mac uploader 2.0

cabbey

:lust
First of all, THANK YOU for the new uploader! It's come along nicely since the previous version. I love having smuggy on my doc, she (he?) fits in well between the yellow sunflower of photoshop, and the blueprint and hammer icon for Xcode. (yes, my dock is aranged by color, at least that section is. Hey, I'm a MAC user... I'm allowed to do that, maybe even expected to.)

That said, I wish earlier offers of beta testing had been taken... just 2 minutes of use and I've got this collection of items to report.

Minor visual bug: If you switch to the Files tab the album drop down is reset to "None Selected", however, the category reminder on the next line remains set to the previously selected value.

Minor visual bug: If you have multiple images selected, and then select a single image other than the one who's preview is shown, the preview does not change.

Minor behavoural annoyance: you took away the red x button. Can we please have it back, even if only when no upload is active, and have it mapped to "Quit" instead of closing the window? (like the system preferences application does.) This was actually my biggest complaint with version 1, I often closed the window and forgot that the app didn't close, and there was no way I could ever find to start a new window, other than quit and re-launch the entire app.

Possible architectural issue: are you generating the preview images in the event thread? Select large images from a slow device and you get a spining beach ball of doom. How about if you don't already have the thumbnail in memory you just blank it out with a loading placard and let a thread do that, it can kick the event thread to re-evaluate what it is displaying when it's got the preview in memory. (if you just update the preview from the worker thread when you've generated it then you could easily end up with the wrong preview loaded.)

If this puppy was an open source application, I'd attach a patch here for a few of these issues. :wink

Andy

Thanks Cabbey I'll make sure Ben sees this.

Ben

cabbey wrote:

First of all, THANK YOU for the new uploader! It's come along nicely since the previous version. I love having smuggy on my doc, she (he?) fits in well between the yellow sunflower of photoshop, and the blueprint and hammer icon for Xcode. (yes, my dock is aranged by color, at least that section is. Hey, I'm a MAC user... I'm allowed to do that, maybe even expected to.)

That said, I wish earlier offers of beta testing had been taken... just 2 minutes of use and I've got this collection of items to report.

Minor visual bug: If you switch to the Files tab the album drop down is reset to "None Selected", however, the category reminder on the next line remains set to the previously selected value.

Minor visual bug: If you have multiple images selected, and then select a single image other than the one who's preview is shown, the preview does not change.

Minor behavoural annoyance: you took away the red x button. Can we please have it back, even if only when no upload is active, and have it mapped to "Quit" instead of closing the window? (like the system preferences application does.) This was actually my biggest complaint with version 1, I often closed the window and forgot that the app didn't close, and there was no way I could ever find to start a new window, other than quit and re-launch the entire app.

Possible architectural issue: are you generating the preview images in the event thread? Select large images from a slow device and you get a spining beach ball of doom. How about if you don't already have the thumbnail in memory you just blank it out with a loading placard and let a thread do that, it can kick the event thread to re-evaluate what it is displaying when it's got the preview in memory. (if you just update the preview from the worker thread when you've generated it then you could easily end up with the wrong preview loaded.)

If this puppy was an open source application, I'd attach a patch here for a few of these issues.

Thanks for the feedback. We actually really would like to make it open source (we are big fans of the OS movement, we sponsor things like OScon, etc), we just haven't yet decided how. It requires time and effort on our part managing the program, keeping track of revisions... etc. And currently none of us has the spare cycles (especially not anyone who actually has the know-how to do so).

If I am missing something obvious there... I am

cabbey

Thanks for pointing Ben at it Andy.

Ben wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. We actually really would like to make it open source (we are big fans of the OS movement, we sponsor things like OScon, etc), we just haven't yet decided how. It requires time and effort on our part managing the program, keeping track of revisions... etc. And currently none of us has the spare cycles (especially not anyone who actually has the know-how to do so).

If I am missing something obvious there... I am

Have you considered asking the developers that don't work for you if they have the time and effort to do some of that? (allow me to present some of my credentials on the subject.) I'd be happy to help advise on that process as my time allows, I work in the open source space both on the clock (for one of Andy's former employers), and off.

onethumb

cabbey wrote:

That said, I wish earlier offers of beta testing had been taken... just 2 minutes of use and I've got this collection of items to report.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but in case I'm not, we actually had multiple rounds (not just one or two, really quite a few) of beta testing, started and led by posts here on dgrin.

Sorry you missed them!

Thanks for the feedback, though, we're definitely listening.

Don

cabbey

onethumb wrote:

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but in case I'm not, we actually had multiple rounds (not just one or two, really quite a few) of beta testing, started and led by posts here on dgrin.

Sorry you missed them!

Thanks for the feedback, though, we're definitely listening.

Don

Or maybe I'm not watching the right parts of dgrin. DavidTO and I both volunteered to beta test back in december... and in the same thread I asked how it was going in april... I never heard anything on either subject, dunno about DavidTO. Only way I knew the new app had been released was that I just happened to check the downloader page the other day. I've kept an eye on the release notes blog looking for it, but never saw it in there. (Though with the flood of other great things y'all have done, it would likely be easy to miss!)

macaddict

Gotcha: Got a Macbook Pro? We apologize, but this uploader won't work with Intel-based Macs—yet. Please use the Universal Drag & Drop Uploader.

Any word on the Universal Binary version? The above says MacBook Pro, but of course the Intel processors are now in most new Macs. My MacBook is now my primary machine, and I'll have to admit a slowdown in uploads because of no easy way to do it in a batch!

Any news? Thanks!

cabbey

macaddict wrote:

Any word on the Universal Binary version? The above says MacBook Pro, but of course the Intel processors are now in most new Macs. My MacBook is now my primary machine, and I'll have to admit a slowdown in uploads because of no easy way to do it in a batch!

Any news? Thanks!

Since it's hardly a processor intensive application, you should be able to run the ppc binary they have up for download under rosetta just fine... just down load it and launch it like normal, the rosetta translation on the fly is seamlessly integrated.

macaddict

Ah, okay. I didn't even bother to try because of the statement there about "won't work with intel-based" Macs yet!

Thanks - I'll give it a try.

macaddict

Well, it came up with a message about logging in insecurely

"Security Warning - Your syste is not recent enough to log into the smugmug service securely. You can choose to continue insecurely or quit."

Hmmm - not recent enough? Jeez, it's a month old!

- but after entering my email and password, it just sits there. I went to control panel and verified my correct email and password - so it's not incorrect. Any ideas?

macaddict

I logged out of smugmug and fired it up - I got the same message, but now when I try to enter in my email, the program immediately quits.

macaddict

Now I logged back in and it still crashes. It doesn't like Rosetta.

Again, back to my original question. Any idea when the Universal Binary version will be released?

cabbey

macaddict wrote:

Now I logged back in and it still crashes. It doesn't like Rosetta.

Bizare. If so, that's the first application I've heard of that wasn't directly interacting with deep hardware that didn't work. (At least I can't see any reason it should be interacting with the hardware... open file, open socket, shove data up the pipe... maybe talk to iPhoto along the way.)

colourbox

macaddict wrote:

"Security Warning - Your system is not recent enough to log into the smugmug service securely. You can choose to continue insecurely or quit."

Does anyone know why this happens? I got that message in 10.4.6 and now in 10.4.7. I'm not sure how my system (on a G4 PPC) could not be recent enough.:help
Old uploader still works.

macaddict

First, I get this odd message:

Then, I try to enter my info:

Then, poof! The program crashes.

DavidTO

macaddict wrote:

Any ideas?

Yeah, tell Cabbey he was wrong and wait until smugmug says it's Universal.

cabbey

DavidTO wrote:

Yeah, tell Cabbey he was wrong and wait until smugmug says it's Universal.

Yep. Like I said, bizare.

Ben

First off, we are definitely sorry it doesn't work under all versions of OS X. We are working on it. :cry

Second off, I know Cabbey has mentioned wanting to tinker with it if/when we turn it Open Source, how many others are interested in that sort of thing? We would love to turn it open source, we are just trying to get a feel for how many people are interested, and who they are. That will help us figure out how to proceed. Thanks!

cabbey

Ben wrote:

Second off, I know Cabbey has mentioned wanting to tinker with it if/when we turn it Open Source, how many others are interested in that sort of thing? We would love to turn it open source, we are just trying to get a feel for how many people are interested, and who they are. That will help us figure out how to proceed. Thanks!

hmmm... maybe a bit more response from a new thread over in the SmugMug APIs, Hacks & Tricks forum? (though admittedly, it's been a while since I've read it extensively, so I don't know what kind of traffic it has lately.)

Ben

For those curious about what is taking so long on this, it appears it is an issue with the cocoa java bridge on intel. We are seeing what we can do, but it is kind of a nasty issue.