We also found that for many, including most of your visitors, the sizes option confused them. Removing it not only means it's one less thing for us to have to support from a technical perspective, but it also removes confusion for the people who use the Lightbox the most.
The few people who used it, were mostly using it as a zoom option. If that's a use case that becomes more necessary to the large set of SmugMug viewers, then we can build a much better tool for that in the future.
While the image-rendering CSS changes discussed earlier will address my big concern once the sizes button goes away, let me, as one of the "vocal few", comment on these.
I suspect part of the confusion with the lightbox sizes button is the obscure labeling of the options. I'm not surprised that "LowRes 2Mpix (X3)" on the lightbox sizes popup is less than crystal clear to some, especially when that "LowRes" size fills the screen for the majority of web users. (Stats on web vary, but all suggest the higher resolution traffic is still a minority.) A phrase like "Up to 1600 wide, 1200 wide" -- essentially the description you use for an X3 in your help doc -- might well have caused less confusion. To be sure, "LowRes 2Mpix (X3)" is meaningful for a site-owner setting up photo protection since it highlights what someone can get from pulling down a screen shot. But that's a different function (selection of the maximum resolution vs. selection of which resolution to actually view), a different user-role (site-owner vs. site-viewer), and a different place (Gallery Settings in the Organizer vs. lightbox). I doubt saving the sizes button is still an option since, as you acknowledged back in August, larger development issues push towards its removal ... but in the future please go slow on attributing a problem to a function when the presentation of the function may be the culprit.
I too would welcome a zoom function. It's not critical for me, but I'll admit I'll miss that functional capability when the sizes button goes away. I am already thinking about work-arounds. (Extra pre-zoomed images in the galleries, expanded use of the Carousel for displaying extra wide but not extra high images.)
Here's a potential work-around for the sizes-based zoom going away, although it is based on something of a loophole in SmugMug's architecture and is not all that convenient to use.
If you put picture into a Single Photo widget (Content and Design --> Add Content Blocks --> Photos --> Single Photo --> Drag into place and drop), select "Original" as the photo size, and arrange that right click protection is off and originals are allowed in the source gallery supplying the photo, then when you view that photo in the widget, SmugMug will send the original and let the browser scale it all the way down to the screen size. No display copies. That means a right click will let you view the original image (with all the scroll bars). Now in a sense that's exploiting an inefficiency in SmugMug since they could send a display copy. For display efficiency, they probably should. But as things stand, it does provide a way to get to an original directly via the SM interface without downloading.
Caveats. If the source gallery is right-click protected, this doesn't work. As should be expected, If the maximum display size allowed for the source gallery supplying the photo is smaller than an original, then the approach above will send the largest size you've allowed (but still select "Original" on the Single Photo widget). Nothing like this works for the Multiple Photos widget. And If you want others to use this approach, it obviously will take a little explanation.
I encourage SmugMug NOT to "fix" this little loophole with the Single Photo widget. You might even keep up your sleeve if someone on the help desk gets pestered hard when someone's on-line lightbox access to expanded images has just gone away.
Allen, it's far, far from elegant, but this might let you salvage sharing of family documents.
@erik64 said:
Is it really that difficult to just leave the sizes button, or at least the option to have it? I just can’t imagine that it would be so impossible to work around it. It's pretty clear that people are going to be very unhappy if it goes.
The few people who used it, were mostly using it as a zoom option. If that's a use case that becomes more necessary to the large set of SmugMug viewers, then we can build a much better tool for that in the future.
I'll repeat what I said earlier -- so don't take it away without providing a zoom.
Or provide a DATE when you will provide a zoom (we all know you won't do that).
Why remove something you KNOW is used without any useful replacement. Downloading the original is not really that much of a replacement.
I won't loose sleep over its absence, but I still object in principle to the 'we're taking X away because we will one day provide a better X".
At BEST that means a period without X, and quite possibly never X.
@Ferguson said:
Why remove something you KNOW is used without any useful replacement.
My apologies if I was confusing. We KNOW this is NOT being used and therefore have no plans of replacing it.
We’re looking to remove features that a majority of our customers are not using so we can focus on making great experiences that thrill all of you and you do want to use. We’re also not going to build new features if we’re not confident that our customers will use the feature.
There’s only a very small amount of desire for a zoom feature (confirmed here). We’ll be happy to build it IF there’s a desire amongst a number of customers but so far there has not been and I do not plan to spend any time building this.
We’re working on an update to the new lightbox which will fix a number of the issues identified here.
The title of the photo will be displayed with an option to expand the title and caption. When the user taps on the expand they’ll be shown more of the title and caption and if it bleeds over, can be scrolled to read more. The title and caption will only expand if the viewer chooses to expand it. Mouse movements will not cause it to expand and contract. If the user changes photos while the caption is expanded, it will remain expanded as they browse additional photos and the title/caption will update.
The play slideshow button is being moved to the top right of the lightbox so that the title and caption can fit properly in the bottom.
We’ll roll this out to the Organizer and Single Photo content block first, and then we’ll proceed with adding the Lightbox to the additional content blocks and to the gallery styles.
When we’re ready to push this live to additional content blocks we’ll start sharing the updated CSS customization code if you want to customize your new lightbox,
@leftquark said:
The title of the photo will be displayed with an option to expand the title and caption.
So it will occupy some of the bottom of the black frame around the lightbox image but not cover the image itself? That's a good idea if so. I was wondering how you were going to exploit that space provided by the frame. What if there is a caption, but no title?
@Jtring said:
So it will occupy some of the bottom of the black frame around the lightbox image but not cover the image itself? That a good idea if so. I was wondering how you were going to exploit that space provided by the frame. What if there is a caption, but no title?
Yep -- we're trying to keep the bottom bar from overlapping the photo unless the viewer explicitly selects to do so (like to read more). The purpose of the Lightbox is to show your photo as beautiful as possible and the viewer should be drawn immediately to the photo.
1 line of the title and 1 line of the caption will be displayed. If there's no title, it'll just be the caption:
It will look something like this (this may not be final, as we may tweak the "expand" parts to maximize space for the photo):
Not too bad. Please, please, please make it easy (without CSS) to alter the background/ font color at least per gallery, even better per photo. A dark concert photo is often best served with a dark border and a bright sunny beach scene with a light one. If you could easily toggle between two choices (black and white for example), that would be beyond awesome. And please, make the character of the text pop-up manageable as well, even lockable if you typically keep captions to a minimum, no one wants the thing popping up in front of the image unnecessarily. Thanks.
Oh and please make it the default to have the shaded boxes around the next and previous arrows transparent, I doubt anyone likes that either.
One thing we're doing in the new lightbox is slightly shrinking the photo so that the top and bottom buttons don't overlap the photo since many of you had mentioned you didn't like the way it caused distractions on the photo by covering it.
(ignore the slight gray overlap on the bottom of the photo. That's been removed as we develop)
When the buttons go away, though, the photo doesn't completely fill the window anymore, since we left room for the buttons to not overlap:
We'd love to get your feedback as we continue to improve the design.
Well, two big thumbs up from me. That's how mine is right now, a photo needs a frame. If you are able to make it easy to swap the background color/text per gallery (or even better, per photo), and make it possible to center the text/caption under the photo then we'll really be getting somewhere. If you can also add an option for it to go full-screen by default, it'll be just about perfect. Thanks, keep up the good work!
The new design for titles and captions is live. You can check it out by opening the Lightbox from within the Organizer.
If a title is entere, it'll always be displayed at the bottom
If a caption is entered, a small amount of the caption will always be displayed at the bottom
If a title is not entered but a caption is, only the brief part of the caption will be displayed at the bottom
If more room is needed to display the title or caption, a "Show More" option will be displayed, slightly overlapping the bottom of the photo
The title and caption and action buttons (download, buy, share, tools, info, etc) will never cover the photo
The close lightbox, fullscreen, and play slideshow button will never cover the photo
The play slideshow button has moved up to the top right of the Lightbox
The "Show More" option for titles and captions will not animate up during mouse movement. The viewer will have to click "Show More"
Once the user clicks "Show More", they will have to click "Show Less" to dismiss it.
Browsing between photos will remember whether "Show More" or "Show Less" had been selected.
-- If a viewer wants to browse captions between photos the captions will remain open
-- If a viewer no longer wants to read captions between photos, they can dismiss the captions.
I checked out the Organizer lightbox. Most things I like. There's one design choice I'd like you to reconsider if you are open to it. And the handling of videos has some problems that need to be fixed.
Let's start with the positive. For the most part, this is a nice clean lightbox. Viewed alone, I'm neutral on whether the border is good or not, but I very, very much like what it enables: that the slideshow, expand, and close buttons up top and the various action buttons at the lower right never cover the image.
I'm a little less happy with the ^ show more ^ business. I'm not sure I'd characterize its positioning as "slightly overlapping the bottom of the photo". It seems this control eats an awful lot of space that covers the image. A lot is just blank "spacer" space too. I know you've got a working design, but at the very least try to scrunch it down a bit. If you are willing to consider alternatives, let me toss one out. You already have a situation in the interface where you may not be able display all the text information available and need a means to let the user know there's more and to access it: gallery descriptions when using a cover. So an alternative approach that doesn't eat as much into the image would be replicate something like that. Make the bottom border just a bit wider (or raise the title/partial caption block a little higher) to allow for a whole first line of a caption, and insert a "... read more" in blue like you do on gallery descriptions when a cover is present. Then get rid of the "^ show more ^". That gets the message across, doesn't take anywhere near as much vertical space that eats into the image, and uses an existing style of control. I'd note repeated, consistent styles like this make the interface feel simpler: a good thing. If the caption is short and there are no keywords, this approach can even provide complete information without needing the "... show more". Again, I don't know if you are open to revisiting this, but I'm strongly in favor of only covering images with other high-information-density stuff ... and this isn't there.
I see the sizes button is still there. I know you want to kill it, but I'm glad it's gotten at least a temporary stay of execution. I've been watching my own work flow over the last month and observe that it can be real handy to use the sizes button to reference an Original once and a while. I find I have two use cases. The first applies when I'm setting up a gallery and have two fairly similar images that I need to choose between. I find it's helpful to put both up on SmugMug temporarily. That lets me think about the choice in same context as a visitor. Beside just flipping back and forth, I pull up the Originals to think about details and sharpness beyond what I can see on my monitor at fill resolution. That helps me visualize what other users (or me in the future) will see on a higher-res screen. I could use the larger display copies, but I usually end up just going to the largest. The second use case applies to a very small number of my galleries: ones that contain documents or some sort of highly detailed reference images (e.g., pictures of the drip system in my garden before the mulch went in on top). With these, I simply am using the sizes button as a zoom. I did this a few times in the last month. On the vast majority galleries, however, once finalized I never look at anything except fills or a near-fill display copies, nor do I expect my viewers will. And with the image-rendering CSS we discussed here last month, I haven't even needed the display copies much. So I find I don't care about most of what's on the sizes button, but it would be really, really nice if you could save access to the Originals or largest allowable size, perhaps without titles, captions, and keywords. For these uses, I don't need those. (And yes, you still have a problem with those interfering with the horizontal scroll bar with the larger display sizes and Originals.)
Finally, let me note a few issues and bugs with videos in the new lightbox.
First, I've got a few videos uploaded at 960 x 540. I observe the new lightbox upscales them to fill the screen (with the border). About the nicest thing I can say is that those upscaled videos is that they don't look quite as bad as I expected. Please, don't go beyond the original resolution. You wouldn't (and don't) do that for stills.
Second, if the display is not full screen, the title/caption area is part way up, and I stop the video and try to use the slider bar to change the time that's playing, I drag the video around the screen, rather than move the slider. If the display is full screen, all is fine in this case. Full screen or not, if the title/caption area is all the way up, the slider bar is inaccessible. Suffice to say, interactions with the slider bar need work.
You've got some caption alignment problems on smaller windows. Observe how the caption overlaps the action button area and is partially covered by the BUY button. This behavior changes depending on the window width. 1920 x 1200 monitor. The window, with borders, is just 974px wide. This is a full size capture. Firefox 62 under Win 7.
Note too the amount of blank space there is between the ^ show more ^ and the title entry line. This too seems to vary with window size. On some size windows the "show more" is nicely scrunched down. Here it is not.
Added note: I explored the CSS. Looks like some of the rules for screens less than 1024px wide are the source of the misalignments.
Personally, I find it worse than the current lightbox, less clean. But if this can be corrected/removed before it will be online published, through the Lightbox options in Content and Design or through CSS, I'd be extremely happy.
On the other side, the good thing is that you have to click and the texts don't come out if you go over it (not like now) and that only a brief part of the caption will be displayed at the bottom (with caption and no title)
What I refer to is the aforementioned "show more".
1) Doing some tests it's always showing, even when there is no Title or Caption like in my private galleries. Screenshot from my private galleries where I'm not using title/caption/keywords. It makes no sense the "show more" displayes in these cases.
2) In my pubblic galleries I'd like to prevent people from reading the texts written in caption/lightbox (because they are written only as Alt text/SEO purposes...in this way it is as if they had a sign that would invite them...but I realize that it's a more personal request than others). Anyway, the important thing is that we'll have the possibility to deselect this "show more".
3) In the new lightbox "show more" overlaps a lot more on the photos than the current one. Should be reviewed. First screenshot current lightbox (logged out), second screenshot the new lightbox (logged in)
4) Caption is shown in the slideshow! It's unwatchable for me, I think who sees a slideshow wants to see the photos, doesn't want a distracting text. In addition, there is no time to read the text (if long) as the slideshow changes photos after a few seconds. A screenshot from the bottom part of the slideshow.
I hadn't looked at the slideshows until I read Sebastian's post. I just took a look.
Tastes differ. I rather like the captions in slideshow mode. I would also be absolutely delighted if there was a lightbox view that looked like that, with maybe a little button on the side to open up the full title/caption/keywords/action button bar display. Seeing the slideshow crystallized a concern that was only about half there when I wrote yesterday: the new lightbox, except for the view with no captions at all, feels a little too busy. That's unavoidable when showing all, but the slideshow demonstrates it can be avoided in the partially-folded-down view.
We're going to optimize the amount of space the "Show More" takes up so it covers a little less of the photo.
We'll also take a look at those video issues -- we don't want to be upscaling / stretching a video.
There's a bug with slideshows not centering the photo properly that we'll be fixing.
The vertical spacing of the "Show More" around a width of 1024px will be fixed
A few other things:
If there's no title, caption or keywords, the "Show More" won't be displayed to your visitors. It will be displayed to you as account owners, since you will have the options to edit / add titles, captions or keywords.
You can enable / disable captions for your gallery slideshows in the Customizer, in the Gallery Settings option. To do that, go into a Gallery, then choose Customize -> Content & Design. In the "Content" tab select "Gallery", choose "Slideshow" and then you should see all the options for how to customize the slideshow:
If there's no title, caption or keywords, the "Show More" won't be displayed to your visitors. It will be displayed to you as account owners, since you will have the options to edit / add titles, captions or keywords.
You can enable / disable captions for your gallery slideshows in the Customizer, in the Gallery Settings option. To do that, go into a Gallery, then choose Customize -> Content & Design. In the "Content" tab select "Gallery", choose "Slideshow" and then you should see all the options for how to customize the slideshow:
Thank you Aaron for the answers. Regarding the second point, I had never paid attention / clicked on the slideshow options. I didn't think slideshow could be customizable. So now I understand that my question about already had an answer!
Are these changes live yet? I thought they were, but I went to one of my galleries with extensive captions, and I saw exactly what I saw before these changes were announced: an up arrow over which I had to hover to see the rest of the caption, without any words (such as "Show more").
Or is it that at this point, the changes are only "live" to account owners when looking at a Lightbox via the Organizer, and general users/viewers still see the old version?
@camner said:
Are these changes live yet? I thought they were, but I went to one of my galleries with extensive captions, and I saw exactly what I saw before these changes were announced: an up arrow over which I had to hover to see the rest of the caption, without any words (such as "Show more").
Or is it that at this point, the changes are only "live" to account owners when looking at a Lightbox via the Organizer, and general users/viewers still see the old version?
More of the latter — we’re doing a slow roll-out to make sure we get this right and can incorporate feedback like many of you have been giving us above. Account Owners can see it live in the Organizer. Basic account holders can see it in their galleries as well.
Since you noted the new lightbox was up for Basic accounts, I browsed through a couple of other folks' sites I know. (It's rather nice when meeting another photographer to learn we both post on SmugMug.) Is there any way to not show the ^ show more ^ when there's a single line caption and nothing more? On those, all the information shows when the folded-down caption is present. There's no need to expand ... but the expand button and all the space it takes is still there. This isn't going to affect my site, but it does affect viewing of the some of the more simple ones.
I checked a couple friends basic sites and in LB all the buttons show (share, comment, info, etc.) when first opening but disappear after changing photo. I can click around the blank area and get the button action but the buttons are hidden.
@Allen said:
I checked a couple friends basic sites and in LB all the buttons show (share, comment, info, etc.) when first opening but disappear after changing photo. I can click around the blank area and get the button action but the buttons are hidden.
Except the BUY button. It's persistent. Some mouse motions can revive the missing buttons too, but I haven't quite figured out exactly actions do the job.
(Firefox 62, Win 7)
With nice improvements to displaying Caption and similar metadata, comes the dirty secret that they may not be the desired Caption, Keywords, Date, etc. Unless SM's Upload+Replace bug has been fixed, which I don't find is the case.
The bug is, using SmugMug.com's Uploader, Replace only replaces the existing Image, it does not replace existing Metadata. But a digital photo has two parts: Image and Metadata. After original upload, often Images get improved, and so does Metadata, and all of these changes comprise what the photographer wants to display on SM., Of what value are Captions that are wrong, Keywords that are incomplete, etc?
But the only SmugMug.com solution is to have Metadata 100% correct upon original upload, since it is impossible to change via SmugMug.com using Upload+Replace. (Or, use my horrible workaround, delete the many many SM original photos that later were given better Captions, useful Keywords, accurate Dates, then re-Upload all of them as new.)
This bug is a major flaw in SmugMug.com. The problem is jaw-dropping because I found it discussed in this forum in 2016, and possibly as far back as 2010. Not a reputation-building situation for SM. For me, the fix could be narrowed-down, probably no need to Upload+Replace all the original EXIF data, just the user-specified XMP block that stores Caption, Date, Keywords.
Meanwhile, I'm really disappointed, and would love to be told (accurately) that I'm wrong and that SmugMug.com Upload+Replace now really works 100%. Please.
PS: Don't mention that Lightroom supposedly can do it, until SM starts giving everyone free CC subscriptions. I already paid for SmugMug, please fix it.
@Hpix said:
The bug is, using SmugMug.com's Uploader, Replace only replaces the existing Image, it does not replace existing Metadata.
Hpix: You're not wrong. It's something I'd love to fix, and we've mentioned several times that we'd love to fix this but haven't had a chance to prioritize it. I'm pushing on the team as hard as I can but at the moment there's some other big fish we're trying to fry. Lets keep this topic focused on Lightbox please.
Comments
While the image-rendering CSS changes discussed earlier will address my big concern once the sizes button goes away, let me, as one of the "vocal few", comment on these.
I suspect part of the confusion with the lightbox sizes button is the obscure labeling of the options. I'm not surprised that "LowRes 2Mpix (X3)" on the lightbox sizes popup is less than crystal clear to some, especially when that "LowRes" size fills the screen for the majority of web users. (Stats on web vary, but all suggest the higher resolution traffic is still a minority.) A phrase like "Up to 1600 wide, 1200 wide" -- essentially the description you use for an X3 in your help doc -- might well have caused less confusion. To be sure, "LowRes 2Mpix (X3)" is meaningful for a site-owner setting up photo protection since it highlights what someone can get from pulling down a screen shot. But that's a different function (selection of the maximum resolution vs. selection of which resolution to actually view), a different user-role (site-owner vs. site-viewer), and a different place (Gallery Settings in the Organizer vs. lightbox). I doubt saving the sizes button is still an option since, as you acknowledged back in August, larger development issues push towards its removal ... but in the future please go slow on attributing a problem to a function when the presentation of the function may be the culprit.
I too would welcome a zoom function. It's not critical for me, but I'll admit I'll miss that functional capability when the sizes button goes away. I am already thinking about work-arounds. (Extra pre-zoomed images in the galleries, expanded use of the Carousel for displaying extra wide but not extra high images.)
Here's a potential work-around for the sizes-based zoom going away, although it is based on something of a loophole in SmugMug's architecture and is not all that convenient to use.
If you put picture into a Single Photo widget (Content and Design --> Add Content Blocks --> Photos --> Single Photo --> Drag into place and drop), select "Original" as the photo size, and arrange that right click protection is off and originals are allowed in the source gallery supplying the photo, then when you view that photo in the widget, SmugMug will send the original and let the browser scale it all the way down to the screen size. No display copies. That means a right click will let you view the original image (with all the scroll bars). Now in a sense that's exploiting an inefficiency in SmugMug since they could send a display copy. For display efficiency, they probably should. But as things stand, it does provide a way to get to an original directly via the SM interface without downloading.
Caveats. If the source gallery is right-click protected, this doesn't work. As should be expected, If the maximum display size allowed for the source gallery supplying the photo is smaller than an original, then the approach above will send the largest size you've allowed (but still select "Original" on the Single Photo widget). Nothing like this works for the Multiple Photos widget. And If you want others to use this approach, it obviously will take a little explanation.
I encourage SmugMug NOT to "fix" this little loophole with the Single Photo widget. You might even keep up your sleeve if someone on the help desk gets pestered hard when someone's on-line lightbox access to expanded images has just gone away.
Allen, it's far, far from elegant, but this might let you salvage sharing of family documents.
I ONLY set family galleries to "Original". I've actually turned right click off everywhere as it's useless protection.
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I'll repeat what I said earlier -- so don't take it away without providing a zoom.
Or provide a DATE when you will provide a zoom (we all know you won't do that).
Why remove something you KNOW is used without any useful replacement. Downloading the original is not really that much of a replacement.
I won't loose sleep over its absence, but I still object in principle to the 'we're taking X away because we will one day provide a better X".
At BEST that means a period without X, and quite possibly never X.
My apologies if I was confusing. We KNOW this is NOT being used and therefore have no plans of replacing it.
We’re looking to remove features that a majority of our customers are not using so we can focus on making great experiences that thrill all of you and you do want to use. We’re also not going to build new features if we’re not confident that our customers will use the feature.
There’s only a very small amount of desire for a zoom feature (confirmed here). We’ll be happy to build it IF there’s a desire amongst a number of customers but so far there has not been and I do not plan to spend any time building 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
I think you may be confusing useful features that are confusing and/or poorly implemented with crummy features that nobody uses or wants.
We’re working on an update to the new lightbox which will fix a number of the issues identified here.
The title of the photo will be displayed with an option to expand the title and caption. When the user taps on the expand they’ll be shown more of the title and caption and if it bleeds over, can be scrolled to read more. The title and caption will only expand if the viewer chooses to expand it. Mouse movements will not cause it to expand and contract. If the user changes photos while the caption is expanded, it will remain expanded as they browse additional photos and the title/caption will update.
The play slideshow button is being moved to the top right of the lightbox so that the title and caption can fit properly in the bottom.
We’ll roll this out to the Organizer and Single Photo content block first, and then we’ll proceed with adding the Lightbox to the additional content blocks and to the gallery styles.
When we’re ready to push this live to additional content blocks we’ll start sharing the updated CSS customization code if you want to customize your new lightbox,
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
So it will occupy some of the bottom of the black frame around the lightbox image but not cover the image itself? That's a good idea if so. I was wondering how you were going to exploit that space provided by the frame. What if there is a caption, but no title?
Yep -- we're trying to keep the bottom bar from overlapping the photo unless the viewer explicitly selects to do so (like to read more). The purpose of the Lightbox is to show your photo as beautiful as possible and the viewer should be drawn immediately to the photo.
1 line of the title and 1 line of the caption will be displayed. If there's no title, it'll just be the caption:
It will look something like this (this may not be final, as we may tweak the "expand" parts to maximize space for the photo):
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Not too bad. Please, please, please make it easy (without CSS) to alter the background/ font color at least per gallery, even better per photo. A dark concert photo is often best served with a dark border and a bright sunny beach scene with a light one. If you could easily toggle between two choices (black and white for example), that would be beyond awesome. And please, make the character of the text pop-up manageable as well, even lockable if you typically keep captions to a minimum, no one wants the thing popping up in front of the image unnecessarily. Thanks.
Oh and please make it the default to have the shaded boxes around the next and previous arrows transparent, I doubt anyone likes that either.
Looks pretty decent Leftquark!
Agree with erik64 btw, those Prev/Next arrows would look a lot better transparent.
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One thing we're doing in the new lightbox is slightly shrinking the photo so that the top and bottom buttons don't overlap the photo since many of you had mentioned you didn't like the way it caused distractions on the photo by covering it.
(ignore the slight gray overlap on the bottom of the photo. That's been removed as we develop)
When the buttons go away, though, the photo doesn't completely fill the window anymore, since we left room for the buttons to not overlap:
We'd love to get your feedback as we continue to improve the design.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Well, two big thumbs up from me. That's how mine is right now, a photo needs a frame. If you are able to make it easy to swap the background color/text per gallery (or even better, per photo), and make it possible to center the text/caption under the photo then we'll really be getting somewhere. If you can also add an option for it to go full-screen by default, it'll be just about perfect. Thanks, keep up the good work!
The new design for titles and captions is live. You can check it out by opening the Lightbox from within the Organizer.
-- If a viewer wants to browse captions between photos the captions will remain open
-- If a viewer no longer wants to read captions between photos, they can dismiss the captions.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
If I go larger then fill size the bottom covers the photo even when scrolling to the bottom.
Edit: this with bottom collapsed.
This not true.
"The title and caption and action buttons (download, buy, share, tools, info, etc) will never cover the photo"
This is with "fill" selected. Bottom of photo covered.
https://www.photosbyat.com/organize/Birds/2018-Birding/Birding-2018-October/2018-October-Yardbirds/i-HNw4pPb
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I checked out the Organizer lightbox. Most things I like. There's one design choice I'd like you to reconsider if you are open to it. And the handling of videos has some problems that need to be fixed.
Let's start with the positive. For the most part, this is a nice clean lightbox. Viewed alone, I'm neutral on whether the border is good or not, but I very, very much like what it enables: that the slideshow, expand, and close buttons up top and the various action buttons at the lower right never cover the image.
I'm a little less happy with the ^ show more ^ business. I'm not sure I'd characterize its positioning as "slightly overlapping the bottom of the photo". It seems this control eats an awful lot of space that covers the image. A lot is just blank "spacer" space too. I know you've got a working design, but at the very least try to scrunch it down a bit. If you are willing to consider alternatives, let me toss one out. You already have a situation in the interface where you may not be able display all the text information available and need a means to let the user know there's more and to access it: gallery descriptions when using a cover. So an alternative approach that doesn't eat as much into the image would be replicate something like that. Make the bottom border just a bit wider (or raise the title/partial caption block a little higher) to allow for a whole first line of a caption, and insert a "... read more" in blue like you do on gallery descriptions when a cover is present. Then get rid of the "^ show more ^". That gets the message across, doesn't take anywhere near as much vertical space that eats into the image, and uses an existing style of control. I'd note repeated, consistent styles like this make the interface feel simpler: a good thing. If the caption is short and there are no keywords, this approach can even provide complete information without needing the "... show more". Again, I don't know if you are open to revisiting this, but I'm strongly in favor of only covering images with other high-information-density stuff ... and this isn't there.
I see the sizes button is still there. I know you want to kill it, but I'm glad it's gotten at least a temporary stay of execution. I've been watching my own work flow over the last month and observe that it can be real handy to use the sizes button to reference an Original once and a while. I find I have two use cases. The first applies when I'm setting up a gallery and have two fairly similar images that I need to choose between. I find it's helpful to put both up on SmugMug temporarily. That lets me think about the choice in same context as a visitor. Beside just flipping back and forth, I pull up the Originals to think about details and sharpness beyond what I can see on my monitor at fill resolution. That helps me visualize what other users (or me in the future) will see on a higher-res screen. I could use the larger display copies, but I usually end up just going to the largest. The second use case applies to a very small number of my galleries: ones that contain documents or some sort of highly detailed reference images (e.g., pictures of the drip system in my garden before the mulch went in on top). With these, I simply am using the sizes button as a zoom. I did this a few times in the last month. On the vast majority galleries, however, once finalized I never look at anything except fills or a near-fill display copies, nor do I expect my viewers will. And with the image-rendering CSS we discussed here last month, I haven't even needed the display copies much. So I find I don't care about most of what's on the sizes button, but it would be really, really nice if you could save access to the Originals or largest allowable size, perhaps without titles, captions, and keywords. For these uses, I don't need those. (And yes, you still have a problem with those interfering with the horizontal scroll bar with the larger display sizes and Originals.)
Finally, let me note a few issues and bugs with videos in the new lightbox.
First, I've got a few videos uploaded at 960 x 540. I observe the new lightbox upscales them to fill the screen (with the border). About the nicest thing I can say is that those upscaled videos is that they don't look quite as bad as I expected. Please, don't go beyond the original resolution. You wouldn't (and don't) do that for stills.
Second, if the display is not full screen, the title/caption area is part way up, and I stop the video and try to use the slider bar to change the time that's playing, I drag the video around the screen, rather than move the slider. If the display is full screen, all is fine in this case. Full screen or not, if the title/caption area is all the way up, the slider bar is inaccessible. Suffice to say, interactions with the slider bar need work.
Notice how the bottom of photo is covered. Photo size at "fill". Larger sizes the lower part is always covered.
When overlay goes away looks clean.
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You've got some caption alignment problems on smaller windows. Observe how the caption overlaps the action button area and is partially covered by the BUY button. This behavior changes depending on the window width. 1920 x 1200 monitor. The window, with borders, is just 974px wide. This is a full size capture. Firefox 62 under Win 7.
Note too the amount of blank space there is between the ^ show more ^ and the title entry line. This too seems to vary with window size. On some size windows the "show more" is nicely scrunched down. Here it is not.
Added note: I explored the CSS. Looks like some of the rules for screens less than 1024px wide are the source of the misalignments.
Personally, I find it worse than the current lightbox, less clean. But if this can be corrected/removed before it will be online published, through the Lightbox options in Content and Design or through CSS, I'd be extremely happy.
On the other side, the good thing is that you have to click and the texts don't come out if you go over it (not like now) and that only a brief part of the caption will be displayed at the bottom (with caption and no title)
What I refer to is the aforementioned "show more".
1) Doing some tests it's always showing, even when there is no Title or Caption like in my private galleries. Screenshot from my private galleries where I'm not using title/caption/keywords. It makes no sense the "show more" displayes in these cases.
2) In my pubblic galleries I'd like to prevent people from reading the texts written in caption/lightbox (because they are written only as Alt text/SEO purposes...in this way it is as if they had a sign that would invite them...but I realize that it's a more personal request than others). Anyway, the important thing is that we'll have the possibility to deselect this "show more".
3) In the new lightbox "show more" overlaps a lot more on the photos than the current one. Should be reviewed. First screenshot current lightbox (logged out), second screenshot the new lightbox (logged in)
4) Caption is shown in the slideshow! It's unwatchable for me, I think who sees a slideshow wants to see the photos, doesn't want a distracting text. In addition, there is no time to read the text (if long) as the slideshow changes photos after a few seconds. A screenshot from the bottom part of the slideshow.
I hope these info can be useful.
sebastian
wedding and portrait photographer in italy | facebook | instagram
I hadn't looked at the slideshows until I read Sebastian's post. I just took a look.
Tastes differ. I rather like the captions in slideshow mode. I would also be absolutely delighted if there was a lightbox view that looked like that, with maybe a little button on the side to open up the full title/caption/keywords/action button bar display. Seeing the slideshow crystallized a concern that was only about half there when I wrote yesterday: the new lightbox, except for the view with no captions at all, feels a little too busy. That's unavoidable when showing all, but the slideshow demonstrates it can be avoided in the partially-folded-down view.
A few more tweaks are in the works:
A few other things:
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thank you Aaron for the answers. Regarding the second point, I had never paid attention / clicked on the slideshow options. I didn't think slideshow could be customizable. So now I understand that my question about already had an answer!
sebastian
wedding and portrait photographer in italy | facebook | instagram
Are these changes live yet? I thought they were, but I went to one of my galleries with extensive captions, and I saw exactly what I saw before these changes were announced: an up arrow over which I had to hover to see the rest of the caption, without any words (such as "Show more").
Or is it that at this point, the changes are only "live" to account owners when looking at a Lightbox via the Organizer, and general users/viewers still see the old version?
More of the latter — we’re doing a slow roll-out to make sure we get this right and can incorporate feedback like many of you have been giving us above. Account Owners can see it live in the Organizer. Basic account holders can see it in their galleries as well.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Since you noted the new lightbox was up for Basic accounts, I browsed through a couple of other folks' sites I know. (It's rather nice when meeting another photographer to learn we both post on SmugMug.) Is there any way to not show the ^ show more ^ when there's a single line caption and nothing more? On those, all the information shows when the folded-down caption is present. There's no need to expand ... but the expand button and all the space it takes is still there. This isn't going to affect my site, but it does affect viewing of the some of the more simple ones.
I checked a couple friends basic sites and in LB all the buttons show (share, comment, info, etc.) when first opening but disappear after changing photo. I can click around the blank area and get the button action but the buttons are hidden.
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Except the BUY button. It's persistent. Some mouse motions can revive the missing buttons too, but I haven't quite figured out exactly actions do the job.
(Firefox 62, Win 7)
We're also working through the issue with the buttons becoming "invisible". It's a nifty feature, right? Right?!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
With nice improvements to displaying Caption and similar metadata, comes the dirty secret that they may not be the desired Caption, Keywords, Date, etc. Unless SM's Upload+Replace bug has been fixed, which I don't find is the case.
The bug is, using SmugMug.com's Uploader, Replace only replaces the existing Image, it does not replace existing Metadata. But a digital photo has two parts: Image and Metadata. After original upload, often Images get improved, and so does Metadata, and all of these changes comprise what the photographer wants to display on SM., Of what value are Captions that are wrong, Keywords that are incomplete, etc?
But the only SmugMug.com solution is to have Metadata 100% correct upon original upload, since it is impossible to change via SmugMug.com using Upload+Replace. (Or, use my horrible workaround, delete the many many SM original photos that later were given better Captions, useful Keywords, accurate Dates, then re-Upload all of them as new.)
This bug is a major flaw in SmugMug.com. The problem is jaw-dropping because I found it discussed in this forum in 2016, and possibly as far back as 2010. Not a reputation-building situation for SM. For me, the fix could be narrowed-down, probably no need to Upload+Replace all the original EXIF data, just the user-specified XMP block that stores Caption, Date, Keywords.
Meanwhile, I'm really disappointed, and would love to be told (accurately) that I'm wrong and that SmugMug.com Upload+Replace now really works 100%. Please.
PS: Don't mention that Lightroom supposedly can do it, until SM starts giving everyone free CC subscriptions. I already paid for SmugMug, please fix it.
Hpix: You're not wrong. It's something I'd love to fix, and we've mentioned several times that we'd love to fix this but haven't had a chance to prioritize it. I'm pushing on the team as hard as I can but at the moment there's some other big fish we're trying to fry. Lets keep this topic focused on Lightbox please.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations