SmugMug BETA RC1 - Jan 10th, 2007

onethumb · January 10, 2007

UPDATED: We're now on to RC2! Check it out!

Ok, we have a new release up, and I think this one is nearly good to go. There's only one major thing I know of holding it up, so we're going to send a message to all SmugMug customers and really digest everyone's feedback.

The big new thing in this release is that our hit tracking has vastly improved. You'll now see *every* hit on *every* photo, even repeated views, so you can truly see which photos are being visited more often.

There are lots of other fixes too, all the details are over on the Beta page at the Wiki.

The great thing is that once this huge change is out the door, we can rapidly innovate on top of it once again and bring out lots of great features we have in the works. So please help us work the last of the bugs out so we can get on with making SmugMug even better.

Thanks!

Oh, and here are the previous threads on the Beta project for any historians in the crowd: first and second.

devbobo · January 10, 2007

sweet...great work guys

Allen · January 10, 2007

onethumb wrote:

...
The big new thing in this release is that our hit tracking has vastly improved. You'll now see *every* hit on *every* photo, even repeated views, so you can truly see which photos are being visited more often.
...

Great new!

clap

This part especially.
Going in to try it now.
Al

Allen · January 10, 2007

Looks like there's a keyword generating monster out there. I hope they're not
being generated from the caption, could be quite a mess. It even included
part of the html code.
http://atsmithbeta.beta.smugmug.net/gallery/76#2896

Al

Andy · January 10, 2007

There are some color fixes we are in the process of making, to some themes, with respect to the pagepicker numbers and titles. These are in the works, and will soon be applied to the http://beta.smugmug.net

Sorry for the small delay on these

jfriend · January 11, 2007

Need new account?
Do we have to create a new beta account and upload new photos or do the photos from our previous beta account now work with the latest beta code?

devbobo · January 11, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Do we have to create a new beta account and upload new photos or do the photos from our previous beta account now work with the latest beta code?

your previous beta account will work fine.

jfriend · January 11, 2007

Will Statcounter hit counting statistics work with the new design?

Mike Lane · January 11, 2007

Did I notice that the thumbs of my snappy shots which aren't particularly well exposed loaded normal and then got a brightness/color fix added to them?

Maybe I'm just going mad. :crazy

I've got to say that I really like this release. Release Candidates are sooooo Web 2.5. Web 2.0 is the forever-in-beta release, you guys are really pushing the edge. Just think when you actually release it, you'll probably be web 3.0!

More praise for the team: Thanks for working so hard on something that actually makes a noticeable difference for smugmuggers. Thanks for taking feedback and turning it into gold.

I'm still testing but so far it's like butter. Not margerine. Butter. The kind that's white that your mom cooked with but tasted really good on french toast and english muffins. The kind of butter that made you look forward to having breakfast in the morning even more than your lucky charms. All I'm saying is that it's sweet, sweet deliciousness.

scwalter · January 11, 2007

Overall it feels faster, but the current location of the flyout thing just doesn't do it for me and I hope there is a way to permanently dock it where the old stuff used to be or revert back to the old way. When viewing standard 3:2 images in landscape with the smugmug style, there is now a huge area of wasted space below the picture, where the camera info, size picker, save photo link used to be. According to my measurements, it's about 600px x 175 px.

Would it be possible to have the flyout extend beyond the picture into this wasted area rather than over the image? Perhaps add a push-pin control that would make it sticky...even between sessions? For portrait pictures, perhaps extend it to the right or left of the picture?

-Scott

onethumb · January 11, 2007

Allen wrote:

Looks like there's a keyword generating monster out there. I hope they're not
being generated from the caption, could be quite a mess. It even included
part of the html code.
http://atsmithbeta.beta.smugmug.net/gallery/76#2896

Al

Keywords aren't generated from the caption, no. So either you've uncovered a bug or you're mistaking correct functionality for broken.

We generate keywords from 3 sources: manually added, filename extraction, and metadata (IPTC/EXIF/etc).

If that's not what you're seeing, please post more info about what you did and what happened so we can track it down.

Don

Andy · January 11, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Will Statcounter hit counting statistics work with the new design?

Hi John, I'm on a short vacation with the family - but could you possible set up a new statcounter account and give it a try? That'd be the way to do it

digitalpins · January 11, 2007

wow looks great I love the hoover over the picture feature where a window pops up and you can select to see the photos info or select what size you want. Also I like being able to use the arrow keys to go through the pictures.

edited for something I noticed.....

Just noticed that where you change the style I changed it to smugmug small and now that cool hoover feature does not work... looks like it only works with the smugmug style for now..

bwg · January 11, 2007

digitalpins wrote:

wow looks great I love the hoover over the picture feature where a window pops up and you can select to see the photos info or select what size you want. Also I like being able to use the arrow keys to go through the pictures.

edited for something I noticed.....

Just noticed that where you change the style I changed it to smugmug small and now that cool hoover feature does not work... looks like it only works with the smugmug style for now..

we are implementing the new features in smugmug style only at this time.

bwg · January 11, 2007

scwalter wrote:

Overall it feels faster, but the current location of the flyout thing just doesn't do it for me and I hope there is a way to permanently dock it where the old stuff used to be or revert back to the old way. When viewing standard 3:2 images in landscape with the smugmug style, there is now a huge area of wasted space below the picture, where the camera info, size picker, save photo link used to be. According to my measurements, it's about 600px x 175 px.

Would it be possible to have the flyout extend beyond the picture into this wasted area rather than over the image? Perhaps add a push-pin control that would make it sticky...even between sessions? For portrait pictures, perhaps extend it to the right or left of the picture?

-Scott

Scott, the info flyout is draggable and remembers its position between sessions. Drag it where you want and it'll stay there.

digitalpins · January 11, 2007

bigwebguy wrote:

Scott, the info flyout is draggable and remembers its position between sessions. Drag it where you want and it'll stay there.

thats cool but I am in safari right now and I can drag that cool info flyout

3rdPlanetPhotography · January 11, 2007

How do I get a beta account?

NEVERMIND.... I found it

bwg · January 11, 2007

digitalpins wrote:

thats cool but I am in safari right now and I can drag that cool info flyout

You should be able to drag it. I'm misunderstanding you I think.

digitalpins · January 11, 2007

nope I can not drag it all..... I also tried draging it in Firefox as well on my mac

I also played around with customizing the site and that works out just fine with a quick cut and paste from my main site only thing is my header is not centering but that could be me maybe I missed something....

as of right now I cant get the bulk zoom to work in the customizing but everything else in the customizing is great... really like the updates

3rdPlanetPhotography · January 11, 2007

Very impressed.... I hope the new stuff gets to custom styles soon

bwg · January 11, 2007

digitalpins wrote:

nope I can not drag it all..... I also tried draging it in Firefox as well on my mac

I also played around with customizing the site and that works out just fine with a quick cut and paste from my main site only thing is my header is not centering but that could be me maybe I missed something....

as of right now I cant get the bulk zoom to work in the customizing but everything else in the customizing is great... really like the updates

ok, before you said you CAN drag it. You're sure you're in smugmug style?

what's your beta url?

Allen · January 11, 2007

onethumb wrote:

Keywords aren't generated from the caption, no. So either you've uncovered a bug or you're mistaking correct functionality for broken.

We generate keywords from 3 sources: manually added, filename extraction, and metadata (IPTC/EXIF/etc).

If that's not what you're seeing, please post more info about what you did and what happened so we can track it down.

Don

The photo I referenced had garbage for a caption and no KW's. So with the
switch to the new beta, keywords magically appeared.

This was the original caption, just garbage playing around.
<center>fg afdg ardfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg</center>

New beta load with magically appearing keywords.
New keywords in edit box. (only green ones are visible after save)
<center>fg afdg ardfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg </center>
Even picked up the html text.

So you can see it picked up the complete old caption.<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Bad bug, bad bug. Imagine if someone has a whole paragraph of text in their
caption like they could have in Journal style.

AL

Edit: If there was already a KW it didn't pick up the caption.

digitalpins · January 11, 2007

bigwebguy wrote:

ok, before you said you CAN drag it. You're sure you're in smugmug style?

what's your beta url?

my smugmug style is "smugmug & black"

now it works i get it now
sorry about that

onethumb · January 11, 2007

Allen wrote:

The photo I referenced had garbage for a caption and no KW's. So with the
switch to the new beta, keywords magically appeared.

This was the original caption, just garbage playing around.
<center>fg afdg ardfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg</center>

New beta load with magically appearing keywords.
New keywords in edit box. (only green ones are visible after save)
<center>fg afdg ardfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg adfg </center>
Even picked up the html text.

So you can see it picked up the complete old caption.<img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Bad bug, bad bug. Imagine if someone has a whole paragraph of text in their
caption like they could have in Journal style.

AL

Edit: If there was already a KW it didn't pick up the caption.

I'm sorry, Allen, but I just can't replicate this. What's more, this particular code hasn't been touched, so you'd see this behavior on the live site, too.

Can you please try again and let me know what steps you took? Are you sure you weren't using the bulk tool and accidentally added it to both caption and keywords?

Can anyone else verify this?

Don

Allen · January 11, 2007

onethumb wrote:

I'm sorry, Allen, but I just can't replicate this. What's more, this particular code hasn't been touched, so you'd see this behavior on the live site, too.

Can you please try again and let me know what steps you took? Are you sure you weren't using the bulk tool and accidentally added it to both caption and keywords?

Can anyone else verify this?

Don

I did nuttin':D The caption on that photo with no KW's was there in
previous beta and just showed up in the new beta with the KW's.

Al

3rdPlanetPhotography · January 11, 2007

Where's the watermarking?

wellman · January 11, 2007

Zoinks! Looks great! Anxiously awaiting the live release.

jfriend · January 11, 2007

Statcounter doesn't work

Andy wrote:

Hi John, I'm on a short vacation with the family - but could you possible set up a new statcounter account and give it a try? That'd be the way to do it

Knowing a bit how the new JavaScript driven code probably works, I suspected there would be a problem with Statcounter (and probably Google Analytics too). I tried my beta account with Statcounter and it appears to record the first gallery page, but not record it when users click on a particular thumb. So, it's pretty much completely busted. I can't tell what images users are looking at anymore.

There are several different ways to install Statcounter, so in case that matters, I chose to just copy their block of code into my footer. You can see it at http://jfriend.beta.smugmug.net.

Since the whole point of the speedup is to prevent full page loads when navigating and Statcounter triggers itself on a new page load, it's likely not trivial to make StatCounter work again. A StatCounter-specific hack would be to detect it's presence and call it's Javascript trigger function each time you pseudo-load a new image without reloading the page. Probably could do the same for Google-Analytics.

onethumb · January 11, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Knowing a bit how the new JavaScript driven code probably works, I suspected there would be a problem with Statcounter (and probably Google Analytics too). I tried my beta account with Statcounter and it appears to record the first gallery page, but not record it when users click on a particular thumb. So, it's pretty much completely busted. I can't tell what images users are looking at anymore.

There are several different ways to install Statcounter, so in case that matters, I chose to just copy their block of code into my footer. You can see it at http://jfriend.beta.smugmug.net.

Since the whole point of the speedup is to prevent full page loads when navigating and Statcounter triggers itself on a new page load, it's likely not trivial to make StatCounter work again. A StatCounter-specific hack would be to detect it's presence and call it's Javascript trigger function each time you pseudo-load a new image without reloading the page. Probably could do the same for Google-Analytics.

Let's be clear here - SmugMug's new stats tracking (in BETA) now shows you exactly how many views each photo has had.

So you lose page tracking, but you gain image tracking. That may not be enough if you're looking for actual web logs, but if you're looking for which photos get viewed the most, that's now built-in. (It wasn't before). So basically the biggest reason people use StatCounter (at least based on the feedback we've received) is now a non-issue.

I'm working on more robust page tracking to be built-in on SmugMug so Analytics and the like aren't necessary, but I'd love to hear some feedback (start another thread, maybe? Let's not pollute this thread.) on exactly what you'd like to see.

Don

richW · January 11, 2007

3rdPlanetPhotography wrote:

Where's the watermarking?

Watermarking is working for me. It's still in the photo tools and control panel for me.

devbobo · January 11, 2007

Stats discussion has been moved to here

SmugMug BETA RC1 - Jan 10th, 2007

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