New Features, June 21st 2008

Andy

papajay wrote:

After twice clearing cache, cookies, history, etc....IE and FireFox...no luck (still no flyout with a Save This Photo link).

So I gave up and went to bed...just put my system in "standby" mode. This morning, the flyout photobar (inlcuding the Save this Photo link) shows up just like it's supposed to. I'm not making any of this up. Someone, I'm sure, will mutter to themselves, "Welcome to the wacky world of computers." But I'm not amused...unless SM found and fixed something while my computer and I slept, I wasted a couple of hours chasing a little gremlin I apparently didn't need to chase.:bash

Papajay, we changed nothing overnight, sorry

- Andy

papajay

Andy wrote:

Papajay, we changed nothing overnight, sorry

- Andy

Thanks Andy. Good news is the problem is solved! I'm not going to lose any sleep over not solving the mystery.

Thanks for checking it out last night.

afarber

Andy - any thoughts on this? Was this option discussed at all in the office?

Thanks!

afarber wrote:

First of all, THANK YOU so much for allowing the Save Photo option when logged in. This was probably my #1 request for a long time.

HOWEVER, I think you missed the boat by just an inch: Since the flyout photobar is not available in some viewing styles (Filmstrip, for example, which I use a lot), I thought it would be much better to have the logged-in Save Photo option live in the drop-down Photo Tools, which is always available.

This is a big deal for me, since on my wife's site (http://sararoizen.com), I use only Filmstrip, and anytime I want to download an original image, I have to go to Customize Gallery, change the viewing options, go out, save file, go back in and change back to Filmstrip. At least now I don't also have to allow original files, but this change does not save me the steps I was hoping all this time to avoid.

Any thoughts? If you don't want to remove the new option, maybe you could just add it to Photo Tools as well. It is, after all, a good photo tool.

Thanks so much!
Adam

micki

**Ok, I think Baldy said this a while back... I'm tired after reading ALL this

"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."***

I am a PRO user and this is my website and truthfully I couldn't tell what everyone was talking about mostly because almost all my stuff is in JOURNAL mode (go figure the "save as folder" doesn't work there).

I will say ONE THING you DO have our e-mails correct?

I would LOVE to receive an e-mail update telling us what is going on when it comes to things that will affect us. Down times, major changes to our HTML etc...

I agree with several of the people that have a much nicer HTML worked website (I tried to keep mine fairly simple). We need to make sure our CUSTOMERS are not put off by what they see.

For me this is Wedding time and I am working my butt off uploading and moving pictures and truthfully I am perplexed as to why you wouldn't think this would be a big deal to me. "I" lose business when you do stuff like this. Ok, let me repeat that.

"I" lose MONEY. I would GLADLY pay extra money to have you send me what is going on in the business of smugmug (like the hint above).

I honestly don't have TIME to go dilly dally (ok, I like that word) through the forums because I am trying to be out their working or I am actually working on pictures.

I ADORE Smugmug and have told everyone about you guys because of how easy it is to use for my business but when you go and change things without fair warning it hurts us in the pocket book.

Now, back to what BALDY said...

are you REALLY going to make it easier for them to buy pictures?

hmmm now THIS I really really really want to hear more

I have a really hard time explaining to people how to go from one folder to another.... blah blah blah (buy pictures) another folder... blah blah blah (ha ha ha ha) people that don't buy pictures on the internet... ha ha ha


Thanks for letting us vent ~ I'm ready for the NEXT PRO Platinum account where you can let me pick font colors without doing HTML yucky stuff (I'll pay more ~ wink wink)

DJKennedy

micki wrote:

dilly dally

Snicker 'dilly dally'

Ok, I shouldnt laff, I used 'tickedy boo' the other day.

Andy

micki wrote:

I would LOVE to receive an e-mail update telling us what is going on when it comes to things that will affect us. Down times,

http://smugmug.wordpress.com/ please subscribe, thanks!

major changes to our HTML etc...

http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2008/06/22/give-us-some-shopping-cart-feedback/

subscribe, thanks!

I'll do my best to put posts there when we have stuff going on here at Dgrin for you to comment on

micki

Andy wrote:

http://smugmug.wordpress.com/ please subscribe, thanks!


http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2008/06/22/give-us-some-shopping-cart-feedback/

subscribe, thanks!

I'll do my best to put posts there when we have stuff going on here at Dgrin for you to comment on

Thank you ~ I just checked it out and have booked marked that site to make it easy peasy for me to find.

Andy

micki wrote:

Thank you ~ I just checked it out and have booked marked that site to make it easy peasy for me to find.

Put 'em in a feedreader even

mdraughn

I, for one, don't care about any of the issues that Gary Morgen and the other professional photographers have brought up. I like the rapid release schedule---it's never disrupted my use of the site, ever---and I pay just as much for my pro account as they do for theirs.

And maybe that's the problem.

Photographers who've integrated SmugMug as a key part of their business have very different needs from photographers like me who have pro accounts but don't use them to operate a business.

Maybe it's time for SmugMug to introduce a business class service that offers certain key business features and that revs slower. Of course, the slow-reving version of SmugMug would be a pain to support, but it has the effect of moving some of the conflict from the user community into SmugMug, where it is more easily managed.

Or maybe you could give business class users access to the staging site where they could learn about the changes and update a special staging-only copy of their customizations. Then, when the rev is pushed out to production, their new customizations could be pushed out as well.

Or maybe you could split the front end cleanly from the back end and release the code for the front end so that bigtime users can implement their own photosharing site on a hosting service of their choosing, with the SmugMug database and image services as the back end. If network performance is a problem, you could cut a deal with some colocated hosting services. If scalability of the hosted site is a problem, now the business users will have more appreciation for what you guys go through.

(I don't know if photographers would host their own site, but this would allow website builders to offer a SmugMug customization service to photography businesses.)

Any one of these ideas would of course be a pain to implement, but that's why you'd charge a lot more for business class service. I'd think that anyone whose wedding photography business was riding on SmugMug would find, say, $100/month reasonable.

Maybe SmugMug could also deal with some of Mr. Morgen's other business requirements, "packages, coupons, branded customer correspondence, branded labeling, non-smugmug labeled product pages, etc" more easily if you didn't have to scale them to support a large number of users.

Andy

mdraughn wrote:

(neat suggestions here )

Thanks, that's great stuff

Baldy

renstar wrote:

Given that I can't even count the number of threads I have read in the 2+ years I have been a member, here and with smugmug, where people have requested the ability to store RAW files and stated that they would pay extra to do it, I'm surprised at the lack of coverage of this feature. I don't have anything really set up to be backed up, yet, but I really look forward to using it.

That said, my only observation is that it is a shame that a much smaller change overshadowed the addition of a feature that is really innovative and unmatched by Smugmug's competitors. I'm left wondering if Smugmug should make their major releases a stand-alone thing and leave the smaller changes for a later smaller release.

-r

Hahaha, some SmugMugs felt the same way but personally, I was interested in a very soft launch and to get some experience from it over the weekend. We actually learned a few things that made us improve the UI before the masses started pounding on it, a good thing.

nipprdog

nipprdog wrote:

When I try to open, or save, a photo, I get this;



Any ideas?

Bump.

Baldy

nipprdog wrote:

When I try to open, or save, a photo, I get this;



Any ideas?

That's a very unfriendly Windows error message saying that it doesn't know what application to open your .jpg file with.

It's asking you to pick an application to open jpg files with, such as IE, Photoshop, etc.

Here's Microsoft's not-very-friendly help page on how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307859

If you have Vista, here you go: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071012040655AAfbQr0

If you have a Mac, it automatically assumes you want to open it in Preview until you choose otherwise, avoiding that error message.

I hope that helps.

Thanks,
Baldy

nipprdog

Baldy wrote:

That's a very unfriendly Windows error message saying that it doesn't know what application to open your .jpg file with.

It's asking you to pick an application to open jpg files with, such as IE, Photoshop, etc.

Here's Microsoft's not-very-friendly help page on how to do it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307859

If you have Vista, here you go: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071012040655AAfbQr0

If you have a Mac, it automatically assumes you want to open it in Preview until you choose otherwise, avoiding that error message.

I hope that helps.

Thanks,
Baldy

Thanks, Baldy. I've got it working now.