iPhone new v2 Lightbox zoom

Allen

On my iPhone 8+ using latest Firefox Win7 64bit when I zoom the LB image larger it only zooms in at the center. No other area of the photo can be zoomed in.

Another problem with RCP on in V2 lightbox. Checked a bunch of galleries and it happened in all.

Edit: found cause
This is the problem with RCP turned on. Disable this CSS rule and photo shows full. With rule enabled turning on RCP photo shows shrunk like right screen shot above. Why in the world would RCP have anything to do with this is weird.

@media screen and (min-width: 961px) {
   .sm-lightbox-v2-content .sm-lightbox-v2-photo {
       margin-left: 15px!important;
       width: 97%
   }
}

tomnovy

Allen, I cannot replicate this on my website. Could it be that some of your code is affecting the way the photo is displayed on your site? I cannot replicate the Firefox and mobile issue either.

Allen

This is still happening.

On my iPhone 8+ using latest Firefox Win7 64bit when I zoom the LB image larger it only zooms in at the center. No other area of the photo can be zoomed in.

Allen

When you pinch zoom and remove fingers photo pops back to original size. Does not hold zoom.

Allen

This is now happening in the Smugmug app. Pinching only zooms the center of photo.
iPhone 8+ in portrait. Turn to landscrape and does not zoom at all.

elmani

I have to agree, the zoom function on mobile is awful! Firstly, when you first zoom the picture seems to disappear for a moment. Then it only zooms to the centre. Can this be urgently sorted?? It was fine in the old lightbox

Allen

Looks like the Smug app now works but the latest Firefox browser does not.
Hello??

elmani

Agree. Zoom in the app works perfectly, but doesn't work properly in ANY mobile web-browser from what I can tell. I've looked at various other photography website platforms that don't have this issue!!!! what's going on?

elmani

@leftquark or anyone else from the Smugmug team. Can you please feedback on the zoom issue on mobile - it's a really bad user experience. thanks

elmani

Can someone from the Smugmug team please respond. Thanks

tomnovy

I am going to report this to our mobile team. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

elmani

Thanks Tom - really appreciate it...

tomnovy

I have just heard back from our product team and engineers and this is an intended behaviour. Currently, on mobile, the zoom feature will zoom into the middle of the photo. Our product is planning to improve on how the zoom feature is going to behave on mobile - but currently, we do not have information when exactly this is going to be implemented. We will update this post as soon as we have more information.

Allen

@tomnovy said:
I have just heard back from our product team and engineers and this is an intended behaviour. Currently, on mobile, the zoom feature will zoom into the middle of the photo. ...

Can't see the rest of the photo when zoomed in? Must be an April Fools joke.

tomnovy

Allen you can move the image around after you have zoomed in. This does not work on your website because of the customization that you have in place. You can compare this with one of my galleries - https://www.photom.me/Personal/USA

elmani

@tomnovy - Thanks for the response. I don't like the fact that when you zoom it zooms to the middle rather than where the user fingers are (which his how every other zoom I've used before works) - however, this I can at least live with. The aspect that is really problematic is that when you zoom, it doesn't zoom right away - the screen goes blank and it them loads the photo again to be able to zoom. This makes the user experience really poor (looks like a glitch rather than an intended UX) and also slows things down. I've visited many other photo sites on the internet and have never seen this happen before. Is this really an intended behaviour - I really can't believe that. Could the team please investigate. (And I checked, it's not just my site - does the same on yours.) Thanks!

elmani

Any update on my previous comment? @tomnovy @leftquark

leftquark

Do you have any examples of what you’re seeing that you can share with us? We haven’t seen anything go blank and I would expect numerous complaints if it was more widespread (I’ll look deeper into whether we have more reports of this).

Zooming is smooth, other than zooming into the center.
(Trying to upload a video from my phone but it won’t upload here)

elmani

Thanks for responding @leftquark - I recorded the issue on my iphone and uploaded the video here https://www.elmani.com/Random/BarmyTemp/ You can see at apprx 15 seconds in to the video when I zoom in on a video that the screen goes blank for a moment before the picture appears. I've tried on several different models of phones and several different browser apps and the same issue occurs. A secondary issue I am also seeing with the new lightbox is that flicking between images (i.e moving left/right), occasionally (but consistenly) there are weird glitches. It's hard to articulate clearly the issue, but you can see it happen at apprx 28 seconds and 36 seconds on the video. Look forward to hearing from you...

leftquark

The flicker between photos when you swipe (occasionally) is caused by the browser grabbing the next set of photos. We grab photos at a time and have them ready to go, and to save bandwidth/data on mobile, we don't load the next photo every time you swipe. Instead we load the next set when you've gotten to the end. When you swipe quickly you might occasionally see that brief blip. For now we'll keep it like this but we can always revisit and start downloading future photos at each swipe.

I'll have the team look into the zooming blip.

elmani

Thanks @leftquark for looking in to the issue with the zoom!
Regarding the swip issue, can I ask you to look at this again. I don't believe that it is simply an issue of swiping to quickly. If you look at this second video, it shows that the issue seems to occur on certain images, rather than just when moving quickly. In this video, I am moving left and right very slowly. When I have an issue with a particular image, that issue keeps happening when I got back to that image... Even when changing very slowly... https://www.elmani.com/Random/BarmyTemp/i-Dk5cTmq

elmani

Hi @leftquark - any thoughts on my last post regarding the issue of swiping photos on mobile? thanks

elmani

Appreciate that you're busy but would really appreciate a response @leftquark or anyone else at Smugmug.

leftquark

I'm pretty convinced it's the issue of loading the next "batch" of photos behind the scenes. Essentially imagine there's pages in a book that each get a certain number of photos, and when you look at a set of photos you turn the page and get the next set. You can also go back and look at the previous page. We have some old technology (to load the gallery) and new technology (to display the Lightbox) and they turn the page at different times. We spent a long time trying to iron out the kinks but there's a few instances that create weird situations (like here).

The fix for this is quite extensive and one we're not quite ready to tackle. It's a pretty annoying issue (I'll even admit it's embarrassing) but at least it has a recoverable path (swiping again). We're a small team and we have to ruthlessly prioritize the improvements we put effort towards. I can't say for sure when this will get fixed.

elmani

Understood - but it never used to do it - it’s only happened since you launched the new lightbox. Why launch something new if it’s worse than what you had before? It doesn’t do it on the app and it doesn’t do it on any other website I’ve visited.

elmani

Any update @leftquark on the zooming problem ??

@leftquark said:
The flicker between photos when you swipe (occasionally) is caused by the browser grabbing the next set of photos. We grab photos at a time and have them ready to go, and to save bandwidth/data on mobile, we don't load the next photo every time you swipe. Instead we load the next set when you've gotten to the end. When you swipe quickly you might occasionally see that brief blip. For now we'll keep it like this but we can always revisit and start downloading future photos at each swipe.

I'll have the team look into the zooming blip.

elmani

Happy new year. @leftquark - any update on the zooming issue raised in November that you said you'll get the team to look at - I've heard nothing :-(