Holy CR@P! Get this lightbox S*&% off *MY* site NOW!!!!

kwalsh

<begin "Insane Rant">

Dear god almighty, what in the name of all that is holy is this ridiculousness????

This light box thing is absolute *GARBAGE*. I get back from a 3 week trip, post some photos, send out links highlighting how easy it is to view originals, even give someone a gift subscription to smugmug that I've praised so highly and I'm greated with this poorly thought out and executed monstrosity!!!!

The stupid images take *forever* to load and give no indication anything is happening causing users to abort. Your scroll feature is the *WORST* thing I've *ever* seen. I can't scroll around my 8MP images without so much lag it is unusable. Captions disappear. You can't even right click on "original" anymore to get it in a window cause it is flagged as an attachment and browsers force you to save it or open it in another application.

INSANE, STUPID, NON-FUNCTIONAL!!!! DID YOU GUYS HAVE A GROUP CRACK SMOKING SESSION WHEN YOU DECIDED TO RELEASE THIS???

You know, I've been very happy with smugmug and its crew. I saw the silly Google Maps thing as a classic but harmless "web-geeks forget their audience" type thing, but whatever. That kind of thinking is what makes so much of the rest of this site great. But now, you guys have put stupid web-geek tricks in front of simple usability. I want my users and myself to be able to see my originals *easily*. Every web-browser on earth can scroll an image quickly and easily. It is standard. It is what the OS and the window manager are for. But *NOOOOOOO* you guys think you can do it better. And you failed, badly. It is the classic techno-geek blunder. Don't fall into that trap, others have and it has ended badly.

I used to end my posts with "Keep up the good work". Maybe I should be ending them with "STOP WORKING, YOU ARE MESSING IT UP!!!".

</end "Insane Rant">

Now that's off my chest, a more reasoned request:

"PLEASE, IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF MERCY AND COMPASSION ALLOW USERS TO REMOVE THE LIGHTBOX FROM THEIR SITE."

Ken

P.S. I still love you all and I'm sure you love me, but someone once said something to the effect of "We are doomed to hurt those we love the most."

Mike Lane

So how do you really feel about it?

I for one like it way better than the popup window

Andy

kwalsh wrote:

P.S. I still love you all and I'm sure you love me, but someone once said something to the effect of "We are doomed to hurt those we love the most."

Ouch, I can see you're upset! Thanks for providing your valuable feedback. Stay tuned...

Andy

Oh - a link to your site would help immensley, so we can see how you use SmugMug? Thanks.

bwg

seriously dude, simmer down.

i agree that lightbox aint perfect but making constructive suggestions is gonna get us all a whole lot farther than using A BUNCH OF PUNCTUATION MARKS!!*&@$!

kwalsh

Andy wrote:

Oh - a link to your site would help immensley, so we can see how you use SmugMug? Thanks.

Hey Andy, hope I didn't step on your guys toes too badly . I know everyone works hard and it hurts not to have your users praise your efforts.

www.kenandchristine.com (or kenandchristine.smugmug.com).

I've used Mozilla at home on Windows 2K and lightbox scrolling was just barely usable (most recent version of Mozilla).

I've used Mozilla at work on Fedore Core 3.0 and lightbox scrolling was pretty much impossible to use (Mozilla is 1.7.12).

As far as download speed goes, that is of course dependent on the ISP, but the main problem is there is absolutely no visual feedback of progress. The old way you'd see the image loading and users were likely to make an informed decision about waiting for it to load or giving up. Now it just appears as if nothing is happening and then "pop" the whole image is there. God forbid you try to scroll and view it though, the image and the scroll bars lag badly.

And I do know you guys are constantly walking the fine line between new features and a broken site and you can't make an omlette without breaking some eggs, but this is the first thing I've run into that actually makes it too painful to perform the primary function of the site (namely, look at photos). If you change colors and what not, whatever, but getting in the way of displaying the photos was a bit much for me.

And I wouldn't want to discourage you guys from continuing to improve the site, I've paid for customization capabilities so in general I don't mind anything that gets added since I can remove it. But don't get in between my photos and my viewers...

Ken

kwalsh

Mike Lane wrote:

I for one like it way better than the popup window

It is cute, but at least on the two systems I use it works far worse than the popup at it's primary purpose, namely letting a user view an image. And I'm a person that generally doesn't like pop-ups.

Ken

dragon300zx

What kind of connection are you on? I don't have any speed problems, or anything, the gears rotate for me showing that it is working on bringing the pic up. I am on dsl at work here and its fine.

Andy

kwalsh wrote:

Hey Andy, hope I didn't step on your guys toes too badly . I know everyone works hard and it hurts not to have your users praise your efforts.

Actually, we learn much MORE when you tell it straight like this. I mean it when I say, "thanks for telling it straight!" We get plenty of positive feedback on LightBox - very little negative - but the negative is just as important!

I looked at your site. You force SmugMug style, and allow originals. LightBox will ALWAYS fire up in SmugMug and SmugMug Small styles, when the featured pic is clicked on. Viewers can still have a single image view, by clicking on Large, for example, under the pic.

All this said, we've heard your comments, and some others, and we're looking at ways of improving the feature. Thanks so much!

kwalsh

bigwebguy wrote:

seriously dude, simmer down.

i agree that lightbox aint perfect but making constructive suggestions is gonna get us all a whole lot farther than using A BUNCH OF PUNCTUATION MARKS!!*&@$!

Yeah, that wasn't very constructive. I'm sure I crossed the line, but this is the first time smugmug has done something that completely alters the viewing expereince and effectively breaks it. I checked previous threads before posting and it seemed to me the message wasn't getting through - lots of "we'll try to fix it" and "that's the way it works" type replies. It doesn't need fixing - it needs to go away (or at least have the option to make it go away). Scrolling multi-megapixel images at a level of abstraction beyond the OS and the window manager is asking for trouble. As long as that is smugmug's plan I simply can't offer any other constructive advice other than "stop it". I'm sure the other issues can be improved upon (progress bars, captions, shortcut keys, right-clicks, whatever), but all of this will be and endless battle of creating a whole new interface that the user shouldn't need to learn - let the browser do what it was designed to do. Sure, smugmug might be smarter than the browser designer but they'll outsmart the user at the same time.

Anyway, sorry if the rant was over the top, but I really can't view this course of action from a UI or programming approach as anything other than cracked. I maybe wrong, but so far my first hand evidence is on my side and I've never seen a web applet or scripting approach sucessfully scroll large images as well as the browser. It'd be super cool if the gurus at smugmug prove me wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.

I wish I had more to offer, but unfortunately I don't design large web apps myself. I do use a lot of them though, and in my humble opinion this one is flawed in concept from the get go.

I guess because I really can't think of anything more constructive than "please make it stop" my energies were improperly directed into a rant.

Ken

EDIT: This is still too harsh on my part. I've got more faith in the SmugMug guys to make this work. I guess I'm just not seeing what it is adding to the site for all the effort and problems, but I've been known to be short-sighted.

kwalsh

dragon300zx wrote:

What kind of connection are you on? I don't have any speed problems, or anything, the gears rotate for me showing that it is working on bringing the pic up. I am on dsl at work here and its fine.

For what it is worth I get gears at home but nothing at work. Of course the total download time is going to be dependent on connection (faster for me at home on cable). The spinning gears are entertaining I guess, but they don't really indicate to me if the connection is broke mid-way through the download or what not.

Bottomline, my main issue is that the scrolling once the image is downloaded is painfully slow with a big lag. But maybe that is a browser or OS issue or something and that's why I despise this thing while others are having better luck.

Ken

kwalsh

Andy wrote:

Actually, we learn much MORE when you tell it straight like this. I mean it when I say, "thanks for telling it straight!" We get plenty of positive feedback on LightBox - very little negative - but the negative is just as important!

I looked at your site. You force SmugMug style, and allow originals. LightBox will ALWAYS fire up in SmugMug and SmugMug Small styles, when the featured pic is clicked on. Viewers can still have a single image view, by clicking on Large, for example, under the pic.

All this said, we've heard your comments, and some others, and we're looking at ways of improving the feature. Thanks so much!

Thanks Andy. I know you guys have to be very thick skinned in this business!

I saw that the large link still worked as before, thanks for pointing it out though. The main issue was the originals.

For what it is worth, I've tried scrolling a few different places. In some cases it works fine, nearly indistinguishable from the browser. In others it seems to go less well. What really kills it is any further indirection, here at work I do everything through a VNC and browser scrolls show a little visible lag but for some reason the Light Box just becomes a nightmare. XP with Netscape seemed OK. I'll have to try again at home with Mozilla on 2K to see what is going on there (perhaps load dependent or something).

Oh, and Netscape on XP the gears pop up and then disappear with "Loading..." just showing for a long time while the image downloads. I've rarely seen the gears work on my systems, hence the "no feedback" complaint. A progress bar would be better.

Maybe you could make the "original" size below the image not use the light box and only make clicking on the image use the lightbox? Perhaps we could through customization remove the link to the lightbox from the image and thus only leave the links at the bottom of the page? Just thinking out loud.

Personally, I'm still of the "make it go away" opinion, but you guys are smarter at this than me. If it really comes to it I can just use smugmug as a giant image host and make my own site with Gallery or JAlbum, but I'd hate for it to come to that.

Again, thanks for being so responsive to your customers, even the annoying irate ones.

Ken

DodgeV83

I think we've all named enough legitimate problems with the lightbox that they HAVE to do SOMETHING about it. Adding a feature to our sites that we have no option to remove sounds kinda off to me to tell ya the truth. I've personally seen new visitors to my site become confused with the lightbox, the buttons are extremely small and its not really what most people expect when clicking on a picture.

The concept is good, it just needs work.

dmc

The reason you don't see the gears when an Original is loading, and instead you see the word loading ... is because once the size of the original is determined, the window for the pic is created, and the gears are centered in the window. Unless you have a very large screen, you can't see the gears unless you scroll to the right, and down, and there they are.

At least you have the word loading ... to keep you company...

kwalsh

dmc wrote:

The reason you don't see the gears when an Original is loading, and instead you see the word loading ... is because once the size of the original is determined, the window for the pic is created, and the gears are centered in the window. Unless you have a very large screen, you can't see the gears unless you scroll to the right, and down, and there they are.

At least you have the word loading ... to keep you company...

Ah ha! You're right. Boy, that was intuative . I'll be sure to put a link to here so my parents can figure it out.

Thanks for the pointer, one less mystery!

I've been playing with this thing for awhile now, can someone please tell me what is suppose to be cool about it? I see the interface I want to be using in the background there, I guess that is cool or something? What exactly is this LightBox thing adding? I can't seem to find any features to it. Right click does nothing new. I can't drag anything. There aren't any pulldowns or pop ups that I can see. The best one is when I left click on the image, then it goes away, best feature yet - about the only thing it does that I like. Is there something else it does? I can't figure it out and there is nothing about it in the help section. I really feel like I must be missing something here. What does this thing do?!?!?!?

Ken

kwalsh

DodgeV83 wrote:

I think we've all named enough legitimate problems with the lightbox that they HAVE to do SOMETHING about it.

Boy I sure hope so.

DodgeV83 wrote:

The concept is good, it just needs work.

Going to have to disagree with you there. It may be user idiocy on my part but after giving the thing a fair shake with all its warts for a few hours here I can't figure out what the heck it is suppose to do. It just appears to be a silly and non-intuitive way to look at the pictures. Screams of someone who saw a cute web trick (oh boy, look at the translucent window within a window, that is SO COOL) and couldn't restrain themselves from forcing everyone to try it. So unless there is some other magic I'm missing it is not a good concept to start with at all.

I sure hope the next step won't be senseless fade effects. My biggest fear is some day I'll come to smugmug and some animated paper-clip (or maybe a roll of film or something) will pop up in the lower righthand corner and start talking to me and getting in my way...

Ken

Andy

kwalsh wrote:

What does this thing do?!?!?!?

If you look at our Help Pages we think that it's a nice way to set off one photo from the rest on the page, particularly in SmugMug and SmugMug small styles. We've learned a few things about how you some other customers feel about it, we hope to be able to address them.

Here's an example gallery with Viewer's Choice turned on, you can try the different views, and how LB acts.

In the meantime, thanks VERY much for your valuable input. Stay tuned...

kwalsh

Andy wrote:

In the meantime, thanks VERY much for your valuable input. Stay tuned...

Thanks again Andy for your usual patience and understanding. I guess I'm just not hip enough to realize it's cool .

Ken

Mike Lane

Clippy r00lz!

kwalsh

Thanks guys for giving us the option to take it off! A+ customer service as usual.

Oh, and as I posted to another thread I tried to use the new version with very little success, crashed Mozilla 1.7.12 under linux and Netscape 7.1 under WinXP. Could only get it to work in Internet Explorer. I though you guys didn't like Microsoft?

Anyway, thanks again for responding to our requests (however irrational they might seem).

Ken

Andy

kwalsh wrote:

Thanks guys for giving us the option to take it off! A+ customer service as usual.

Oh, and as I posted to another thread I tried to use the new version with very little success, crashed Mozilla 1.7.12 under linux and Netscape 7.1 under WinXP. Could only get it to work in Internet Explorer. I though you guys didn't like Microsoft?

Anyway, thanks again for responding to our requests (however irrational they might seem).

Ken

YW, Ken - so you saw how to disable it, I take it?

In javascript section:

useLightbox = false;

Enjoy your popups again! But, we hope you'll give the LB a thorough try. Yes, we saw your Linux FF bug.

onethumb

kwalsh wrote:

Thanks guys for giving us the option to take it off! A+ customer service as usual.

Oh, and as I posted to another thread I tried to use the new version with very little success, crashed Mozilla 1.7.12 under linux and Netscape 7.1 under WinXP. Could only get it to work in Internet Explorer. I though you guys didn't like Microsoft?

Anyway, thanks again for responding to our requests (however irrational they might seem).

Ken

I'm surprised to hear you using two archaic browsers which no-one uses (less than 0.1% of smugmug browers use both those browsers *combined*).

IE6 has a 76% market share, and Firefox has 17%, Safari has 4%, and everything else is less than 1%. Mozilla and Netscape rate only a few visitors every day. Needless to say, the only browsers we officially support are IE6, Firefox, and Safari. No Mozilla, no Netscape, no Opera.

And for the record, we like Microsoft fine - we just don't like them letting their browser stagnate for years on end. They're paying for it now, though, and competition is good.

Don

kwalsh

onethumb wrote:

I'm surprised to hear you using two archaic browsers which no-one uses (less than 0.1% of smugmug browers use both those browsers *combined*).

IE6 has a 76% market share, and Firefox has 17%, Safari has 4%, and everything else is less than 1%. Mozilla and Netscape rate only a few visitors every day. Needless to say, the only browsers we officially support are IE6, Firefox, and Safari. No Mozilla, no Netscape, no Opera.

And for the record, we like Microsoft fine - we just don't like them letting their browser stagnate for years on end. They're paying for it now, though, and competition is good.

Don

Thanks Don for the "screw you" reply. As I said in the other post no applet or application in the entire space I surf has ever hard crashed Mozilla. I especially love the way it does it on multiple platforms. You guys busted something.

Ken

{JT}

Ken,

Sorry if something Don said came out wrong, I won't try to explain, I'll let Don do that. But he is right about one thing; Mozilla is not being maintained as far as I know, and the percentage of users using it is shrinking. I feel for you, being a Mac user I often get trashed for using a browser with less than 4% market share

I am pretty shocked that you never had mozilla crash though, FF 1.5 still crashes on me to this day. I did isolate the offending code though, want to see the line that did it?

document.documentElement.style.overflow = "hidden";

Most browsers would throw a javascript exception. But all Gecko based browsers of that code era crash. Sorry if it affects your day to day browsing on smugmug, I have the fix we just need to test internally and send it out.

JT

kwalsh wrote:

Thanks Don for the "screw you" reply. As I said in the other post no applet or application in the entire space I surf has ever hard crashed Mozilla. I especially love the way it does it on multiple platforms. You guys busted something.

Ken

kwalsh

{JT} wrote:

Ken,

Sorry if something Don said came out wrong, I won't try to explain, I'll let Don do that. But he is right about one thing; Mozilla is not being maintained as far as I know, and the percentage of users using it is shrinking. I feel for you, being a Mac user I often get trashed for using a browser with less than 4% market share

I am pretty shocked though that you never had mozilla crash though, FF 1.5 still crashes on me to this day. I did isolate the offending code though, want to see the line that did it?

document.documentElement.style.overflow = "hidden";

Most browsers would throw a javascript exception. But all Gecko based browsers of that code era crash. Sorry if it affects your day to day browsing on smugmug, I have the fix we just need to test internally and send it out.

JT

Thanks a bundle JT!!! And yeah, I probably read too much (or not enough) into Don's message. I think it's my job to apologize, not his. Sorry I snapped at you Don, you're still just about my favorite internet CEO out there.

And yeah, I've yet to see Mozilla 1.7 anything crash like that. You're right though, it should handle that code bug more gracefully. But it is still a compliant browser unless I'm missing something.

Anyway, sorry if I was a bit sharp, you guys got too much to deal with already without me snapping at you about browsers...

Ken

arthurp

{JT},onethumb wrote:

[...browser market shares...]

While I generally agree that when designing sites, you have to make design tradeoffs that keep your site from working well on every browser ever made...degrading gracefully is still a powerful concept, so I'm glad to see you've paid attention to the extreme case of very rare browser with very bad bug. I had two separate friends tell me my shiny new site crashed their browser. I think netscape {6,7,8} is used much more by folks on dial-up, who are less likely to want to wait for a new browser to download.

{JT} wrote:

I have the fix we just need to test internally and send it out.

Since I don't have a copy of those browsers around...can anyone here tell me if the patch has been applied, and if it seems to have fixed the problem?

Thanks!
-arthur.

kwalsh

arthurp wrote:

Since I don't have a copy of those browsers around...can anyone here tell me if the patch has been applied, and if it seems to have fixed the problem?

Yep, no more crashes! Don't the guys at smugmug rock?

Ken