new smugmug features - March 11th, 2005

[onethumb]

Don't get all excited, most of this stuff is bug fixes and cosmetic changes, but here's a list of some of them:

- Sharegroups have been overhauled with new GUI tools. Pretty nice.

- Non-existent Bio photos don't take up any space, and skinny Bio photos don't take up more space than they need. Leaves more room for your Bio text and HTML.

- Crop tool has a ratio choice for same as Original now.

- Image protection (formerly known as right-click protection, but renamed since we incorporate so much more than just right-click protection now) has been enhanced yet again. I won't go into details, since obscurity can actually be a good component of a security strategy, but it's much harder now to capture your photos. (The big holes are still there, but not pluggable).

- Slideshow has some new options to display filename or caption if you're the owner or it's allowed.

- Red "private gallery" tags have been added to your private galleries if you're logged in and can see them.

- Custom category dropdowns have been tweaked to make it more obvious when you have custom categories and how they can be modified.

- Rotation photos now has a 'flip' option in case you scanned your slide in backwards or something.

- Sorting by date bug in 'arrange galleries' bug was fixed.

- Our CSS files are now compressed & cached more effectively, making out pages a little zippier.

- Our Javascript files have had their compression & caching tweaked as well.

- PNG support for IE5.5 and higher has been tweaked. Hopefully it'll work a little bit better now. I suggest you bother Microsoft about decent PNG support any chance you get.

- Quite a few customers continue to use smugmug without paying their yearly renewal fees. We're starting to lock down features for people who are delinquent in their fees. Their photos and site will still remain available for browsing, but adding photos, creating galleries, and other features like that will be locked out.

- Tweaks to the API.

- Keywords now display their # of photos in a "hover" window, rather than next to the photo. Cleans up the display, but retains the functionality.

- Journal style on community keywords was broken. It's fixed now.

And lots more tiny things, but I think that's a good list.

Enjoy! Holler when stuff breaks! ;)

Don

[Andy]

:clap

always great to see the continued rollout of new features and fixes. thanks don and team!

[Nikolai]

Been busy, weren't you:-)
Cheers!:1drink

[lenscape]

Don't get all excited, most of this stuff is bug fixes and cosmetic changes, but here's a list of some of them:

- Sharegroups have been overhauled with new GUI tools. Pretty nice.

- Non-existent Bio photos don't take up any space, and skinny Bio photos don't take up more space than they need. Leaves more room for your Bio text and HTML.

- Crop tool has a ratio choice for same as Original now.

- Image protection (formerly known as right-click protection, but renamed since we incorporate so much more than just right-click protection now) has been enhanced yet again. I won't go into details, since obscurity can actually be a good component of a security strategy, but it's much harder now to capture your photos. (The big holes are still there, but not pluggable).

- Slideshow has some new options to display filename or caption if you're the owner or it's allowed.

- Red "private gallery" tags have been added to your private galleries if you're logged in and can see them.

- Custom category dropdowns have been tweaked to make it more obvious when you have custom categories and how they can be modified.

- Rotation photos now has a 'flip' option in case you scanned your slide in backwards or something.

- Sorting by date bug in 'arrange galleries' bug was fixed.

- Our CSS files are now compressed & cached more effectively, making out pages a little zippier.

- Our Javascript files have had their compression & caching tweaked as well.

- PNG support for IE5.5 and higher has been tweaked. Hopefully it'll work a little bit better now. I suggest you bother Microsoft about decent PNG support any chance you get.

- Quite a few customers continue to use smugmug without paying their yearly renewal fees. We're starting to lock down features for people who are delinquent in their fees. Their photos and site will still remain available for browsing, but adding photos, creating galleries, and other features like that will be locked out.

- Tweaks to the API.

- Keywords now display their # of photos in a "hover" window, rather than next to the photo. Cleans up the display, but retains the functionality.

- Journal style on community keywords was broken. It's fixed now.

And lots more tiny things, but I think that's a good list.

Enjoy! Holler when stuff breaks! ;)

Don

I was just wondering why the bio pic is in the center as opposed to in the upper left hand corner like it was prior to the adjustments.

[{JT}]

That snuck past me, it is fixed and waiting to go out.

I was just wondering why the bio pic is in the center as opposed to in the upper left hand corner like it was prior to the adjustments.

[lenscape]

That snuck past me, it is fixed and waiting to go out.
Thanks JT:thumb

[jfriend]

Wow, if I'm following this correctly, I asked for the "same as original" option for cropping last week and it's already been implemented. That's impressive! Thanks.

--John

Don't get all excited, most of this stuff is bug fixes and cosmetic changes, but here's a list of some of them:

- Sharegroups have been overhauled with new GUI tools. Pretty nice.

- Non-existent Bio photos don't take up any space, and skinny Bio photos don't take up more space than they need. Leaves more room for your Bio text and HTML.

- Crop tool has a ratio choice for same as Original now.

- Image protection (formerly known as right-click protection, but renamed since we incorporate so much more than just right-click protection now) has been enhanced yet again. I won't go into details, since obscurity can actually be a good component of a security strategy, but it's much harder now to capture your photos. (The big holes are still there, but not pluggable).

- Slideshow has some new options to display filename or caption if you're the owner or it's allowed.

- Red "private gallery" tags have been added to your private galleries if you're logged in and can see them.

- Custom category dropdowns have been tweaked to make it more obvious when you have custom categories and how they can be modified.

- Rotation photos now has a 'flip' option in case you scanned your slide in backwards or something.

- Sorting by date bug in 'arrange galleries' bug was fixed.

- Our CSS files are now compressed & cached more effectively, making out pages a little zippier.

- Our Javascript files have had their compression & caching tweaked as well.

- PNG support for IE5.5 and higher has been tweaked. Hopefully it'll work a little bit better now. I suggest you bother Microsoft about decent PNG support any chance you get.

- Quite a few customers continue to use smugmug without paying their yearly renewal fees. We're starting to lock down features for people who are delinquent in their fees. Their photos and site will still remain available for browsing, but adding photos, creating galleries, and other features like that will be locked out.

- Tweaks to the API.

- Keywords now display their # of photos in a "hover" window, rather than next to the photo. Cleans up the display, but retains the functionality.

- Journal style on community keywords was broken. It's fixed now.

And lots more tiny things, but I think that's a good list.

Enjoy! Holler when stuff breaks! ;)

Don

[fish]

- Rotation photos now has a 'flip' option in case you scanned your slide in backwards or something.

What is a "slide", Don? :scratch

[winnjewett]

- Image protection (formerly known as right-click protection, but renamed since we incorporate so much more than just right-click protection now) has been enhanced yet again. I won't go into details, since obscurity can actually be a good component of a security strategy, but it's much harder now to capture your photos. (The big holes are still there, but not pluggable).

I hate to sound like too much of a cynic, but is Image protection really a fight worth even attempting? Have photogs found that they make more sales when this feature is enabled? Surely there is not way to truely win this war, but is it worth the effort to win a few small battles along the way?

-winn

[onethumb]

I hate to sound like too much of a cynic, but is Image protection really a fight worth even attempting? Have photogs found that they make more sales when this feature is enabled? Surely there is not way to truely win this war, but is it worth the effort to win a few small battles along the way?

-winn

Amen. Anyone who knows anything about the way computers work realizes that there's truly no way to protect against your photos other than not letting them be seen.

However, it turns out that almost no pro photographers understand the way computers work. ;) Seriously, it was easier for us to write the software to do decent image protection than it was to educate photographers about the fact that it's useless.

They have a warm fuzzy blanket, now, despite the fact that their photos aren't (and *cannot* be, or we'd do it) protected.

As to whether it actually helps sales, I'd bet sizable sums of money that intrusive image protection *hurst* pro sales, not helps them. I think there's a reason why CD sales increased when MP3s became easy to download. Along those same lines, I think there's value in, say, a parent being able to easily tell the rest of their family how cute a pro photographer's photos of their son are -- but image protection can often prevent them from sharing the sales love.

Don

[rainforest1155]

What is a "slide", Don? :scratchUsed back in times of film photography and sometimes still today...special typ of film where the negative (actually a dia-positive) is put under glass and is framed in order to be put in a dia-projector to be shown at a family-meeting on a big canvas! :D

Hope I got the english terms correct somehow.

EDIT: Andy linked here (http://www.starvingphotographer.com/) in another thread and there you can see some slides...they are digitally made, but I guess you get the idea.

[winnjewett]

Amen. Anyone who knows anything about the way computers work realizes that there's truly no way to protect against your photos other than not letting them be seen.
Don, thanks for your great reply. It's good to hear that thought and reason is the driving force behind the actions of smugmug.

Sort of along the image protection lines, I think that one of the best ways to for a photographer to both protect his images and ensure that people won't forget about him is to print his name, website, and a copyright notice on the back of all his prints. I have heard many stories of people taking prints to kinkos and walmart to have duplicates made, only to be turned around as a result of the copyright notice on the back.

It would be great if your printers could offer either printing on the backside or the addition of a sticker to the backside. Any thoughts?

thanks
-Winn