What's wrong with the zoom thumbnail tool?

jfriend · October 22, 2007

When I go to zoom the thumbnail on one image, the zoom setting page appears to be fully visually loaded, but it won't let me do anything for a very long time. When I try to pick an aspect ratio, I get an error message that says "Page loading, please wait".

When I look, I see that the browser spinner is still going, though the page appears fully loaded visually.

This last time I did this, it took almost 3 minutes before the page thought it was done loading and would actually let me specify the zoom on a thumbnail and this is on a T1 so it's certainly not a bandwidth limitation.

IE says that it's trying to download a picture: http://www.smugmug.com/toolthumbs.mg?tool-cropmask&Size=Medium&'ImageID=... and that's what it is waiting to finish.

What is going on with this page? What is it waiting to finish loading?

Andy · October 22, 2007

Related to our processing queue, right now, I'm sure. Try again later, John, I'm so very sorry.

jfriend · October 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

Related to our processing queue, right now, I'm sure. Try again later, John, I'm so very sorry.

I guess I'd ask whether the design really needs to work this way and needs to depend on your processing queue server load just to load the tool page.

I could understand why processing the final zoom action might take awhile (though we'd love to see that Ajaxed), but loading the tool page shouldn't take long at all. That's just some HTML, a standard size image, a little Javascript with no back-end processing at all. I can think of no back-end reason at all why this shouldn't be anything more than a simple page load.

Andy · October 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

I rather doubt the design needs to work this way and needs to depend on your processing queue server load.

I could understand why processing the final zoom action might take awhile (though we'd love to see that Ajaxed), but loading the tool page shouldn't take long at all. That's just some HTML, a standard size image, a little Javascript with no back-end processing at all. I can think of no back-end reason at all why this shouldn't be anything more than a simple page load.

Hi John, I'm terribly sorry, it's the only answer I can come up with right now.

jfriend · October 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

Hi John, I'm terribly sorry, it's the only answer I can come up with right now.

If you want the zoom tool to work better, I guess I was hoping this feedback could get to your developers. I suspect there's a mistaken dependency on some back-end load for just loading the tool page.

bwg · October 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

If you want the zoom tool to work better, I guess I was hoping this feedback could get to your developers. I suspect there's a mistaken dependency on some back-end load for just loading the tool page.

The script runs when the body load event fires. The body load event fires when all resources on the page are completely loaded. This includes images and scripts, so if the site or network is slow (as it is today) things take longer than expected.

Back when this tool was developed many years ago, this was the standard way of doing things. We're all a lot smarter now and have other methods for determining when scripts should fire. Tools are on our list of things to update.

jfriend · October 22, 2007

bigwebguy wrote:

The script runs when the body load event fires. The body load event fires when all resources on the page are completely loaded. This includes images and scripts, so if the site or network is slow (as it is today) things take longer than expected.

Back when this tool was developed many years ago, this was the standard way of doing things. We're all a lot smarter now and have other methods for determining when scripts should fire. Tools are on our list of things to update.

I'll be looking forward to a tools update sometime. Cropping and zoom thumbing is particularly painful.

I looked into this one a little more. It's a generated background image (the half-tone version of the image that is used to help show a cropped area) that is causing the problem. That probably does need backend CPU to generate. I guess that is really, really slow right now. For some reason, IE seems to take a lot, lot longer to load this image than Firefox - no idea why there would be any difference. I would guess that Javascript/CSS transparency and other types of styling could probably solve this problem on the client without having to generate a new image in your back-end.

bwg · October 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

I'll be looking forward to a tools update sometime. Cropping and zoom thumbing is particularly painful.

I looked into this one a little more. It's a generated background image (the half-tone version of the image that is used to help show a cropped area) that is causing the problem. That probably does need backend CPU to generate. I guess that is really, really slow right now. For some reason, IE seems to take a lot, lot longer to load this image than Firefox - no idea why there would be any difference. I would guess that Javascript/CSS transparency and other types of styling could probably solve this problem on the client without having to generate a new image in your back-end.

CSS background images don't block the body load event. While the custom image would cause a display issue, it wouldn't cause the 'wait till the page is done loading' message.

Relax John. Go have a beverage. We know the tools are in need of a refresh.

jfriend · October 22, 2007

bigwebguy wrote:

CSS background images don't block the body load event. While the custom image would cause a display issue, it wouldn't cause the 'wait till the page is done loading' message.

Relax John. Go have a beverage. We know the tools are in need of a refresh.

I'm just frustrated. It took more than an hour to zoom one thumb in each of 13 galleries and then set each as the featured photo. This is something that should have taken less than 10 minutes and it took more than six times that long. I know you don't want the tools to reflect that poorly on your service so I was trying to start a dialog on this particular one and point out a design choice that was causing much of the slowness.

If you are going to address the tools (including this one) such that it won't take this long, even when the site is heavily loaded, then you can tell me that and I'll wait for that. Nobody has ever said that this was going to happen so how could I know?

Andy · October 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

Nobody has ever said that this was going to happen so how could I know?

Yeah it's a frustrating day for us

and I hear you.

We don't talk much about future things - but we have let on here and there that the tools will get a full makeover by the SmugSorcerers. You'd have to have been in the right thread at the right time to see that though

Sorry you had a bad experience today!

jfriend · October 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

Yeah it's a frustrating day for us and I hear you.

We don't talk much about future things - but we have let on here and there that the tools will get a full makeover by the SmugSorcerers. You'd have to have been in the right thread at the right time to see that though

Sorry you had a bad experience today!

OK, thanks. I'd be happy to provide some feedback on the tools things that I think are most in need of updating if somebody wants it.

Andy · October 22, 2007

jfriend wrote:

OK, thanks. I'd be happy to provide some feedback on the tools things that I think are most in need of updating if somebody wants it.

we crave the feedback. Bring it on, right here!

renstar · October 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

we crave the feedback. Bring it on, right here!

OK, here's one: I'd like to not have to use a hack to get bulk zoom thumbs.

-r

Andy · October 22, 2007

renstar wrote:

OK, here's one: I'd like to not have to use a hack to get bulk zoom thumbs.

-r

But isn't it nice that the hack is there?
thanks for letting us know how you feel though, we really do love this!

renstar · October 22, 2007

Andy wrote:

But isn't it nice that the hack is there?
thanks for letting us know how you feel though, we really do love this!

Yes, it is nice that the hack is there, and even better that you all allow your users to create them, i just don't have time to get stuff set up right now to actually use it (or maybe I do, right now..:), so I'd love to see it (and other commonly used hacks) as automatically provided tools.

bwg · October 22, 2007

renstar wrote:

Yes, it is nice that the hack is there, and even better that you all allow your users to create them, i just don't have time to get stuff set up right now to actually use it (or maybe I do, right now..:), so I'd love to see it (and other commonly used hacks) as automatically provided tools.

me too

dogwood · October 23, 2007

Time for me to pile onto this thread-- I'm using BZT. Set everything up on a gallery, stepped away, so far ten thumbs have been zoomed in just under three hours. If my math is correct, that means it's taking 16 minutes to zoom a single thumb nail

Allen · October 23, 2007

I did a gallery with 49 yesterday and it took about 15 min. for the 1x1 boxes
to all show filled with images and another 20 min. to complete.

What's wrong with the zoom thumbnail tool?

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