Firefox gallery view freaks out

GemGem · January 22, 2009

Hi!

I can view my gallery fine in Safari but in firefox the thumbnails appear on the left side, then the bigger
picture below the thumbnails.. can someone assist me with this.. pretty please.

http://anagiltaylorphotography.smugmug.com

Thanks!
GG

Andy · January 22, 2009

Hello, please set your View > Zoom to default.

jfriend · January 22, 2009

Andy wrote:

Hello, please set your View > Zoom to default.

Andy, this seems to be getting to be a more and more common problem and most of the time it probably happens to our viewers and we never even know they had that sort of sub-optimal experience.

Have your wizards considered looking into how to prevent this problem even when zoom is set to something other than 100%?

GemGem · January 22, 2009

Andy wrote:

Hello, please set your View > Zoom to default.

Hi Andy, Pardon my ignorance, but where is that?

Andy · January 22, 2009

GemGem wrote:

Hi Andy, Pardon my ignorance, but where is that?

It's that big menu bar across the top of your browser. View>Zoom>Reset

{JT} · January 22, 2009

jfriend wrote:

Andy, this seems to be getting to be a more and more common problem and most of the time it probably happens to our viewers and we never even know they had that sort of sub-optimal experience.

Have your wizards considered looking into how to prevent this problem even when zoom is set to something other than 100%?

I can dig in to FIrefox to see if they provide a type of listener or anything - but this is a fairly low priority.

alacranera · March 29, 2009

Fix Firefox zoom
This shouldn't be a low priority.

I just figured out, after about 10 hours of sheer frustration, that the source of my ills was Firefox zoom management. I searched dgrin, I searched the web, and I typed in miles of tentative code before I figured out that one stupid option on a sub-menu on a specific browser was left unchecked. Only now that I know that, is it easy to search and confirm my diagnosis.

Smugmug's whole philosophy of customization is based on the Firefox WebDeveloper add-on. In my personal world, Mac and Windows folks alike use Firefox primarily. In other words, Firefox is currently a, if not the, major browser. And, despite all its smugness, Smugmug code doesn't really play very well with Firefox.

"Stretchy" looks absolutely crappy if its display is corrupted by something so silly as a browser preference set at something other than Smugmug's ideal. I would be embarrassed to send a client to my site and have her see nothing but a half page of thumbnails. I also would not expect her to spend the 10 hours I did trying to figure out why the display was so crappy. I would also not expect her to even click on an "easy instructions for making your browser work here" link. I frequent lots and lots of photo sites. Never once have I had to "reset" my browser to view them, until I met Smugmug.

The bottom line is: Smugmug (at least in "Stretchy" mode) is not fully compatible with Firefox.

The question is: Why is that not a priority to fix?

{JT} · March 29, 2009

Well, it depends on the type of zoom that you are using. Zoom text only is better than having that part disabled. I can take a look to see what we can do - but afaik the browser makers don't enable a setting that I can read with javascript to see if zooming is happening.

alacranera wrote:

This shouldn't be a low priority.

I just figured out, after about 10 hours of sheer frustration, that the source of my ills was Firefox zoom management. I searched dgrin, I searched the web, and I typed in miles of tentative code before I figured out that one stupid option on a sub-menu on a specific browser was left unchecked. Only now that I know that, is it easy to search and confirm my diagnosis.

Smugmug's whole philosophy of customization is based on the Firefox WebDeveloper add-on. In my personal world, Mac and Windows folks alike use Firefox primarily. In other words, Firefox is currently a, if not the, major browser. And, despite all its smugness, Smugmug code doesn't really play very well with Firefox.

"Stretchy" looks absolutely crappy if its display is corrupted by something so silly as a browser preference set at something other than Smugmug's ideal. I would be embarrassed to send a client to my site and have her see nothing but a half page of thumbnails. I also would not expect her to spend the 10 hours I did trying to figure out why the display was so crappy. I would also not expect her to even click on an "easy instructions for making your browser work here" link. I frequent lots and lots of photo sites. Never once have I had to "reset" my browser to view them, until I met Smugmug.

The bottom line is: Smugmug (at least in "Stretchy" mode) is not fully compatible with Firefox.

The question is: Why is that not a priority to fix?

jfriend · March 29, 2009

{JT} wrote:

Well, it depends on the type of zoom that you are using. Zoom text only is better than having that part disabled. I can take a look to see what we can do - but afaik the browser makers don't enable a setting that I can read with javascript to see if zooming is happening.

After laying out the page, could you query the position of things and see that the main image has been forced down below the thumbs and then take some corrective action?

I agree with alacranera that it's a pretty horrid user experience and it is completely out of our control. I'm surprised that you all aren't more concerned that a population of viewers are having a crummy Smugmug viewing experience. Besides reflecting poorly on our sites when it happens, it certainly doesn't look good for Smugmug either.

Andy · March 29, 2009

jfriend wrote:

After laying out the page, could you query the position of things and see that the main image has been forced down below the thumbs and then take some corrective action?

I agree with alacranera that it's a pretty horrid user experience and it is completely out of our control. I'm surprised that you all aren't more concerned that a population of viewers are having a crummy Smugmug viewing experience. Besides reflecting poorly on our sites when it happens, it certainly doesn't look good for Smugmug either.

We are concerned, John. But it's not something we've had control over. JT's looked in the past, and he's agreed to look now, too.

Have you tried Dgrin, or Dpreview, or other sites with the same type of zooming in Firefox? It's ugly

jfriend · March 29, 2009

Andy wrote:

We are concerned, John. But it's not something we've had control over. JT's looked in the past, and he's agreed to look now, too.

Have you tried Dgrin, or Dpreview, or other sites with the same type of zooming in Firefox? It's ugly

Actually dgrin works perfectly fine with Firefox zooming as best I can tell (I'm writing this with zooming on).

dpreview is busted with zooming and that's because it's a really bad design in that regard - always has been. The issue with dpreview is that they have a hard-coded design that assumes they know the max width of certain text elements (in pixels). That is poor HTML design, not the fault of a browser.

Anyway, regardless of who's fault it is, you have a site design that looks horrible in some percentage of viewers using a browser that you support. I know you could detect this condition with javascript, thus I imagine there is at least some work-around you could provide. It would also be possible to change the way the page is laid out so the image couldn't jump down below ever. This might cause a horizontal scroll bar to appear if the image didn't fit by a few pixels (which would be fine). I'm not half the web developer that {JT} is, but I'm sure there are things you could do to address this issue if you really wanted to.

Andy · March 29, 2009

jfriend wrote:

I'm sure there are things you could do to address this issue if you really wanted to.

And therein lies the reason that I made sure JT saw this. Thanks again for posting, John.

jfriend · March 29, 2009

Andy wrote:

And therein lies the reason that I made sure JT saw this. Thanks again for posting, John.

The more I think about it, it seems like any solution to this issue should include changing the HTML layout so that the browser cannot put the main image below the thumbs. We never want it there, even when it won't completely fit so the HTML/CSS should probably not give the browser permission to do so (the main image and thumbs are both now float:left so if the main image doesn't fit on screen, the browser is specifically instructed to wrap it down below). A different layout mechanism would not give the browser that option.

Firefox gallery view freaks out

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