The request to nuke them comes from pros because many pros don't want large sizes in the first place and they want the presentation to their customers to be as simple as possible.
If those pros didn't want them there, couldn't they already nuke the entries in their own custom style sheets?
Baldy,
Honestly, I don't think the point is size buttons...putting them back would work great...no big deal.
The problem is how Smug will handle changes that are customer-perceptable in the future. There have been a number of these throughout the past year and each time there's this thread of anger on DGRIN followed by some constructive ideas...but why go through it each time?
Just make it a POLICY to notify your customers of any changes coming which will make a perceptable change to their customers WITH enough advanced notice to allow them to prepare their sites for the cutover evening.
Today's issue is miniscule...but it's an indication that such a policy has not been put in place....That's what I think bothers many folks...certainly me.
This is not a new discussion., We had it a couple of months ago when the Javascript change disabled Vanity URLs (EXTREMELY customer perceptable). Had an email gone out a week in advance of that change that anyone using vanity URLs (or anything that depended on the order of loading) should move their code to the header before xxxx date, you could have avoided a lot of the angst! In fact, for that change, we could have modified our code prior to the cutover and it would have been completely transparent!
I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, it's the pattern of non-communication that gets me. This is a standard software release policy that must be put in place. It's easy to do (assuming you're not just throwing changes in willy-nilly)...and it will save you guys tons of time after the fact.
Thanks for staying on top of this forum. As a former product line manager at a global company in a cutting edge technology business I learned a few things about updating products. (Some of them the hard way... just like you guys are getting it now.)
1) Never make any changes to a product that will affect your customer's workflow, or have any impact on a derived product that they are producing, without significant warning and documentation on how it will affect them. Customers build their protocols and/or derived products around your product and the way it works, and when you change it unexpectedly it breaks their system and impacts their business.
2) When making "improvements" to a product, never take away existing functionality unless it is absolutely necessary or so onerous to maintain that it significantly impacts your business. No matter how vivid your imagination may be, customers will always find a way of using your product that you haven't thought of, and removing functionality is guaranteed to break something mission critical for some of them. Even if you give them warning of the change it may cost them a lot of time/money to adapt to it.
3) In any high tech product change is inevitable, and we always get caught up in making the product better. As the manufacturer you know the product inside out because the product is your business. Your customers are in a totally different boat. They don't orient their day around your product - it's simply one of the many tools they use in the course of business. They buy your product, make their derivative product dependent on its feature set, and go about their business. Although they may clamor for upgrades and improvements, they are also relying on those improvements not to break their current implementation.
It's always a balancing act to figure out how to evolve product functionality over time. I know you guys work like crazy to make SmugMug the best business in it's category and that's part of the reason I chose you guys. But just imagine how upset you would be if one of your server manufacturers made an unannounced change to the way their server worked and it suddenly changed something on the SmugMug website without warning. You would be pretty upset.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a fan of the flyout window and have probably complained about its implementation on these forums. I personally like the change to minimize its impact, but all of the above still holds true.
I was one that was asking to be able to download a pic while still being logged in, but I would have liked some notice about it. I FLIPPED OUT today when I noticed it and I had the right click turned on. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was only when logged in. Either an e-mail or a note on top of my site announcing the feature would have been nice.
I could care less if the sizes are on the fly out or not, but there are other features I want to see. My #1 request is picture packages.
One thing that is happening though (that didnt before), when I have my pointer over the large image, now my caption is shown in a pale yellow window (alt caption?). BUt goes away when my point is on the fly out.
I was one that was asking to be able to download a pic while still being logged in, but I would have liked some notice about it. I FLIPPED OUT today when I noticed it and I had the right click turned on. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was only when logged in. Either an e-mail or a note on top of my site announcing the feature would have been nice.
I could care less if the sizes are on the fly out or not, bugt there are other features I want to see. My #1 request is picture packages.
The homepage news box is out - we'll do better at alerting on release in the future, sorry! It's there, now:
Baldy,
Honestly, I don't think the point is size buttons...putting them back would work great...no big deal.
The problem is how Smug will handle changes that are customer-perceptable in the future. There have been a number of these throughout the past year and each time there's this thread of anger on DGRIN followed by some constructive ideas...but why go through it each time?
Just make it a POLICY to notify your customers of any changes coming which will make a perceptable change to their customers WITH enough advanced notice to allow them to prepare their sites for the cutover evening.
Today's issue is miniscule...but it's an indication that such a policy has not been put in place....That's what I think bothers many folks...certainly me.
This is not a new discussion., We had it a couple of months ago when the Javascript change disabled Vanity URLs (EXTREMELY customer perceptable). Had an email gone out a week in advance of that change that anyone using vanity URLs (or anything that depended on the order of loading) should move their code to the header before xxxx date, you could have avoided a lot of the angst! In fact, for that change, we could have modified our code prior to the cutover and it would have been completely transparent!
I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, it's the pattern of non-communication that gets me. This is a standard software release policy that must be put in place. It's easy to do (assuming you're not just throwing changes in willy-nilly)...and it will save you guys tons of time after the fact.
Thanks,
- Gary.
First Gary, I want to say that I agree with your points and feel they are valid without exception, and appreciate your taking the time to get the issues out there....
So while it may be after the fact and and a relatively minor little Nicity to have the size options available, I want to say thanks to Baldy / Andy / and whoever else decides these things for listening on this particular issue and reactivating the option. I'm pleased they are back and appreciate your listening to my original bitching session way back on page 1 of this thread. It's something that the users of my little album, and myself also, enjoy having as an option.
Baldy,
The problem is how Smug will handle changes that are customer-perceptable in the future. There have been a number of these throughout the past year and each time there's this thread of anger on DGRIN followed by some constructive ideas...but why go through it each time?
Just make it a POLICY to notify your customers of any changes coming which will make a perceptable change to their customers WITH enough advanced notice to allow them to prepare their sites for the cutover evening.
This is a critical point. I know from experience that you're always worried about "giving too much away" in advance because some details remain to be finalized, and there's also concern about competitors taking advantage of the information.
Although this makes sense for things like consumer products, one has to take a different approach for things like enterprise or service products sold by subscription for commercial purposes. In the case of SmugMug your Pro customers are paying for a mission-critical business tool and as such have a reasonable expectation that they will be notified in advance of any updates or changes that will have an impact on their business, and have an opportunity to respond to such changes before they go live.
Thanks for staying on top of this forum. As a former product line manager at a global company in a cutting edge technology business I learned a few things about updating products. (Some of them the hard way... just like you guys are getting it now.)
1) Never make any changes to a product that will affect your customer's workflow, or have any impact on a derived product that they are producing, without significant warning and documentation on how it will affect them. Customers build their protocols and/or derived products around your product and the way it works, and when you change it unexpectedly it breaks their system and impacts their business.
2) When making "improvements" to a product, never take away existing functionality unless it is absolutely necessary or so onerous to maintain that it significantly impacts your business. No matter how vivid your imagination may be, customers will always find a way of using your product that you haven't thought of, and removing functionality is guaranteed to break something mission critical for some of them. Even if you give them warning of the change it may cost them a lot of time/money to adapt to it.
3) In any high tech product change is inevitable, and we always get caught up in making the product better. As the manufacturer you know the product inside out because the product is your business. Your customers are in a totally different boat. They don't orient their day around your product - it's simply one of the many tools they use in the course of business. They buy your product, make their derivative product dependent on its feature set, and go about their business. Although they may clamor for upgrades and improvements, they are also relying on those improvements not to break their current implementation.
It's always a balancing act to figure out how to evolve product functionality over time. I know you guys work like crazy to make SmugMug the best business in it's category and that's part of the reason I chose you guys. But just imagine how upset you would be if one of your server manufacturers made an unannounced change to the way their server worked and it suddenly changed something on the SmugMug website without warning. You would be pretty upset.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a fan of the flyout window and have probably complained about its implementation on these forums. I personally like the change to minimize its impact, but all of the above still holds true.
Dale
Hi Dale,
Thanks for adding a good overview from the "big picture" perspective as well as your insightful feedback.
I assume you would agree that in this little "Flyout Window" case, the fans of the feature like me, and the non-fans like you, should have an option whether or not it's displayed rather than just having it simply disappear. A simple option button in the customise section would make all parties happy.
I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, it's the pattern of non-communication that gets me.
Thanks,
- Gary.
Hey Gary,
I completely sympathize with this. I'm in the same shoes as you with software I use and sometimes it makes me crazy when Apple or Adobe change something like iMovie 6 into iMovie 8. Me and many of the forums went crazy over that (although I *cough* reluctantly *choke* like iMovie 8 better now than I like iMovie 6, but that's beside the point).
Sometimes it's so obvious to me and people I know that they screwed up a feature release. Why didn't they talk to me?
But even as I go crazy, I remember what it was like to work for Steve Jobs and try to get those products out.
So here's a case in point: we hope to ship our new shopping cart next week. We're flying in Andy, Lee, JT and some others as we go into major submersion get this out the door mode. It's the key to coupons, packages, interfacing to a pro lab, and an easier experience for your customers.
We've been working on it for a year and a half, trying to fix a cropping tool bug for 6 weeks. We thought we could ship it months ago but feedback had us changing the interface.
We have a (good) chance of shipping it next week and I'm happy to start a thread now with screen shots so everyone can get ready. But if we have to send email to several hundred thousand customers and manage the responses, it will pull quite a few of us off of other important projects and we'll need to slip the release date very significantly.
You've seen me post screen shots of potential search results changes, etc., many times, but it's usually in the early stage of the product when we're in the mode of gathering customer feedback. In the stage the cart is in now, any changes will mean months of delay.
Sounds like I better get writing the get ready for the cart thread.
Thanks for adding a good overview from the "big picture" perspective as well as your insightful feedback.
I assume you would agree that in this little "Flyout Window" case, the fans of the feature like me, and the non-fans like you, should have an option whether or not it's displayed rather than just having it simply disappear. A simple option button in the customise section would make all parties happy.
Thanks, John
John, that makes some sense, but unfortunately there is at least one feature I really want that relies on this flyout window - PhotoRank. I want people to be able to vote for my photos because it helps populate the "Popular Photos" section of my page and also allows me to figure out which photos people react to most strongly. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell there is no way to use PhotoRank without the flyout window. I'm a proponent of doing things simply and having thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons to the side of the photo rather than having the flyout tab constantly flying in and out every time the mouse passes over a photo.
I absolutely appreciate the effort the SmugMug team is making to improve the site, even if I don't get everything I want. :cry
Sounds like I better get writing the get ready for the cart thread.
Thanks,
Baldy
Hi Baldy,
There are really only two companies that I'm fanatical about recommending to others. One is the computer company run by that Jobs guy. The other one is SmugMug. Keep up the good work!
Dale
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
John, that makes some sense, but unfortunately there is at least one feature I really want that relies on this flyout window - PhotoRank.
Someone can probably dig up the threads where a flyout window was so passionately argued for. Some of our competitors had them and they made the gallery layouts much cleaner. I'm afraid that if we took it away after all that, there would be some very disappointed people.
I'm not saying there's no way, but it would be a very big commitment to design an alternative that the pro-flyout people would support.
I was one that was asking to be able to download a pic while still being logged in, but I would have liked some notice about it. I FLIPPED OUT today when I noticed it and I had the right click turned on. It took me a few minutes to realize that it was only when logged in. Either an e-mail or a note on top of my site announcing the feature would have been nice.
Poor Andy is taking a beating, but I confess that it was me who delayed. Andy was bugging me all day to do it.
I was just hedging our bets. I stayed up late last night answering emails to the desk and had a sense we may have to roll back the display size changes.
Turns out we did roll back the sizes, so I'm glad that the notice didn't go out to every subscriber. But it's a shame that we scared people about the downloads.
1) When logged in, you will see the "save photo" icon on your photobar now - it's a brand new feature, for gallery owners (you!) only - your visitors won't see this option. To validate, use Visitor View, or log out of SmugMug, and have a look. For a long time, our customers have been asking to have the ability to save an photo while logged in, even though they've got that size blocked for customers and visitors, and so we made it happen. More will be coming shortly in our release notes, here: http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/
And this is the second best news I've heard all day:
So here's a case in point: we hope to ship our new shopping cart next week. We're flying in Andy, Lee, JT and some others as we go into major submersion get this out the door mode. It's the key to coupons, packages, interfacing to a pro lab, and an easier experience for your customers.
We've been working on it for a year and a half, trying to fix a cropping tool bug for 6 weeks. We thought we could ship it months ago but feedback had us changing the interface.
We have a (good) chance of shipping it next week and I'm happy to start a thread now with screen shots so everyone can get ready.
However I'm on a pc w/IE (at school) and I only see the size choices/photobar while logged in on my site
note: I added the code (way back when) to move photobar to bottom from the right side
when I check other sites the photobar works but its on the right side again...
Have I lost the option for viewers to see photobar from the bottom??
Any suggestions?
rich56k
I cleared cache and temp files and even tried another pc to no avail....
photobar never was taken away, just to be precise. We restored the size listing.
However I'm on a pc w/IE (at school) and I only see the size choices/photobar while logged in on my site
note: I added the code (way back when) to move photobar to bottom from the right side
when I check other sites the photobar works but its on the right side again...
Have I lost the option for viewers to see photobar from the bottom??
Any suggestions?
rich56k
I cleared cache and temp files and even tried another pc to no avail....
Photobar on the bottom could have issues - we''ll probably have to remove that one day as well, it can't support all the formatting and such. Sorry!
WOuld anyone like to take a stab at my problem caused by the change, and roll back?
Caption windows have started showing up when the mouse pointer is over a photo, or thumbnail.
This started tonight, with the roll back.
TIA
Derek
Caption windows? You mean tooltips? We've always had them... Depending on browser, they come, and then disappear... They've been on the site for sometime, perhaps they were buggy and weren't appearing for a while and then got fixed. I'll try and find out exactly what's up, Derek.
Caption windows? You mean tooltips? We've always had them... Depending on browser, they come, and then disappear... They've been on the site for sometime, perhaps they were buggy and weren't appearing for a while and then got fixed. I'll try and find out exactly what's up, Derek.
Tooltips? Maybe.
I assumed captions as the text that comes up in the pale yellow box was the same text as in my photo captions. Especially annoying/noticable when the photo has a large caption.
I don't recall them before today. Meaning if they where there, that I had used some snipit of code to turn that off.
photobar never was taken away, just to be precise. We restored the size listing.Photobar on the bottom could have issues - we''ll probably have to remove that one day as well, it can't support all the formatting and such. Sorry!
Andy,
Ooopps...Well for me since all I used it for was the sizes - it seemed like you returned it - sorry.
However, I just removed the 'photobar from bottom code' from my javascript box and now logged in it shows from the right - but still nothing when logged out (as a viewer would experience....) :cry
Ooopps...Well for me since all I used it for was the sizes - it seemed like you returned it - sorry.
However, I just removed the 'photobar from bottom code' from my javascript box and now logged in it shows from the right - but still nothing when logged out (as a viewer would experience....) :cry
I am a current Configuration Manager for a major Internet application. My customers would have my head if we did not provide accurate release notes at least a month in advance of a release, and if we did not provide a user acceptance test period for at least two weeks in advance of a release. Final release notes are delivered with the release. Our planned releases are quarterly, and even patches and emergency patches are communicated in advance. I was amazed and a little concerned when I signed on to SmugMug and realized that there is no customer facing test bed. For our application, production uses the "www.xxxx...." url, and user acceptance testing uses the "qa.xxxx...." url. At the start of the user acceptance test period we make a copy of production data available so the only visible difference for the customer is the url and the new code. Not every customer tests, but they accept the risk of not doing so. Our help desk and techical support respond to all concerns during the test period and we will not migrate a release to production until all concerns have been addressed. We have strong IT governance, follow a rigorous SDLC, and use an effective SDM. We don't cut corners. We don't allow scope creep. No changes that were not not scoped from the get go and included in the release notes. No half baked changes go to production. If it doesn't work 100% then its dropped from that release. We invite customers in on the release cycle during the start-up and define phases of the SDM. Not all cutomers, but key customers. Our business analysts and tech analysts represent the interests of the rest of the customers based on their suggestions and requests. It's not a big shop, but it's mature. Mature in attitude and approach. It pays off big time.
SmugMug is in a tight spot. Targeting the masses with an attractive price reminisent of QuickBooks -- about 150 bucks for pros, with lower tiered prices for those that need less. But unlike QuickBooks and other products with mass appeal, you support one version of your application online. There's no fallback for the customer. Take it or leave it. With boxed software you can always stay on the old version if that makes the most sense for you. I don't envy your dilema.
I hate to preach. I've been at this software development stuff for a long time. Be mature about the way you handle change and your customers will reward you handsomely.
Maybe you need two flavors of SmugMug: SmugMug and SmugMug Pro. Keep a core shared code base, but put a fully customizable UI on top of the Pro flavor. I would pay more. It took me about 15 minutes to decide to plop down $150 after looking at the alternatives. I've put about 1 month of effort into customizing and I feel like I'm 95% done. I would have preferred to have been done with the customizing in a week instead of a month, and I probably would have been if the customization UI was more robust. Now that I know what it takes I'd gladly pay more if I could customize with less effort. Based on what I see in the forums, customizing is a never ending process partly (or mostly?) because of the way SmugMug manages change. That's a boat that won't float for long.
It's been fun so far. Keep up the good work. Be open. Tell us where we're going, and don't fear the competion. Lead it.
Photobar is completely missing for visitors
The photobar has suddenly gone completely missing for visitors, but appears OK when I am logged in. Largest size is still set to Original.
Comments
If those pros didn't want them there, couldn't they already nuke the entries in their own custom style sheets?
Honestly, I don't think the point is size buttons...putting them back would work great...no big deal.
The problem is how Smug will handle changes that are customer-perceptable in the future. There have been a number of these throughout the past year and each time there's this thread of anger on DGRIN followed by some constructive ideas...but why go through it each time?
Just make it a POLICY to notify your customers of any changes coming which will make a perceptable change to their customers WITH enough advanced notice to allow them to prepare their sites for the cutover evening.
Today's issue is miniscule...but it's an indication that such a policy has not been put in place....That's what I think bothers many folks...certainly me.
This is not a new discussion., We had it a couple of months ago when the Javascript change disabled Vanity URLs (EXTREMELY customer perceptable). Had an email gone out a week in advance of that change that anyone using vanity URLs (or anything that depended on the order of loading) should move their code to the header before xxxx date, you could have avoided a lot of the angst! In fact, for that change, we could have modified our code prior to the cutover and it would have been completely transparent!
I can't speak for everyone, but for myself, it's the pattern of non-communication that gets me. This is a standard software release policy that must be put in place. It's easy to do (assuming you're not just throwing changes in willy-nilly)...and it will save you guys tons of time after the fact.
Thanks,
- Gary.
Thanks for staying on top of this forum. As a former product line manager at a global company in a cutting edge technology business I learned a few things about updating products. (Some of them the hard way... just like you guys are getting it now.)
1) Never make any changes to a product that will affect your customer's workflow, or have any impact on a derived product that they are producing, without significant warning and documentation on how it will affect them. Customers build their protocols and/or derived products around your product and the way it works, and when you change it unexpectedly it breaks their system and impacts their business.
2) When making "improvements" to a product, never take away existing functionality unless it is absolutely necessary or so onerous to maintain that it significantly impacts your business. No matter how vivid your imagination may be, customers will always find a way of using your product that you haven't thought of, and removing functionality is guaranteed to break something mission critical for some of them. Even if you give them warning of the change it may cost them a lot of time/money to adapt to it.
3) In any high tech product change is inevitable, and we always get caught up in making the product better. As the manufacturer you know the product inside out because the product is your business. Your customers are in a totally different boat. They don't orient their day around your product - it's simply one of the many tools they use in the course of business. They buy your product, make their derivative product dependent on its feature set, and go about their business. Although they may clamor for upgrades and improvements, they are also relying on those improvements not to break their current implementation.
It's always a balancing act to figure out how to evolve product functionality over time. I know you guys work like crazy to make SmugMug the best business in it's category and that's part of the reason I chose you guys. But just imagine how upset you would be if one of your server manufacturers made an unannounced change to the way their server worked and it suddenly changed something on the SmugMug website without warning. You would be pretty upset.
In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a fan of the flyout window and have probably complained about its implementation on these forums. I personally like the change to minimize its impact, but all of the above still holds true.
Dale
I could care less if the sizes are on the fly out or not, but there are other features I want to see. My #1 request is picture packages.
Website
Sports Sample Photos
Sportsshooter.com/ctproctor
Four Seam Images
One thing that is happening though (that didnt before), when I have my pointer over the large image, now my caption is shown in a pale yellow window (alt caption?). BUt goes away when my point is on the fly out.
Kinda annoying...
THis never happened before. ?
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
The homepage news box is out - we'll do better at alerting on release in the future, sorry! It's there, now:
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First Gary, I want to say that I agree with your points and feel they are valid without exception, and appreciate your taking the time to get the issues out there....
So while it may be after the fact and and a relatively minor little Nicity to have the size options available, I want to say thanks to Baldy / Andy / and whoever else decides these things for listening on this particular issue and reactivating the option. I'm pleased they are back and appreciate your listening to my original bitching session way back on page 1 of this thread. It's something that the users of my little album, and myself also, enjoy having as an option.
John
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Andy - Thanks for the new feature, it's one I had been asking for. My blood pressure is back to normal now.
Website
Sports Sample Photos
Sportsshooter.com/ctproctor
Four Seam Images
This is a critical point. I know from experience that you're always worried about "giving too much away" in advance because some details remain to be finalized, and there's also concern about competitors taking advantage of the information.
Although this makes sense for things like consumer products, one has to take a different approach for things like enterprise or service products sold by subscription for commercial purposes. In the case of SmugMug your Pro customers are paying for a mission-critical business tool and as such have a reasonable expectation that they will be notified in advance of any updates or changes that will have an impact on their business, and have an opportunity to respond to such changes before they go live.
Dale
Maybe you should consider setting up a beta site with the changes you want to make. Then invite users to visit it to see how the changes work.
Hi Dale,
Thanks for adding a good overview from the "big picture" perspective as well as your insightful feedback.
I assume you would agree that in this little "Flyout Window" case, the fans of the feature like me, and the non-fans like you, should have an option whether or not it's displayed rather than just having it simply disappear. A simple option button in the customise section would make all parties happy.
Thanks, John
________________________________________________________________________________________________
(history: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=51218)
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I completely sympathize with this. I'm in the same shoes as you with software I use and sometimes it makes me crazy when Apple or Adobe change something like iMovie 6 into iMovie 8. Me and many of the forums went crazy over that (although I *cough* reluctantly *choke* like iMovie 8 better now than I like iMovie 6, but that's beside the point).
Sometimes it's so obvious to me and people I know that they screwed up a feature release. Why didn't they talk to me?
But even as I go crazy, I remember what it was like to work for Steve Jobs and try to get those products out.
So here's a case in point: we hope to ship our new shopping cart next week. We're flying in Andy, Lee, JT and some others as we go into major submersion get this out the door mode. It's the key to coupons, packages, interfacing to a pro lab, and an easier experience for your customers.
We've been working on it for a year and a half, trying to fix a cropping tool bug for 6 weeks. We thought we could ship it months ago but feedback had us changing the interface.
We have a (good) chance of shipping it next week and I'm happy to start a thread now with screen shots so everyone can get ready. But if we have to send email to several hundred thousand customers and manage the responses, it will pull quite a few of us off of other important projects and we'll need to slip the release date very significantly.
You've seen me post screen shots of potential search results changes, etc., many times, but it's usually in the early stage of the product when we're in the mode of gathering customer feedback. In the stage the cart is in now, any changes will mean months of delay.
Sounds like I better get writing the get ready for the cart thread.
Thanks,
Baldy
John, that makes some sense, but unfortunately there is at least one feature I really want that relies on this flyout window - PhotoRank. I want people to be able to vote for my photos because it helps populate the "Popular Photos" section of my page and also allows me to figure out which photos people react to most strongly. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell there is no way to use PhotoRank without the flyout window. I'm a proponent of doing things simply and having thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons to the side of the photo rather than having the flyout tab constantly flying in and out every time the mouse passes over a photo.
I absolutely appreciate the effort the SmugMug team is making to improve the site, even if I don't get everything I want. :cry
Dale
Hi Baldy,
There are really only two companies that I'm fanatical about recommending to others. One is the computer company run by that Jobs guy. The other one is SmugMug. Keep up the good work!
Dale
I'm not saying there's no way, but it would be a very big commitment to design an alternative that the pro-flyout people would support.
I was just hedging our bets. I stayed up late last night answering emails to the desk and had a sense we may have to roll back the display size changes.
Turns out we did roll back the sizes, so I'm glad that the notice didn't go out to every subscriber. But it's a shame that we scared people about the downloads.
Anyway, sorry for the scare.
Caption windows have started showing up when the mouse pointer is over a photo, or thumbnail.
This started tonight, with the roll back.
TIA
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
And this is the second best news I've heard all day:
Thanks guys!
However I'm on a pc w/IE (at school) and I only see the size choices/photobar while logged in on my site
note: I added the code (way back when) to move photobar to bottom from the right side
when I check other sites the photobar works but its on the right side again...
Have I lost the option for viewers to see photobar from the bottom??
Any suggestions?
rich56k
I cleared cache and temp files and even tried another pc to no avail....
Member: ASMP; EP; NPPA; CPS
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Tooltips? Maybe.
I assumed captions as the text that comes up in the pale yellow box was the same text as in my photo captions. Especially annoying/noticable when the photo has a large caption.
I don't recall them before today. Meaning if they where there, that I had used some snipit of code to turn that off.
Thanks Andy. I appreciate that.
(and sorry if i came off as a &$@*$# earlier)
Derek
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
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Andy,
Ooopps...Well for me since all I used it for was the sizes - it seemed like you returned it - sorry.
However, I just removed the 'photobar from bottom code' from my javascript box and now logged in it shows from the right - but still nothing when logged out (as a viewer would experience....)
Any thoughts?
http://rich56k.smugmug.com/gallery/5213786_2uFGM#316899092_Ha6tm
rich
Member: ASMP; EP; NPPA; CPS
Shhh.....Andy went to bed :snore
He snores!
What did Cinderella say when she left the photo shop? "One day my prints will come."
SmugMug is in a tight spot. Targeting the masses with an attractive price reminisent of QuickBooks -- about 150 bucks for pros, with lower tiered prices for those that need less. But unlike QuickBooks and other products with mass appeal, you support one version of your application online. There's no fallback for the customer. Take it or leave it. With boxed software you can always stay on the old version if that makes the most sense for you. I don't envy your dilema.
I hate to preach. I've been at this software development stuff for a long time. Be mature about the way you handle change and your customers will reward you handsomely.
Maybe you need two flavors of SmugMug: SmugMug and SmugMug Pro. Keep a core shared code base, but put a fully customizable UI on top of the Pro flavor. I would pay more. It took me about 15 minutes to decide to plop down $150 after looking at the alternatives. I've put about 1 month of effort into customizing and I feel like I'm 95% done. I would have preferred to have been done with the customizing in a week instead of a month, and I probably would have been if the customization UI was more robust. Now that I know what it takes I'd gladly pay more if I could customize with less effort. Based on what I see in the forums, customizing is a never ending process partly (or mostly?) because of the way SmugMug manages change. That's a boat that won't float for long.
It's been fun so far. Keep up the good work. Be open. Tell us where we're going, and don't fear the competion. Lead it.
le pere de www.nikiwalkerphotography.com
The photobar has suddenly gone completely missing for visitors, but appears OK when I am logged in. Largest size is still set to Original.
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