New interface Concerns

storksb · January 23, 2007

Maybe it is just me, but after taking my first serious look at the new interface I can honestly say that I think smug mug has taken 1 step forward and 2 steps backwards.

The site does appear quicker to load, which is nice but user friendliness has diminished.

1. The photobar, unless you happen to just drag your mouse over the photo you'll never know that it exists. Please can we have the option of having the old site style wiyh the links etc below the picture. Having to find the photobar just to view a different size is crazy.

2. Whilst talking about viewing different sizes, the way it is done now as an image above a darkened default page is just painful on the eyes and very distracting. Please revert back to old format.

3. On pages with a lighter colored theme,I sometimes get black vertical lines appear for a second or two as I move the mouse around the page. Using IE7.

4. There appears to be a lot of wasted screen real estate, in gallery http://storksb.smugmug.com/gallery/2228748#114745231 I get a section with share phot and slideshow and that is all, taking up to much room.

Look forward to your comments
Thanks

Simon

Andy · January 23, 2007

storksb wrote:

Maybe it is just me, but after taking my first serious look at the new interface I can honestly say that I think smug mug has taken 1 step forward and 2 steps backwards.

The site does appear quicker to load, which is nice but user friendliness has diminished.

1. The photobar, unless you happen to just drag your mouse over the photo you'll never know that it exists. Please can we have the option of having the old site style wiyh the links etc below the picture. Having to find the photobar just to view a different size is crazy.

Thanks for the great feedback - our engineers and whole team will see this.

2. Whilst talking about viewing different sizes, the way it is done now as an image above a darkened default page is just painful on the eyes and very distracting. Please revert back to old format.

You can still see them that way. All single image view links work still, and if you change viewing style to traditional, allthumbs for example, and click on the thumbs, you get the images "on the page" and not in lightbox.

3. On pages with a lighter colored theme,I sometimes get black vertical lines appear for a second or two as I move the mouse around the page. Using IE7.

If you can be more specific, theme name, and gallery link, we will surely look into that!

4. There appears to be a lot of wasted screen real estate, in gallery http://storksb.smugmug.com/gallery/2228748#114745231 I get a section with share phot and slideshow and that is all, taking up to much room.

I can't replicate, i see 15 thumbs and a main image (great shots!)

graphicknight · January 23, 2007

I agree with Simon in regards to the Photo Bar. I've had to walk people through the process in how to view the larger images. The Photo Bar looks cool, but a lot of people just don't seem to move the cursor over the image in order to bring it up.

Eric

Trasmc · January 23, 2007

Also agree with the photobar comment.

KvPhoto · January 23, 2007

I also agree with the photobar, it is nice to have the screen less cluttered but people will not know to mouseover the image without instruction to do so. That can be confusing to most. Is there anyway to make it optional?

raebrown · January 23, 2007

New interface Concerns
I agree with the previous responses regarding the photo bar. It's not intuitive and I just don't like having it hover above the photos.

pmaland · January 24, 2007

Photobar
I complained on the beta thread about the photobar, but wanted to add my concern in here as well. On three machines so far, I've had the photobar get stuck in the hover ON position, and wouldn't go away even if I clicked to new photos. Only a refresh would clear it. I'm still annoyed that it's covering up the picture I'm currently trying to look at. I've changed the delay, but since you HAVE to access it in order to get at the options, I don't want the delay too long. I just wish the darn thing didn't cover up my picture.

- Phil

dogwood · January 24, 2007

KvPhoto wrote:

I also agree with the photobar, it is nice to have the screen less cluttered but people will not know to mouseover the image without instruction to do so. That can be confusing to most. Is there anyway to make it optional?

If you put this in your javascript, it will kill the photobar:

showPhotoBar = false;

dogwood · January 24, 2007

pmaland wrote:

you HAVE to access it in order to get at the options, I don't want the delay too long. I just wish the darn thing didn't cover up my picture.

The main option I like is the photo size-- you can kill your photobar (see my post above) and still click on the image to get the photo size options. Personally, I hate the photorank (you can turn that off in js too) and exif options, so this seems to work fine for me.

Stustaff · January 24, 2007

pmaland wrote:

I complained on the beta thread about the photobar, but wanted to add my concern in here as well. On three machines so far, I've had the photobar get stuck in the hover ON position, and wouldn't go away even if I clicked to new photos. Only a refresh would clear it. I'm still annoyed that it's covering up the picture I'm currently trying to look at. I've changed the delay, but since you HAVE to access it in order to get at the options, I don't want the delay too long. I just wish the darn thing didn't cover up my picture.

- Phil

There is a piece of javascript that will make the photobar appear under your image.

I have this set in my galleries here - http://stuarthill.smugmug.com/gallery/2352115#123127051

Edit- Here it is

WANT THE PHOTOBAR ON THE BOTTOM?

add this to your JS:
SM.PhotoBar.config.position = 'bottom';

storksb · January 24, 2007

Stustaff wrote:

There is a piece of javascript that will make the photobar appear under your image.

I have this set in my galleries here - http://stuarthill.smugmug.com/gallery/2352115#123127051

Edit- Here it is

WANT THE PHOTOBAR ON THE BOTTOM?

add this to your JS:
SM.PhotoBar.config.position = 'bottom';

Thanks to everyone that has replied, it would be nice if the options to move or turn off the photbar were placed in the gallery customisation page. How do I add the JS to my pages, I am a standard account user.

Thanks

Simon

storksb · January 24, 2007

Hi Andy thanks for the comments.

andy wrote:

2. Whilst talking about viewing different sizes, the way it is done now as an image above a darkened default page is just painful on the eyes and very distracting. Please revert back to old format.

You can still see them that way. All single image view links work still, and if you change viewing style to traditional, allthumbs for example, and click on the thumbs, you get the images "on the page" and not in lightbox.

This is a work around but I would like to have the old option of viewing my images as large as the old site did, accessable from the standard page but not in a lightbox, I guess another alternative would be to darken the lightbox background even more, maybe another customizable option.

Andy wrote:

3. On pages with a lighter colored theme,I sometimes get black vertical lines appear for a second or two as I move the mouse around the page. Using IE7.

If you can be more specific, theme name, and gallery link, we will surely look into that!

I cannot seem to replicate it today, maybe my browser was just acting funny

Andy wrote:

4. There appears to be a lot of wasted screen real estate, in gallery http://storksb.smugmug.com/gallery/2228748#114745231 I get a section with share phot and slideshow and that is all, taking up to much room.

I can't replicate, i see 15 thumbs and a main image (great shots!)

In the Masai gallery at the top they is a bar with slideshow and share photo, is it possible to free this screen space? Thanks for the comments.

dbd · January 25, 2007

Photobar not always there!
I display a lot of horizontal and vertical panoramas. It is essential to viewing them that they be resized to original. I finally had several people trained to select "other size 'O' " and then the format changes! Now I have a couple hundred images to recomment with instructions on how to resize, where it is possible. And currently it isn't always possible.

Before I do that:

1) As so many have asked, Can we get the 'classic' version as an option?

2) Is there some other way to optionally provide the sizing option? (I don't need to replace all the other functions of the popup-photobar.)

3) If there aren't any workarounds, or even if there are, Can the popup-photobar be corrected to work for all photo aspect ratios?
For examples from my site:
This image:
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#71424456
has a functional popup-photobar. It works even though the popup-photobar is taller than the image. However, wider aspect ratio images such as:
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#75390754
get no popup-photobar response to running the cursor over the image.
Even the vertical panoramas that are tall enough to host a popup-photobar don't always get the popup-photobar, for example:
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#71424442

Even if there is a workaround for 2), a fix for the problem in 3) would keep me from having to retrain the 'new-experienced' Smugmug users who come across my site.

I know that you guys were working hard to do good for us. It has always seemed to be a fundamental law of user interface design that any upgrade will be interpreted by some as an attack. I hope we get our requests for things like 2) or 3) past all our screaming for 1).

Thanks
Dale B. Dalrymple
dbdimages.smugmug.com

dbd · January 25, 2007

Panoramas without popup-photobar
I've looked at this with a number of panoramas. For horizontal format panoramas the popup-photobar quits somewhere between 81 and 85 pixels in image height on medium size. These are aspect ratios between 5.55 and 5.31.

Thanks

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com

Andy · January 26, 2007

storksb wrote:

Hi Andy thanks for the comments.

This is a work around but I would like to have the old option of viewing my images as large as the old site did, accessable from the standard page but not in a lightbox, I guess another alternative would be to darken the lightbox background even more, maybe another customizable option.

In the Masai gallery at the top they is a bar with slideshow and share photo, is it possible to free this screen space? Thanks for the comments.

Both of these, yes, if you are a power or pro user.

Andy · January 26, 2007

dbd wrote:

I've looked at this with a number of panoramas. For horizontal format panoramas the popup-photobar quits somewhere between 81 and 85 pixels in image height on medium size. These are aspect ratios between 5.55 and 5.31.

Thanks

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com

can we have a direct link to examples please? thanks!

storksb · January 26, 2007

Andy wrote:

Both of these, yes, if you are a power or pro user.

So Andy I guess us "Standard Users" are stuck with what has been thrust upon us. It would be nice if these options could be added to the basic customise gallery options. Just a thought.

Simon

dbd · January 26, 2007

Andy wrote:

can we have a direct link to examples please? thanks!

The examples in my original post were for FF 1.5. I get different results for IE6. So here are vertical and horizontal examples for each that both work, IE6 only works and neither works:

Vertical and Horizontal pans with or w/o popup-photobar:

V1 IE6 yes FF1.5 yes
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491134#71412840

V2 IE6 yes FF1.5 no
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491134#76568527

V3 IE6 no FF1.5 no
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#122778000

H1 IE6 yes FF1.5 yes
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#108652904

H2 IE6 yes FF1.5 no
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#108652908

H3 IE6 no FF1.5 no
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/1491201#125071316

Thanks

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com

Andy · January 26, 2007

dbd wrote:

The examples in my original post were for FF 1.5. I get different results for IE6. So here are vertical and horizontal examples for each that both work, IE6 only works and neither works:

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com

Hi Dale,

I've shown this to our engineers. Not sure if there's anything they can do, but they are looking at it. There's a restriction, based on size, so that the photobar doesn't appear on things like avatars, tiny pics. We'll see!

Oh the browser differences - thanks for detailing all that

dbd · January 26, 2007

Andy wrote:

Hi Dale,

I've shown this to our engineers. Not sure if there's anything they can do, but they are looking at it. There's a restriction, based on size, so that the photobar doesn't appear on things like avatars, tiny pics. We'll see!

Oh the browser differences - thanks for detailing all that

If it helps any, here is a gallery with images of 1 by 4,5,6,7,8,9,,10,12,15,20 in both horizontal and vertical formats to test with:
http://dbdimages.smugmug.com/gallery/2396996#125606313

Maybe the size limit needs to check that both sizes are too small instead of either side is too small.

Thanks

Dale B Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com

ghealy · January 26, 2007

Just another standard user adding his voice to the "Kill the photobar!" cry.

It really would be nice if we could choose to have this on or off in the gallery customization options.

TIA

New interface Concerns

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