sharing EXIF link

tspore · March 13, 2008

So I cannot anylonger get the display exif link to work with my photos. ...
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=224372925

All I see is a blank screen.
Even in the tutorial all i see is a blank screen. What am I doing wrong?
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/HowToSeeExif

jfriend · March 13, 2008

tspore wrote:

So I cannot anylonger get the display exif link to work with my photos. ...
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=224372925

All I see is a blank screen.
Even in the tutorial all i see is a blank screen. What am I doing wrong?
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/HowToSeeExif

I tried it also and it looks broken to me. Hopefully someone from Smugmug will chime in.

BeachBill · March 13, 2008

Below is a copy and paste of the exif link presented for one of my photos. Comparing to what you have, the difference is the ImageKey is missing from your link. If I remove the ImageKey from my link, I too get a blank page, but with it in, it works fine.

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=264096094&ImageKey=zfiQh

jfriend · March 13, 2008

BeachBill wrote:

Below is a copy and paste of the exif link presented for one of my photos. Comparing to what you have, the difference is the ImageKey is missing from your link. If I remove the ImageKey from my link, I too get a blank page, but with it in, it works fine.

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=264096094&ImageKey=zfiQh

Smugmug is really inconsistent with this blasted ImageKey. Sometimes you can't use it at all. Most of the time the ImageKey is not needed for an image in a public gallery, but sometimes it is. Sometimes you append it with an underscore to the ImageID. And sometimes you have to use a whole separate parameter for the ImageKey.

This was clearly not done consistently. Apparently, the reason it didn't work for me is I tried without the ImageKey and then I tried with it appended after an underscore. Who knew there's a new ImageKey parameter you have to use. It SHOULD have worked for a pre-existing gallery without the ImageKey at all. And, I would have expected it to work with an underscore appended ImageKey. But, alas neither is the case.

And, the descriptive page is clearly wrong.

Andy · March 13, 2008

tspore wrote:

So I cannot anylonger get the display exif link to work with my photos. ...
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=224372925

All I see is a blank screen.
Even in the tutorial all i see is a blank screen. What am I doing wrong?
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/HowToSeeExif

Hi, that photo is here:

http://43photo.smugmug.com/gallery/3870111_ES7t2/1/224372925_ZskaX#224372925

when I use the photobar, get the exif, then click "photo information" to get the exif share link popup, I get this url:
http://43photo.smugmug.com/photos/newexif.mg?ImageID=224372925&ImageKey=ZskaX

which indeed does have an image key and does indeed work.

Are you contstructing the url manually or something? Let us know, ok?

Andy · March 13, 2008

jfriend wrote:

Smugmug is really inconsistent with this blasted ImageKey.

I believe it's working properly in this poster's case. See my post above. If I'm missing something, let me know, thanks.

And, the descriptive page is clearly wrong.

Which descriptive page, where, please? I can't get it fixed if I don't know how :jfriend

Andy · March 13, 2008

tspore wrote:

Even in the tutorial all i see is a blank screen. What am I doing wrong?
http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/HowToSeeExif

That's our old wiki, olde & busted

Our new wiki is here:
http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/How+To+See+Exif

and the link is good.

holler if you have more questions, thanks!

jfriend · March 13, 2008

Andy wrote:

I believe it's working properly in this poster's case. See my post above. If I'm missing something, let me know, thanks.

Unfortunately, some of the elegance of the design of the link system in Smugmug was lost with the addition of the ImageKey. If you know the imageID and imageKey, you should be able to construct a link anywhere to that image using basically the same rules everywhere. But, different things work differently (when they didn't need to and didn't used to). Some examples:

If you want a link directly to the image, it's imageID_imageKey.
If you want a link to the gallery page that an image is on, it's /gallery/galleryID_galleryKey#imageID.
If you want a link to the lightbox for an image, it's gallery/galleryID_galleryKey#imageID_imageKey-xx-LB
If you want a link to the Exif info, it's ?ImageID=xxxx&ImageKey=yyyy.
A slideshow link is /photos/sspopup.mg?AlbumID=723627&AlbumKey=DBqjV

Five types of screens, five different syntaxes.

It's not busted. You can train yourself to just always view the actual screen and copy the URL from the browser, but it was quite elegant before (you could easily just learn the URL system and use it from memory) and now some of that elegance is lost.

Andy · March 13, 2008

jfriend wrote:

It's not busted. You can train yourself to just always view the actual screen and copy the URL from the browser, but it was quite elegant before (you could easily just learn the URL system and use it from memory) and now some of that elegance is lost.

I totally agree, I liked it better before, too

But we're tighter, more secure now. We'll all get used to the keys eventually.

We're also gonna make it easy to get links. That's a promise.

jfriend · March 13, 2008

Andy wrote:

I totally agree, I liked it better before, too

But we're tighter, more secure now. We'll all get used to the keys eventually.

We're also gonna make it easy to get links. That's a promise.

I'm not objecting to the new security. I'm commenting on the elegance of the implementation. It could have been just as secure without losing the elegance. For example, if everywhere that it previously took an imageID, it could now just take imageID_imageKey, then we'd have exactly the same system with just a longer (and more secure) imageID. In fact, all anyone would have had to learn is that imageIDs are now longer. But, that isn't how it was done unfortunately.

Andy · March 13, 2008

jfriend wrote:

I'm not objecting to the new security. I'm commenting on the elegance of the implementation. It could have been just as secure without losing the elegance. For example, if everywhere that it previously took an imageID, it could now just take imageID_imageKey, then we'd have exactly the same system with just a longer (and more secure) imageID. In fact, all anyone would have had to learn is that imageIDs are now longer. But, that isn't how it was done unfortunately.

It was a 9000lb gorilla that was wrestled to the ground in extremely short order, a project of massive scale, that touched nearly every corner of our site.

No doubt there are some links and places that need cleaning up. Would love it if you'd put all your thoughts on this in one post in the FR thread, and I'll be sure the SmugSorcerers see it.

Thanks for keeping us honest, John!

tspore · March 14, 2008

Thanks Andy -
I guess I am just out of date with the image key thing -
http://43photo.smugmug.com/gallery/3870111_ES7t2#224372925
Here in my gallery I do not see the link to copy exif info.
How would I add it to the image?
Thanks for the answers guys.

Andy · March 14, 2008

tspore wrote:

Thanks Andy -
I guess I am just out of date with the image key thing -
http://43photo.smugmug.com/gallery/3870111_ES7t2#224372925
Here in my gallery I do not see the link to copy exif info.
How would I add it to the image?
Thanks for the answers guys.

In the exif floatie, click the link for Photo Information:

Does this help?

tspore · March 14, 2008

Andy wrote:

In the exif floatie, click the link for Photo Information:

Does this help?

Ops my bad. Thanks Andy.

Andy · March 14, 2008

tspore wrote:

Ops my bad. Thanks Andy.

It's no trouble at all, my pleasure

BeachBill · March 14, 2008

tspore wrote:

Here in my gallery I do not see the link to copy exif info.
How would I add it to the image?

Another way, in addition to what Andy just said, is when viewing individual photos, you've got the "more details: exif" link below the photo. Click on that and the photo information will pop up in a separate window with an area titled "To link to this information, copy the url below:"

Both of these methods are in the new wiki Andy provided a link to.

sharing EXIF link

Comments