Smugmug only uses the middle half of my widescreen display.

papajay

Maybe there's a screen setting I'm supposed to use but haven't found???

I have a widescreen (20.5") monitor. DGRIN, for example uses the entire width of the screen when it displays. Most (if not all....can't remember) normal websites I visit use the entire width of the screen.

But my Smugmug home page and gallery pages only use about half the total width (centered) for the display of the page. The smugmug background color extends all the way to the edges of the display (same with Theme graphics like the roses on the Wedding theme), but the content is trapped in the middle, so it appears like an 8 1/2 wide page format.

Once, for a brief few minutes, and without my doing anything I know of, the gallery pages showed up using the entire width. I said, "ah- ha!!!!, success"...but the next time I logged in, it was back to the middle of the road.

Is it me? Is it my Monitor settings? Is it Smugmug?
Is it the way it's supposed to be with a widescreen monitor?...(doesn't seem right to me).

More importantly, any idea where I should start or what I can do to change it? Thanks

Andy

papajay wrote:

Maybe there's a screen setting I'm supposed to use but haven't found???

I have a widescreen (20.5") monitor. DGRIN, for example uses the entire width of the screen when it displays. Most (if not all....can't remember) normal websites I visit use the entire width of the screen.

But my Smugmug home page and gallery pages only use about half the total width (centered) for the display of the page. The smugmug background color extends all the way to the edges of the display (same with Theme graphics like the roses on the Wedding theme), but the content is trapped in the middle, so it appears like an 8 1/2 wide page format.

Once, for a brief few minutes, and without my doing anything I know of, the gallery pages showed up using the entire width. I said, "ah- ha!!!!, success"...but the next time I logged in, it was back to the middle of the road.

Is it me? Is it my Monitor settings? Is it Smugmug?
Is it the way it's supposed to be with a widescreen monitor?...(doesn't seem right to me).

More importantly, any idea where I should start or what I can do to change it? Thanks

Papa,

smugmug, traditional, journal, all thumbs and your homepage are all 800px wide. Smugmug, critique styles are all roughly 1000px wide.

You can contribute to our ongoing discussion regarding "gigantor" sizes, here:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=32241

Mike Lane

papajay wrote:

Maybe there's a screen setting I'm supposed to use but haven't found???

I have a widescreen (20.5") monitor. DGRIN, for example uses the entire width of the screen when it displays. Most (if not all....can't remember) normal websites I visit use the entire width of the screen.

But my Smugmug home page and gallery pages only use about half the total width (centered) for the display of the page. The smugmug background color extends all the way to the edges of the display (same with Theme graphics like the roses on the Wedding theme), but the content is trapped in the middle, so it appears like an 8 1/2 wide page format.

Once, for a brief few minutes, and without my doing anything I know of, the gallery pages showed up using the entire width. I said, "ah- ha!!!!, success"...but the next time I logged in, it was back to the middle of the road.

Is it me? Is it my Monitor settings? Is it Smugmug?
Is it the way it's supposed to be with a widescreen monitor?...(doesn't seem right to me).

More importantly, any idea where I should start or what I can do to change it? Thanks

First, it isn't you or your screen settings. It's simply how the pages are designed. What sites do you visit most often out of curiosity? Sites like dgrin or blogs or sites that are mainly text will easily be able to handle a full width "liquid" layout. But smugmug sites aren't mainly text=based sites, they are sites that are meant to display images. Text is usually used only to enhance the images and generally sparingly. There is no way to scale images using web technology that would be good enough for a site with the main purpose of displaying photography (that is to say that it can be done but the photos won't look their best or the page loading times will be prohibitive). So for photo sharing sites in general, a fixed-width layout just makes good sense.

But it's not so much the fixed width part that is the problem here. If it were fixed to nearly the edges of your 20.5" monitor (which tells me next to nothing incidentally, you could still have your resolution set to 800x600 on your 20"er) I'm assuming you'd be okay with that. The problem is that most people have a screen resolution of no greater than 1024x768 and nearly 1 in 5 people have their screen resolution set to 800x600 (as of January of this year). Unfortunately for all of us leading edge types (my resolution is either 1280x1024 or 1680x1050 depending on what computer I'm at) it's important to remember that since there are so many people using 800x600 resolutions that websites must still cater to their needs. And unfortunately this isn't likely to get better any time soon since nearly 3/4 of the people who are surfing the net are doing so at 1024x768 or lower resolution. Smugmug has made the best compromise possible IMHO with the various display size options and the ability for them to set a preference for users based on the user's resolution? (Or is it based on the viewport size JT?) And as Andy alluded to, they are considering adding yet another much bigger size to give us high resolution folks something too.

Now, having said all that (I've got some crazy insomnia tonight...) I will say that you can change up your particular smugmug site's layout any way you want if you've got a power or pro account. If you want to make it so your page is only visible fully if someone has a screen resolution that is at least 1600px wide or 2400px wide or 8000px wide you can do that. Have fun with that. But make sure to check google analytics to see what the screen resolution is of the visitors to your site first. But if I were you, I'd take the lead of some other well known sites and stick with a fixed width layout that those with 800x600 screens can handle. Here are some examples:

...er... upon closer inspection I'm having difficulty finding sites that are buit for 800x600 other than webdesign guru blogs. Never the less here are a bunch that have 1024x768 fixed width layouts:

www.cnn.com
www.yahoo.com
www.wired.com
www.cnet.com
www.newyorktimes.com

I guess my point is there isn't much that you can do about it.

papajay

Mike Lane wrote:

First, it isn't you or your screen settings. It's simply how the pages are designed.
....
....
....

I guess my point is there isn't much that you can do about it.

Mike:
Thank you for the explanation...it helps a lot ( a bit scary, actually, because I think I even understood most of it!!).
All part of the learning process. Thanks again.

wellman

Mike Lane wrote:

There is no way to scale images using web technology that would be good enough for a site with the main purpose of displaying photography (that is to say that it can be done but the photos won't look their best or the page loading times will be prohibitive).

At the risk of being the guy who likes the Zenfolio UI and beats the living stuffing out of that horse, I have to disagree with this part of your statement. One of the strengths in their UI is its liquidity and the fact that it always fills the browser window - making for a more "immersive" experience. If Smugmug were to implement something like a "Smugmug Auto" gallery style, we could have our cake and eat it too, UI-wise.

Anyway, I've rambled enough. I need to get to taking pictures again.

PS - for the record, I completely agree with Mike's sentiment that sites should handle 800x600. Zenfolio does not (1024x768 min). I'm the webmaster for my church, and I see disturbing amounts of 640x480, some from people I know to own 19" LCDs! :cry

peestandingup

wellman wrote:

PS - for the record, I completely agree with Mike's sentiment that sites should handle 800x600. Zenfolio does not (1024x768 min). I'm the webmaster for my church, and I see disturbing amounts of 640x480, some from people I know to own 19" LCDs! :cry

I fought with this before I switched & just decided its best to move forward & progress. I cant help that there are still people who use 800 x 600 monitors (or lower). To me, those people are probably still using dial-up, never heard of wifi & think IE is the only choice of browsers they have.

Monitors have been using 1024 x 768 (or higher) for quite a few years now, and the internet is geared more & more towards people with broadband, so there really is no excuse.

Mike Lane

peestandingup wrote:

I fought with this before I switched & just decided its best to move forward & progress. I cant help that there are still people who use 800 x 600 monitors (or lower). To me, those people are probably still using dial-up, never heard of wifi & think IE is the only choice of browsers they have.

Monitors have been using 1024 x 768 (or higher) for quite a few years now, and the internet is geared more & more towards people with broadband, so there really is no excuse.

Unless of course you have a vision problem.

wellman

Mike Lane wrote:

Unless of course you have a vision problem.

Indeed. :

peestandingup

Mike Lane wrote:

Unless of course you have a vision problem.

True, but those people could crank up the font size in their browsers. Guess that wouldnt help with images though. Unless it was a site like ours where they can enlarge stuff.

Andy

peestandingup wrote:

True, but those people could crank up the font size in their browsers. Guess that wouldnt help with images though. Unless it was a site like ours where they can enlarge stuff.

Ours what?

peestandingup

Andy wrote:

Ours what?

Site like ours = Smugmug/Zenfolio/etc.

jfriend

Why not adjustable width to fill the width of the page?

Mike Lane wrote:

So for photo sharing sites in general, a fixed-width layout just makes good sense.

I have never understood why a fixed width smugmug that is incapable of adjusting to the size of a user's browser window is better than one that can dynamically resize itself to use however much screen real estate the user desires.

So, this whole argument about designing for a fixed 800x600 screen sizes only means to me that a site needs to work on that size screen, NOT that it shouldn't allow a user to take advantage of a much bigger screen/window if they want.

I just popped over to Zenfolio and was very impreseed with how they automatically adjust to fill up my screen when I drag it wider. This is very cool and very useful! I happened to be looking at a thumbnail view with many pages of thumbs and they dynamically adjusted it from a 5x3 grid to a 7x3 grid as I dragged my window wider. Smugmug does not do this. It's traditional view is hardwired to 4x4 regardless of window size. I must say, I find the Zenfolio implementation lots more useful and I can't find any downsize to their implementation.

Why doesn't Smugmug do something like this?

Andy

jfriend wrote:

I have never understood why a fixed width smugmug that is incapable of adjusting to the size of a user's browser window is better than one that can dynamically resize itself to use however much screen real estate the user desires.

We serve up a go-jillion images a day. Millions of visitors per day, times many/several/however many you want to assume per visit... times automagic resizing... equals LOTS of image processing horsepower. It's something that we're discussing and looking at, John.

We have to balance speed, performance, cost, and viewing pleasure. Know that this is something that's being worked on, discussed, and we hope to have some new styles to satisify!

Mike Lane

jfriend wrote:

I have never understood why a fixed width smugmug that is incapable of adjusting to the size of a user's browser window is better than one that can dynamically resize itself to use however much screen real estate the user desires.

So, this whole argument about designing for a fixed 800x600 screen sizes only means to me that a site needs to work on that size screen, NOT that it shouldn't allow a user to take advantage of a much bigger screen/window if they want.

I just popped over to Zenfolio and was very impreseed with how they automatically adjust to fill up my screen when I drag it wider. This is very cool and very useful! I happened to be looking at a thumbnail view with many pages of thumbs and they dynamically adjusted it from a 5x3 grid to a 7x3 grid as I dragged my window wider. Smugmug does not do this. It's traditional view is hardwired to 4x4 regardless of window size. I must say, I find the Zenfolio implementation lots more useful and I can't find any downsize to their implementation.

Why doesn't Smugmug do something like this?

Notice that they don't let you customize your site looks either. That's because their look is dependent heavily on javascript. Customizing your own site or getting all these themes would automatically become much more difficult. If smugmug were to do it the same way as zenfolio that is.

jfriend

Andy wrote:

We serve up a go-jillion images a day. Millions of visitors per day, times many/several/however many you want to assume per visit... times automagic resizing... equals LOTS of image processing horsepower. It's something that we're discussing and looking at, John.

We have to balance speed, performance, cost, and viewing pleasure. Know that this is something that's being worked on, discussed, and we hope to have some new styles to satisify!

I'm glad that it's being worked on. It would be a significant improvement, both visually and for usability.

To be cleaer, you may be commenting on more than I was asking for because the kind of dynamic layout I saw at Zenfolio did not require ANY new image processing horsepower. It wasn't resizing images to fit the screen, it was just changing the generated HTML to fill up the window with more thumbnails.

Of course, there are some pretty cool things you could do with dynamically sized images and that would take some significant horsepower, but that wasn't what I was asking for in this instance.

jfriend

The point is...

Mike Lane wrote:

Notice that they don't let you customize your site looks either. That's because their look is dependent heavily on javascript. Customizing your own site or getting all these themes would automatically become much more difficult. If smugmug were to do it the same way as zenfolio that is.

Obviously Smugmug has a different set of constraints to operate under and I didn't suggest that they copy Zenfolio's implementation. The point is it's very pleasing to the eye and useful to the viewer and it's something that Smugmug is really missing out on.

Given how the current styles are hard-wired to a fixed width and people have hacked their own CSS around that, I have no idea how Smugmug would ever make any of the current styles variable width for the people that have styled them. Fortunately, they could add new dynamic width styles and let the styling public adapt to them over time or figure out some other sort of transition plan.

Mike Lane

jfriend wrote:

Obviously Smugmug has a different set of constraints to operate under and I didn't suggest that they copy Zenfolio's implementation. The point is it's very pleasing to the eye and useful to the viewer and it's something that Smugmug is really missing out on.

Given how the current styles are hard-wired to a fixed width and people have hacked their own CSS around that, I have no idea how Smugmug would ever make any of the current styles variable width for the people that have styled them. Fortunately, they could add new dynamic width styles and let the styling public adapt to them over time or figure out some other sort of transition plan.

varying width styles are kind of pointless without varying width (and height) images right? If you let CSS set the width and height of an image using CSS it will look reasonably good at certain resolutions but will get all pixelated as it gets larger. So that's why you need to use javascript to call up a different sized image automagically just like zenfolio did.

This would affect smugmug, smugmug small, filmstrip, slideshow, single image (s, m, l, o), and lightbox. Adjusting the allthumbs, traditional, journal (probably), homepage, keywords page (not gallery display), dates page, and some others that I'm forgetting would probably be fairly trivial since they use thumbnails.

I suppose there could be one gallery style called liquid or something like that which SM could build in javascript that would automatically call a main image display size that would be based on viewport size. Then users and themex0r0z could style that type of page. So that way if you adjusted the trivial parts like the homepage and category pages you could force this new liquid gallery style then you'd have a whole smugmug site that is liquid rather than fixed.

I'm sure there are lots of problems with this approach that I'm not thinking of. And I've got no idea if any of those problems are show stoppers. So this may or may not be a realistic idea.

jfriend

No, it's not pointless w/o variable sized images

Mike Lane wrote:

varying width styles are kind of pointless without varying width (and height) images right?

I don't doubt that Zenfolio does some useful things with variable sized images, but that is NOT what I was commenting on here or asking for. And NO, variable width styles are not pointless without dynamically sized images.

If you read what I commented on, you would see that all I was describing was a fairly simple concept of filling the page with thumbnails (fixed size thumbnails) so if you have a bigger window, you can see more thumbnails at once and don't have to page through them.

This is something that pretty much every non-web app that displays thumbnails does (Bridge, Lightroom, ACDSee, Elements, Aperture, Windows Explorer, etc...) and while some of those apps are capable of dynamically resizing thumbs that is not needed to deliver what I was asking for.

The usefulness to the viewer comes by just putting more of the same sized thumbs on screen when there is room in the window. This let's you scan a larger number of thumbs at once and keeps you from having to page through different pages as often. It's a UI concept that has existed since the dawn of graphical interfaces. It requires coordination between the window size and the content in the window so it's a little more work for web apps, but there are more and more who are doing it now.

Mike Lane

jfriend wrote:

I don't doubt that Zenfolio does some useful things with variable sized images, but that is NOT what I was commenting on here or asking for. And NO, variable width styles are not pointless without dynamically sized images.

If you read what I commented on, you would see that all I was describing was a fairly simple concept of filling the page with thumbnails (fixed size thumbnails) so if you have a bigger window, you can see more thumbnails at once and don't have to page through them.

This is something that pretty much every non-web app that displays thumbnails does (Bridge, Lightroom, ACDSee, Elements, Aperture, Windows Explorer, etc...) and while some of those apps are capable of dynamically resizing thumbs that is not needed to deliver what I was asking for.

The usefulness to the viewer comes by just putting more of the same sized thumbs on screen when there is room in the window. This let's you scan a larger number of thumbs at once and keeps you from having to page through different pages as often. It's a UI concept that has existed since the dawn of graphical interfaces. It requires coordination between the window size and the content in the window so it's a little more work for web apps, but there are more and more who are doing it now.

And if you read what I commented on you'd see that I mentioned that making a page of thumbnails liquid was trivial.

However, many smugmug gallery pages are not thumbnail pages.

... I tell you what read what I had to say earlier, it's all in there.

jfriend

Pointless?

Mike Lane wrote:

And if you read what I commented on you'd see that I mentioned that making a page of thumbnails liquid was trivial.

However, many smugmug gallery pages are not thumbnail pages.

... I tell you what read what I had to say earlier, it's all in there.

I was reacting and disagreeing with these words in your message "varying width styles are kind of pointless without varying width (and height) images right?"

The word pointless says to me that you didn't think it was useful at all to make a design that dynamically adjusts the number of thumbnails (not their size) according to the window size. I didn't understand how that could be pointless because I think it's incredibly useful and a significant improvement in the viewing experience. Far too much of the web world is designed only for the lowest common denominator screen size with no thought how the significant part of the population that has a larger screen/window might get an enhanced experience. If you truly think that is pointless to deliver that experience, I guess I'd like to know why you think that. If it was just an unfortunate choice of words in your message, then we can just let it go at that.

I agree that it's substantially more difficult to merge Smugmug's current design with some of the Web 2.0 viewing benefits that Zenfolio is delivering. That's not an argument why Smugmug shouldn't be moving in that direction, but it is an explanation for why it might take some time to get there.

Mike Lane

jfriend wrote:

I was reacting and disagreeing with these words in your message "varying width styles are kind of pointless without varying width (and height) images right?"

The word pointless says to me that you didn't think it was useful at all to make a design that dynamically adjusts the number of thumbnails (not their size) according to the window size. I didn't understand how that could be pointless because I think it's incredibly useful and a significant improvement in the viewing experience. Far too much of the web world is designed only for the lowest common denominator screen size with no thought how the significant part of the population that has a larger screen/window might get an enhanced experience. If you truly think that is pointless to deliver that experience, I guess I'd like to know why you think that. If it was just an unfortunate choice of words in your message, then we can just let it go at that.

I agree that it's substantially more difficult to merge Smugmug's current design with some of the Web 2.0 viewing benefits that Zenfolio is delivering. That's not an argument why Smugmug shouldn't be moving in that direction, but it is an explanation for why it might take some time to get there.

We're talking about 2 different things or you're refusing to read past one sentece. I don't know which but it's really annoying. So I'll say it just once more. Once you read this hopefully you'll see that what I said was that it'd be easy to adjust pages that were thumbnail-based to be a liquid layout. Same thing that you keep repeating over and over again like a parrot. I get it, believe me.

Furthermore what I was saying is that if you're using a page style that isn't based on a thumbnail image (i.e. smugmug small, smugmug, filmstrip, critique, lightbox, etc) it is pointless to have a liquid layout *unless* you have javascript to dynamically resize the image (which is exactly what zenfolio does mind you). What's more that makes it much more difficult to style your page using CSS. It can be done but I can foresee some issues that people would have and limitations based on the viewing style.

Now, hopefully that's a little more clear and you can start to see where that sentence you've quoted 3 times fits into the bigger picture. My overall point is that I do not think that smugmug should try to make those styles (smugmug small, smugmug, filmstrip, lightbox, single image) a liquid layout. What I'm brainstorming about is the possibility to create a NEW gallery style that is the only one to be scripted to use dynamically changing main image. That way one could do the trivial work required to make the majority of their site liquid (you know, making pages that use thumbnails liquid just like you keep harping on ) and then force the liquid gallery style so that ultimately their whole site would be liquid.

EDIT: Maybe you need to see it in big red letters? If so, make sure you have signatures enabled.

wellman

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking YOU who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: That's who?

Abbott: Yes.


Sorry - couldn't resist.

bwg

Mike Lane wrote:

EDIT: Maybe you need to see it in big red letters? If so, make sure you have signatures enabled.

wow, someone pissed in your cheerios today.

and for the record, i disagree. i think a liquid layout with dynamic thumbnail loading (which is what jfriend is talking about but I think your are having a hard time understanding) will work fine with smugmug and smugmug small styles.

pat.kane

I'd love to have an all-thumbs view of fixed-size thumbnails that automatically fit the width of the screen, regardless of the window's size.