SmugMug Open Beta - new 'SmugMug' style!

onethumb

Last time we released something major, we didn't have an open beta. But we listened, and learned, and now we've got one for the latest big release. Details are over on the Beta page on our Wiki.

This isn't a final product - it's a beta. We know there are bugs, we've listed some of them on the Wiki, so read carefully. If you find new things, or want to give us some feedback, this thread is the place to do it.

Hopefully everyone likes the super-speed and extra clean layout, but feel free to let us have it if you don't.

Don

NaturalEye

hey - I'm first

So I can be first to say Wow!, Thanks and I love it so far........

Gary

onethumb wrote:

Last time we released something major, we didn't have an open beta. But we listened, and learned, and now we've got one for the latest big release. Details are over on the Beta page on our Wiki.

This isn't a final product - it's a beta. We know there are bugs, we've listed some of them on the Wiki, so read carefully. If you find new things, or want to give us some feedback, this thread is the place to do it.

Hopefully everyone likes the super-speed and extra clean layout, but feel free to let us have it if you don't.

Don

encosion

Wow... Looking good...

I've noticed that rotating of photos is now no longer immediately visible... You have to go out of the gallery and then come back in again... A step back in this respect... Otherwise I'm pretty impressed with the first five minutes I've been playing!

A few more observations:

[1] A bit later I had an "Unresponsive Script" on Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X 10.4.8 (4 x 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 with 2.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM)... Not sure what caused it... But it appears to have gone now...

[2] "Image size links are on mouseover" - Have yet to see this... Where is it?

[3] "New page navigation flyout makes it easier to jump through very large galleries" - True, but for smaller galleries it's perhaps tedious... It requires two clicks with a bit of skillful navigation in between... If you go out of the flyout area it closes requiring you to start again... If the flyout was on mouseover it wouldn't be so bad because you would be expecting this sort of behaviour... But since you have to click for the flyout to appear, the expectation is that it should stay out until clicked on... Or clicked off... Does that make sense? It's a usability thing...

I would suggest using the older method of constantly displaying up to 6 or 7 pages numbers at a time... Then in conjunction with that, have this new little flyout at the end instead of the more (>>) button...

devbobo

barbbarb

Very sweet....great work JT, Lee and Don.



Be sure to check out the new comments, and make sure u have a bio pic entered

wellman

I'm uploading photos as I "speak," and I can't wait to test. Thanks, guys! ivar

wellman

Now that SmugMug will have arrow-key navigation (including up/down!) and image prefetching, all I have to say is:

Zen-foley-who? rofl

AWESOME WORK! :smooch

HDVideo

Slideshow problem
Well, I set up a trial pro account and uploaded a few pics. I also transferred my customization and have a slight problem with the slideshow.

It is located in my footer and seems to work, but the pictures displayed are real nice, but not mine . I duplicated the gallery used for the SS and modified the link to point to the new gallery in my test account, but it still loads pics from an unknown account. Clicking on a SS pic does go to my gallery though.

Otherwise, I like what I see so far. Keep up the good work .

Here's the link.

Andy

wellman wrote:

Zen-foley-who? rofl

Now that is music to our ears

DavidTO

Beautiful.

Like everything about this.

Couple of questions/notes:

1) Using the up/down arrows changes piccys, but it also scrolls the window. Is that behavior going to change? I'm not sure what the answer should be, just asking...

2) I love how my bio pic showed up on Andy's test site when I left a comment. Cool! Smart enough to fetch my bio pic, but I still have to prove I'm not a spammer? Just sayin'....

3) I wonder if the photo comments should go above the gallery comments? I mean, if I'm scrolling through, maybe I want to be able to see first the comments that are changing as I'm scrolling...not sure myself about that, just asking. I guess being able to hide gallery comments works pretty well.

4) I've always wanted a dialog box for saving photos. Am I alone in this? It's extra clicks, which would be a downside, but I'd like to be able to name/place the photos where I want them.

bwg

DavidTO wrote:

4) I've always wanted a dialog box for saving photos. Am I alone in this? It's extra clicks, which would be a downside, but I'd like to be able to name/place the photos where I want them.

Change the setting in safari to prompt where to save files.

oh wait, you cant.

safari = dum

Andy

bigwebguy wrote:

Change the setting in safari to prompt where to save files.

oh wait, you cant.

safari = dum

even IE gives you the save dialog!

DavidTO

Andy wrote:

even IE gives you the save dialog!

I think I got the point.

{JT}

1. So far as I know - there is no way to return false to prevent the browsers window from scrolling when you hit arrow up or arrow down. If you see elsewhere on any other site just let me know

2. I will let Don think about this

3. Absolutely not. I don't want to have to scroll two pages just to see that someone left a new comment about the entire gallery. Sorted by time is the way to go.

4. Lee explained this rather well.

DavidTO wrote:

Beautiful.

Like everything about this.

Couple of questions/notes:

1) Using the up/down arrows changes piccys, but it also scrolls the window. Is that behavior going to change? I'm not sure what the answer should be, just asking...

2) I love how my bio pic showed up on Andy's test site when I left a comment. Cool! Smart enough to fetch my bio pic, but I still have to prove I'm not a spammer? Just sayin'....

3) I wonder if the photo comments should go above the gallery comments? I mean, if I'm scrolling through, maybe I want to be able to see first the comments that are changing as I'm scrolling...not sure myself about that, just asking. I guess being able to hide gallery comments works pretty well.

4) I've always wanted a dialog box for saving photos. Am I alone in this? It's extra clicks, which would be a downside, but I'd like to be able to name/place the photos where I want them.

{JT}

encosion wrote:

I've noticed that rotating of photos is now no longer immediately visible... You have to go out of the gallery and then come back in again... A step back in this respect... Otherwise I'm pretty impressed with the first five minutes I've been playing!

Sad but true - the browser caches the image and does not recognize that it has changed since the URL does not change (we go get new data every time you change a page, so captions and other changes per image are apparent).

encosion wrote:

[1] A bit later I had an "Unresponsive Script" on Firefox 2.0 on Mac OS X 10.4.8 (4 x 2.5GHz PowerPC G5 with 2.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM)... Not sure what caused it... But it appears to have gone now...

If you remember the steps to reproduce, please post them

encosion wrote:

[2] "Image size links are on mouseover" - Have yet to see this... Where is it?

When you hover over the main photo with your mouse you don't get a popover that has links to exif, popular, sizes or save?

encosion wrote:

[3] "New page navigation flyout makes it easier to jump through very large galleries" - True, but for smaller galleries it's perhaps tedious... It requires two clicks with a bit of skillful navigation in between... If you go out of the flyout area it closes requiring you to start again... If the flyout was on mouseover it wouldn't be so bad because you would be expecting this sort of behaviour... But since you have to click for the flyout to appear, the expectation is that it should stay out until clicked on... Or clicked off... Does that make sense? It's a usability thing...

Lee will think about changing this, right Lee?

wellman

encosion wrote:

[2] "Image size links are on mouseover" - Have yet to see this... Where is it?

For the record, this is working fine for me - FF1.5.0.8 and IE6 on WinXP Pro.

Just a nitpicky thing, but could the image size links in the flyout get some onhover underliney goodness? It would help show that they're links. Also, the flyout graphics getting some highlighty treatment when they're moused over would be da funk.

That being said, it's all about the speed, baby. Don't sacrifice that, because I'm addicted already.

{JT}

Both of those are doable

wellman wrote:

For the record, this is working fine for me - FF1.5.0.8 and IE6 on WinXP Pro.

Just a nitpicky thing, but could the image size links in the flyout get some onhover underliney goodness? It would help show that they're links. Also, the flyout graphics getting some highlighty treatment when they're moused over would be da funk.

That being said, it's all about the speed, baby. Don't sacrifice that, because I'm addicted already.

javier.rinaldi

great job guys, love the new look, feel and response, customization doesn't have to change much so the change will be pretty transparent when the time comes, just make sure to send out a message so we can update our co-branding when you implement.

btw, will the 'new hotness' buttons (e.g. Add Comment) part of the new gallery definition or are those still going to be separate?

BenA2

Way to go Smugmug!
I've got to admit that I have been lurking through the Smugmug vs. Zenfolio threads for months now and was frustrated over the browsing performance advantage of the latter. I think it was back in April that I started thinking, "Hey, what's going on here Smugmug? If these guys can do it, why can't you?" But, I stayed patient, realizing you were also working through a bunch of hardware, storage, and processing issues. And, while y'all don't talk about features in the pipeline, you were smart enough to let Andy drop some hints that you weren't going to take a lickin' from Zenwhositswhats for long.

It seemed like a realy long wait, but in the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn't. And now, all I can say after browsing through the beta site is...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! barb

The speed advantage is awsome. But, I think I'm even more excited by the new graphic flyouts. Those are sweet, and really classy. I love the way that move cleans up the area below the main photo. I'm surprised not to see the XL size incorporated though.

I also want to say that the beta site is also an excellent idea. Way to go Smugmug team!

{JT}

Our position on making the new buttons default for all users has not changed. Although with the introduction of a new beta server - we will be able to make global changes more comfortably and give a heads up to pros with customization.

If you would like the new buttons and styles on your site - you can always add this to the top of your css section in customization:
@import url(/include/css/pureSmugBlack.css);

If your layout is white; just add this after the black one:
@import url(/include/css/pureSmugWhite.css);

javier.rinaldi wrote:

great job guys, love the new look, feel and response, customization doesn't have to change much so the change will be pretty transparent when the time comes, just make sure to send out a message so we can update our co-branding when you implement.

btw, will the 'new hotness' buttons (e.g. Add Comment) part of the new gallery definition or are those still going to be separate?

javier.rinaldi

{JT} wrote:

Our position on making the new buttons default for all users has not changed. Although with the introduction of a new beta server - we will be able to make global changes more comfortably and give a heads up to pros with customization.

If you would like the new buttons and styles on your site - you can always add this to the top of your css section in customization:
@import url(/include/css/pureSmugBlack.css);

If your layout is white; just add this after the black one:
@import url(/include/css/pureSmugWhite.css);

Thanks JT,

I was just asking 'cuz I have some customization to the buttons, thanks for the update

DavidTO

{JT} wrote:

Sorted by time is the way to go.

That explains why my gallery comment was on top. Now I get it.

onethumb

DavidTO wrote:

2) I love how my bio pic showed up on Andy's test site when I left a comment. Cool! Smart enough to fetch my bio pic, but I still have to prove I'm not a spammer? Just sayin'....

Unfortunately, some of our customers DO comment spam. ImagesByJack is notorious for it, for example. Our system and employees catch him doing it all the time.

The captcha means he can't do it very fast, which helps a lot, but I see your point. I'm open to any other suggestions... ?

Don

onethumb

{JT} wrote:

Sad but true - the browser caches the image and does not recognize that it has changed since the URL does not change (we go get new data every time you change a page, so captions and other changes per image are apparent).

Jimmy, we could probably do a "ping" on images periodically to see if they've changed at all. Or maybe flag images that have some rotation/watermarking/color changes pending. We can probably improve this with a little thinking... but I doubt we can eliminate it entirely.

Don

onethumb

wellman wrote:

For the record, this is working fine for me - FF1.5.0.8 and IE6 on WinXP Pro.

Just a nitpicky thing, but could the image size links in the flyout get some onhover underliney goodness? It would help show that they're links. Also, the flyout graphics getting some highlighty treatment when they're moused over would be da funk.

That being said, it's all about the speed, baby. Don't sacrifice that, because I'm addicted already.

Great ideas!

BenA2

Default image size in smugmug style
Now that image size selection is in the flyout, will there be a way anymore to change the main image size for the Smugmug style, or will it be fixed at medium, allowing viewing of large sizes only in Lightbox?

DavidTO

onethumb wrote:

Unfortunately, some of our customers DO comment spam. ImagesByJack is notorious for it, for example. Our system and employees catch him doing it all the time.

The captcha means he can't do it very fast, which helps a lot, but I see your point. I'm open to any other suggestions... ?

Don

Yeah, if one of your customers is spamming, warn them, and if that does no good, delete their account.

onethumb

BenA2 wrote:

I've got to admit that I have been lurking through the Smugmug vs. Zenfolio threads for months now and was frustrated over the browsing performance advantage of the latter. I think it was back in April that I started thinking, "Hey, what's going on here Smugmug? If these guys can do it, why can't you?" But, I stayed patient, realizing you were also working through a bunch of hardware, storage, and processing issues. And, while y'all don't talk about features in the pipeline, you were smart enough to let Andy drop some hints that you weren't going to take a lickin' from Zenwhositswhats for long.

It seemed like a realy long wait, but in the grand scheme of things, it probably wasn't. And now, all I can say after browsing through the beta site is...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!! barb

The speed advantage is awsome. But, I think I'm even more excited by the new graphic flyouts. Those are sweet, and really classy. I love the way that move cleans up the area below the main photo. I'm surprised not to see the XL size incorporated though.

I also want to say that the beta site is also an excellent idea. Way to go Smugmug team!

We wanted to make this sort of change much earlier... We actually had versions of this internally before Zenfolio and Picasaweb launched, but we just couldn't solve a few of the big issues (and Zenfolio and Picasaweb, not to mention GMail, Google Maps, etc, still haven't solved the issues we've just solved). I believe we've got them all nailed, now, though, and are the first ones to do it in the world. They'll all soon copy us, which is fine, but it's nice to Do It Right rather than rush it out.

SmugMug XL is in phase two. Phase two was just too big of a change to make without testing and releasing phase one first. There are a few other goodies in the works, too. The sooner everyone finds any lingering bugs here, the sooner we can tackle phase two.

Warning: Phase two is going to require quite a bit of customization & theme changes, but it'll be worth it. I promise.

Don

onethumb

encosion wrote:

[3] "New page navigation flyout makes it easier to jump through very large galleries" - True, but for smaller galleries it's perhaps tedious... It requires two clicks with a bit of skillful navigation in between... If you go out of the flyout area it closes requiring you to start again... If the flyout was on mouseover it wouldn't be so bad because you would be expecting this sort of behaviour... But since you have to click for the flyout to appear, the expectation is that it should stay out until clicked on... Or clicked off... Does that make sense? It's a usability thing...

I would suggest using the older method of constantly displaying up to 6 or 7 pages numbers at a time... Then in conjunction with that, have this new little flyout at the end instead of the more (>>) button...

I fell asleep this morning thinking the EXACT same thoughts. Thanks for confirming what I was feeling!

Don

onethumb

DavidTO wrote:

Yeah, if one of your customers is spamming, warn them, and if that does no good, delete their account.

We can't always detect it, though. There's a multibillion-dollar industry around detecting spam, and none of them can do it right either.

I'm open to ideas on how to detect, though.

Don

onethumb

BenA2 wrote:

Now that image size selection is in the flyout, will there be a way anymore to change the main image size for the Smugmug style, or will it be fixed at medium, allowing viewing of large sizes only in Lightbox?

Look for phase 2....

Don

DavidTO

onethumb wrote:

We can't always detect it, though. There's a multibillion-dollar industry around detecting spam, and none of them can do it right either.

I'm open to ideas on how to detect, though.

Don

A button that's only visible on logged in that'll report spam from a smugmugger. I'm saying, keep catptcha for guests, and lose it for logged in smuggers. The ratio of spamming smuggers must be very low. If you get spam reports on a user that you can confirm, warn them, and then if they keep it up, delete them, or temporarily close their account, or something. The number of registered spammers must be very, very low and a report button would be adequate to keep up with it, IMO.