"Add Photos" breaks when multiple galleries have same name...

scwalter

I have several galleries with the same name, differentiated by the description, which contains the date. Specifically, I have a bunch of galleries named "San Diego Zoo" with a description containing the date of the visit.

http://scwalter.smugmug.com/Animals

Okay, now to the bugs:

1. With the new "Add Photos" button flyout, only one gallery called "San Diego Zoo" appears.

2. Even if they did all appear, how am I to know which is which without the description visible.

Clearly, this was not a case considered during the development of this feature.

Please give me back my one-click "add-photos" button.

Thanks,
Scott

Andy

scwalter wrote:

I have several galleries with the same name, differentiated by the description, which contains the date. Specifically, I have a bunch of galleries named "San Diego Zoo" with a description containing the date of the visit.

http://scwalter.smugmug.com/Animals

Okay, now to the bugs:

1. With the new "Add Photos" button flyout, only one gallery called "San Diego Zoo" appears.

2. Even if they did all appear, how am I to know which is which without the description visible.

Clearly, this was not a case considered during the development of this feature.

Please give me back my one-click "add-photos" button.

Thanks,
Scott

Hah - this certainly would be a rare case. I don't know anyone else with a page of galleries, all the same name

I'll ask {JT} if the menu can be made to support your setup.

Andy

By the way, you can always hit "add photos" from the gallery tools menu within a gallery.

scwalter

Thanks for the quick response Andy. I guess I'm pretty unique with my gallery naming scheme. And thanks for the workaround tip.

-Scott

tsk1979

I have a similar gripe
Suppose I have to move a photo from one gallery to a gallery called landscapes under subcategory "Travel".
Suppose I have a gallery with the same name in a subcategory called "Favorites".
When I have to move, in the drop down menu I see two landscape galleries, with no way of knowing which is which. This is a serious problem, because under various subcategories you can have galleries with same name.
If the drop down menu instead of just showing gallery name showed something like
Category.SubCategory.GalleryName, it would be great.

Dna

tsk1979 wrote:

Suppose I have to move a photo from one gallery to a gallery called landscapes under subcategory "Travel".
Suppose I have a gallery with the same name in a subcategory called "Favorites".
When I have to move, in the drop down menu I see two landscape galleries, with no way of knowing which is which. This is a serious problem, because under various subcategories you can have galleries with same name.
If the drop down menu instead of just showing gallery name showed something like
Category.SubCategory.GalleryName, it would be great.

A workaround is to temporarily rename one gallery with ~ at the start. You can then click on the list, type ~ and be taken straight to the required gallery. Remember to remove the ~ too.

Andrew

tsk1979

Dna wrote:

A workaround is to temporarily rename one gallery with ~ at the start. You can then click on the list, type ~ and be taken straight to the required gallery. Remember to remove the ~ too.

Andrew

Thanks for the workaround, but I would like smugmug to do something about it. The reason is that if I want to upload 100 pics to a gallery called landscapes from "sendToSmugmug" I need to rename that gallery, upload, and then rename again.
Not a big deal, but I feel that if it was fixed from within smugmug it would be great.

Andy

tsk1979 wrote:

Suppose I have to move a photo from one gallery to a gallery called landscapes under subcategory "Travel".
Suppose I have a gallery with the same name in a subcategory called "Favorites".
When I have to move, in the drop down menu I see two landscape galleries, with no way of knowing which is which. This is a serious problem, because under various subcategories you can have galleries with same name.
If the drop down menu instead of just showing gallery name showed something like
Category.SubCategory.GalleryName, it would be great.

Hi, sorry about this - is this really common? You are one of two people I know of that use same-gallery names.

Andy

scwalter wrote:

I have several galleries with the same name, differentiated by the description, which contains the date. Specifically, I have a bunch of galleries named "San Diego Zoo" with a description containing the date of the visit.

http://scwalter.smugmug.com/Animals

Okay, now to the bugs:

1. With the new "Add Photos" button flyout, only one gallery called "San Diego Zoo" appears.

2. Even if they did all appear, how am I to know which is which without the description visible.

Clearly, this was not a case considered during the development of this feature.

Please give me back my one-click "add-photos" button.

Thanks,
Scott

Scott, {JT} is looking into it today.

iamback

Andy wrote:

Hi, sorry about this - is this really common? You are one of two people I know of that use same-gallery names.

I don't have them yet but in my planned structure there certainly will be! Same names, but under different (sub)categories.

jfriend

iamback wrote:

I don't have them yet but in my planned structure there certainly will be! Same names, but under different (sub)categories.

Since I think folks in this thread are talking about the new Add Photos UI which shows you categories and sub-categories when picking a gallery, there's shouldn't be any problem with that new UI if you have identically named galleries in different categories or sub-categories. The original poster in this thread had identically named galleries in the same category - differing only in the description, not the name.

So your structure should be fine for the Add Photos UI.

There are other places in the UI where there are problems if you have same named gallery even in a different category. You can usually work around it, but it is a occasionally a pain. I have this lots of places because I have galleries named by the first name of a sports player and each sports season is a different sub-category so each time there's a team with the same player on it or even just a player with a name in common with a previous team, I end up with a gallery with the same name. The worst place in the UI is the Move Photos command which just gives you a flat list of all your galleries with no way to distinguish between galleries of the same name. Hopefully some day soon, they will replace that flat list with the new hierarchical picker now used for Add Photos.

iamback

jfriend wrote:

Since I think folks in this thread are talking about the new Add Photos UI which shows you categories and sub-categories when picking a gallery, there's shouldn't be any problem with that new UI (...)

Actually I was replying to

Andy wrote:

is this really common? You are one of two people I know of that use same-gallery names.

which was in reply to

tsk1979 wrote:

When I have to move, in the drop down menu I see two landscape galleries, with no way of knowing which is which. This is a serious problem, because under various subcategories you can have galleries with same name.

(my emphasis)

That makes me the third. And I was specifically worried about this moving operation which, as tsk1979 described and you confirm, presents a flat view with no clue as to which gallery lives in which category.

jfriend wrote:

Hopefully some day soon, they will replace that flat list with the new hierarchical picker now used for Add Photos.

Exactly. I hope so too - a little consistency goes a long way.

jfriend

iamback wrote:

Actually I was replying to which was in reply to (my emphasis)

That makes me the third. And I was specifically worried about this moving operation which, as tsk1979 described and you confirm, presents a flat view with no clue as to which gallery lives in which category.

Exactly. I hope so too - a little consistency goes a long way.

OK, fine. Just wanted to confirm that we need a different solution than the original poster in this thread. Our issue is easier and more straightforward to solve as all we need is category/sub-category context added to all gallery lists. Since I have >300 galleries in one of my sites, I also need a hierarchical list, not a flat list in order to be able to efficiently find anything.

The original poster needs access to text from the description in the pick lists since that is all that uniquely identifies his galleries. My guess is that the original poster's problem is far less common than ours.

iamback

jfriend wrote:

The original poster needs access to text from the description in the pick lists since that is all that uniquely identifies his galleries. My guess is that the original poster's problem is far less common than ours.

Probably. But having access to the description (in the form of a title attribute for instance) might be far easier to implement (for both adding and moving!) than showing a full hierarchy, and would help in our case, too (unless you don't have descriptions, but that's another topic. )

jfriend

iamback wrote:

Probably. But having access to the description (in the form of a title attribute for instance) might be far easier to implement (for both adding and moving!) than showing a full hierarchy, and would help in our case, too (unless you don't have descriptions, but that's another topic. )

I usually don't use descriptions. I need category and sub-category context to distinguish my galleries. I've built a style which works really well for viewers, but sucks for administration. I figure the point of me posting these is to make viewing easy so I should optimize for that.

For my event photography, I typically use a structure like this:

Sports

Cobras Spring Soccer 2007

Highlights
Sara
Alison
Nicole
....

Cobras Fall Soccer 2007

Highlights
Sara
Alison
Nicole
....

This is very easy for viewers and I've seen no benefit from adding gallery descriptions, but it's a bugger for administration in a flat list of gallery names.

iamback

jfriend wrote:

I usually don't use descriptions. I need category and sub-category context to distinguish my galleries. I've built a style which works really well for viewers, but sucks for administration. I figure the point of me posting these is to make viewing easy so I should optimize for that.

For my event photography, I typically use a structure like this: (...) This is very easy for viewers and I've seen no benefit from adding gallery descriptions, but it's a bugger for administration in a flat list of gallery names.

Your structure makes a lot of sense and I agree you should optimize for viewing.

But would adding a short description make viewing any less easy? If these are all private galleries the point is moot, but otherwise adding a description can help for SEO by repeating important keywords. For instance: "Highlights of the 2007 Cobras Spring Soccer tournament" (etc.) You can always hide it from the gallery view. That would be just as optimized for viewing, but also SEO optimized.

jfriend

iamback wrote:

Your structure makes a lot of sense and I agree you should optimize for viewing.

But would adding a short description make viewing any less easy? If these are all private galleries the point is moot, but otherwise adding a description can help for SEO by repeating important keywords. For instance: "Highlights of the 2007 Cobras Spring Soccer tournament" (etc.) You can always hide it from the gallery view. That would be just as optimized for viewing, but also SEO optimized.

They are not public galleries (they are password protected), so there's no indexing involved. Adding descriptions is just extra work when I'm usually creating 15-30 galleries at a time (I do one gallery per player, plus several team galleries). If Smugmug showed descriptions in the flat gallery name list, I could do as you say as a work-around, but if they're going to change that code, I'd rather they just fix it right and add category/sub-category information so I don't need a work-around.

Even with proper context, the flat list is also a drag because I have >300 galleries all in one giant list. A hieararchical list is the way to go.

Andy

scwalter wrote:

Thanks for the quick response Andy. I guess I'm pretty unique with my gallery naming scheme. And thanks for the workaround tip.

-Scott

You should have some new joy now, with same name galleries

scwalter

Andy wrote:

You should have some new joy now, with same name galleries

Sweet. That's a very nice update.

Thanks,
Scott