Android app option to hide the big green BUY button

RonvanderPlas

One month ago the SmugMug Android app was updated and added functionality of a BUY button. We use the app for our own photo's and showing them to friends and family. The app works great but....as soon as the Title is shown we get an awful big green BUY button at the bottom.
In the website I have hidden this with CSS. The button in the app is very irritating and for us completely unnecessary. Especially as very few people would like to buy their own photo's. They have other ways.

Please add an option/setting to hide the BIG GREEN BUY BUTTON. I'm sure many users would like it.

leftquark

Thanks for the feedback!

In the meantime, tapping once on the photo should go into "Lights Out" mode, which will hide the buy button.

HaraldE

I have the same situation, do not want/need that big BUY button.
Yes tapping once takes it away but also takes away the Description which I very much wants.

mike80

The BUY button is truly horrible. I also use the app to view my own photos, and to show them to friends and family. The experience is marred by the ugly BUY button. I happily pay a yearly fee to SmugMug so I don't have to be assaulted by advertisements when I view my photos. The BUY button ruins the experience. Please add a switch to turn off the BUY button.

sarasphotos

I just noticed this. Indeed, the BIG HUGE UGLY UNNECESSARY "BUY" button shows up on exactly the screen which also displays the photo title and caption. I'm like @HaraldE (and probably many others) - I would like to see the title and caption without the BUY button.

Out of curiosity I pressed the BUY button to see where it would lead me. After one or two minutes of the little cubes blinking in and out I got an error message "We're sorry. Something went wrong here. Please try again." Tried it with a picture from a different gallery and got the same message. So you put this immensely huge, obnoxious, unwanted button in the middle of our screens that we can't turn off - and it doesn't even work??

I am curious about the use case of this button. Is there really a huge portion of users that take advantage of this "service", whatever it may be?

Jtring

The button is functional on my Pixel2. I've got to agree though that a discrete little "cart" icon, perhaps in with the other icons up top or inside the 3-dot menu, would be much more welcome than that huge green thing.

Ferguson

Yeah, and I hit it a couple times to see what happens, and it just hangs showing the little alternating checkerboard 4x4. That's with me logged in as owner and on fast wifi.

And that's a Pixel2 also, so go figure.

Oh wait... I waited longer that time, it finally said "We're sorry. Something went wrong here. Please try again. "

Is "Buy" the same as "Owner Buy" on the web? Because these are galleries with purchase turned off, anyway. Though I am logged in so it may be appropriate to show, but it's really ugly, I mean REALLY ugly, and to also not work?

How about just an icon somewhere on the info page if you must have it.

Jtring

This is bizarre. I just checked again with three different images from my site. In all cases, the app's buy button brought up the "Buy This Photo" page as one would expect. It shouldn't really make a difference, but for reference I have very fast internet (gig fiber) and wifi (phone says the transmit speed is 780 Mbps).

A little added information: App version 3.7.12.20191217. Pixel2 has Android 10 with Security Patch level December 5, 2019.

sarasphotos

@Jtring said:
This is bizarre. I just checked again with three different images from my site. In all cases, the app's buy button brought up the "Buy This Photo" page as one would expect. It shouldn't really make a difference, but for reference I have very fast internet (gig fiber) and wifi (phone says the transmit speed is 780 Mbps).

A little added information: App version 3.7.12.20191217. Pixel2 has Android 10 with Security Patch level December 5, 2019.

But do you have the purchase option turned on for the galleries? @Ferguson & I both have "purchase" turned off and are getting an error message. Dumb. Shouldn't have to "fix" this with custom CSS. I have never understood the function of the owner buy button anyway.

Jtring

@sarasphotos said:

But do you have the purchase option turned on for the galleries? @Ferguson & I both have "purchase" turned off and are getting an error message. Dumb. Shouldn't have to "fix" this with custom CSS. I have never understood the function of the owner buy button anyway.

I keep the Visitor's Shopping Cart turned off, although a logged-in owner always has it. Maybe something else makes a difference? I do "Show Sharing Options" for all. I have some galleries which do and some which do not allow downloads. The "Buy This Photo" page comes up for both. On the website, over in hard-to-find the lightbox settings, I have Buy Button Style set to "Icon" and use CSS to hide the button at the top of the galleries. The icon works as expected, as does the buy button up top if I remove the code to hide it. Have you tried the buy capabilities on the website to see if they work for you?

sarasphotos

@Jtring said:
Have you tried the buy capabilities on the website to see if they work for you?

I just tried via the owner buy button (which I haven't bothered to hide) and it works normally. My phone is a Sony XZ, a few years old but still pretty fast and I use either LTE (4G) or a fast WiFi connected to a fast broadband. I'm not sure if it makes a difference that I'm not in the USA.

It doesn't matter to me anyway, as it's a feature that if I ever do use, it certainly won't be via cell phone. I just want the huge green thing gone.

leftquark

Thanks for the continued feedback on the size of the button. This was new functionality that we added to allow owners to buy their own photos through the Android app and we'll continue to improve the purchasing experience within the app.

It should work the same as the owner buy button on the web. Clicking on it will launch the shopping cart, allowing you to choose the type of product you'd like to purchase. Since owners can always purchase their own photos

I'll have the Android team take a look at the spinning squares issue. That shouldn't be happening - it should launch the shopping options immediately.

@sarasphotos said:
I have never understood the function of the owner buy button anyway.

The purpose is to purchase prints of your own photos. Millions of people have done this and continue to purchase their own prints.

Ferguson

@leftquark, I recall how dedicated you were during the lightbox changes to avoiding distractions when people wanted to scroll through photos, to showing them cleanly. How about an on/off switch (default to on if you like) so people could avoid the ugliness of that big green button if they wanted?

Or at least consider how seriously ugly it is. A subtle icon somewhere, or just put it in the menu with all the other options. If it's really for owners, you'd think they could find it in the menu without having to hit them visually so hard.

leftquark

Our current thoughts are in line with what @Jtring said above: just a small icon on the top right with share, etc.

leftquark

For the galleries that the BUY button didn't work, were they private galleries? Did you have a custom domain attached to your account?

We've temporarily disabled the BUY button while we work on fixes.

Ferguson

I've never seen it work, mine are public, I do have a custom domain (www.captivephotons.com -> linwoodferguson.smugmug.com).

Ferguson

@leftquark said:
We've temporarily disabled the BUY button while we work on fixes.

In what way have you done that, as it still appears for me. I gave it awhile in case a new version had to percolate out, but it's still there, unchanged as of 3 minutes ago.

Now the world isn't ending because the big green button is still there; just saying if you've been told it is gone, it's not.

leftquark

I should have mentioned that we turned it back on. We have a fix coming in the near future that will make sure it works for accounts with custom domains and to shrink the size of the button. It'll be similar to the Buy button in Lightbox on mobile web, with a smaller button in the bottom right corner. When an item is added to the cart, a shopping cart icon will appear in the top right (next to share, more options, etc) for you to checkout.

leftquark

The update to the Android app to shrink the size of the BUY button and to fix the bug for custom domain accounts is being rolled out to the Android Play store today and tomorrow. Let us know if things look better.

Ferguson

Yes, the big ugly green non-functional button is now a smaller ugly functional button.

ThomasKr

@leftquark said:
The update to the Android app to shrink the size of the BUY button and to fix the bug for custom domain accounts is being rolled out to the Android Play store today and tomorrow. Let us know if things look better.

Could you please provide the CSS code to disable the BUY button for the admin and guests in all galleries ?

Jtring

The BUY button won't show when logged out provided the Visitor Shopping Cart is off for that gallery. Set that in the gallery settings tab. In the app, I've not found a way to get rid of the green BUY button when logged in. The app doesn't respond to user CSS. So, if I'm just browsing or showing other people my pictures, I tend to I use the app logged out. (Log in or out from the menu that comes up when you tap the gear icon.) To browse your site when logged out, you have to add it to the list of sites you are following. That's pretty straightforward. Hit people icon at the lower right of the app screen, tap add, and search for your site. That approach doesn't work, of course, if most of your galleries are unlisted. You have to log back in to see those, to upload, or change settings. One annoyance is that if you are viewing your site while logged out, then log in, then log out later, you will have to repeat the task of adding your site to the list of sites you are following.

leftquark

When logged in and looking at a photo, you can also tap once to go into "Lights out" mode, which will hide the buy button, then browse. Slideshows should also use Lights Out mode, with the buy button hidden.

kdog

@leftquark said:
The purpose is to purchase prints of your own photos. Millions of people have done this and continue to purchase their own prints.

Then add a toggle to the user interface to enable owner-purchase. That way people who want to buy their own prints are happy, and you aren't punishing the rest of us with that big green eyesore.

RonvanderPlas

Now that the updated iOS app is a few month active I noticed the big ugly green button is absent. To buy a photo the user can open the side menu.
Please add the same in the Android app. So removing the big green button and adding an option in the three dots menu. This way you keep both users satisfied, the pro's and the private users.