolved will post screen shots.

When you say "mobile app" in there -- this is just a plain phone browser view right?

Allen

I'm referring to the IOS Smugmug app for the iPhone. It only displays photos/videos no html.

Both bad and good should look same now as I fix them. i.e. no cover photo and gallery description showing.

@Ferguson said:
I tried a bad and good on my android and couldn't see a difference. I have to run out now, but later if it's not resolved will post screen shots.

When you say "mobile app" in there -- this is just a plain phone browser view right?

Ferguson

@Allen said:
I'm referring to the IOS Smugmug app for the iPhone. It only displays photos/videos no html.

Ah, sorry, I can't spell iPhone without auto-correct.

Android looked OK in a brief check.

Ferguson

Should this be fixed yet?

It does not seem to be at least with regard to the Lightroom plugin.

I'm using LR 7.1 and plugin 3.1.4.0 which it says is current. I've done a "refresh" on the quick settings several times.

If I create a gallery with a quick setting which, at least on SM's web, has gallery cover image off, I still get a cover image.

If I create a gallery on SM in the web interface and use the same quick setting I get cover image = off.

Plugin broken still?

leftquark

The fix for Quick Settings is still being vetted by QA.

leftquark

The fix for Quick Settings should now be live. Any Quick Setting created before Gallery Cover Image existed should leave or turn Cover Image to OFF.

Jtring

You still have some work to do. I created a new test gallery using the Lightroom plug-in with a Quick Setting I've been using for a while that includes the Gallery Cover Image flag. I think this setting is new enough (March 2016) that I created it after gallery cover images were introduced, so perhaps this is a slightly different problem than the one you just fixed. In any case, my Quick Setting setting turns the Gallery Cover Image OFF. Then, still in Lightroom, I popped a few pictures into the gallery and published. Then I went to the browser. There is still a cover image! The process is illustrated below.

The gallery in question is unlisted but you can view it at https://jtringl.smugmug.com/Other/Misc-Galleries/Cover-Image-Test-Gallery-Feb-5-2018/n-2xMbjm/ . So you are still inserting a new gallery cover image when one is not requested in at least one circumstance. Perhaps this is plug-in issue. In any case, please fix.

Ferguson

Did you refresh the plugin quick settings? (I haven't experimented yet for a long and irrelevant reason, but wondered if it needs to be "fixed" on SM then refreshed into the LR Plugin?)