Help SmugMug make a key decision

BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
edited November 30, 2007 in SmugMug Support
The whispers for a larger image size have turned to a low rumble and we know what that means: the march of monitor pixels will increase the rumble volume, so we're thinking about an XL image size.

(Yes, we know the rumble volume for this is not as loud as for some other things in the queue, but it turns out to be an opportune time given engineering work we're doing on storage right now.)

The rumbles: "I don't get enough L when I click L."

We think XL should be 1024x768. Below the image where you currently see an L link, XL would appear beside it. Just like L, pros will be able to disable XL.

The good:

Two new gallery styles would be born, smugmug L and smugmug XL, which you can preview:

http://onethumb.smugmug.com/gallery/1377106

The dilemma:

smugmug L style would use the Large image size, which can be up to 800 pixels wide or high. For landscape photos, 800 px wide looks great and fits a 1280 monitor beautifully. But at 800 px high, you wouldn't be able to read the caption without scrolling, or any of the other stuff below the photo. That's because monitors are wider than tall.

The solution with the medium size was to make them up to 600 px wide or 450 px tall.

We can think of 2 practical solutions to this dilemma. I'll also mention a third not-so-practical solution so someone else doesn't have to propose it:

1. Resize all Large images to 800 px wide or 600 px tall.

The downside is all portrait-mode images that are now posted on forums and blogs at 800 px high would become 600 px high. 99% of forum posts would just adjust, but a few would look distorted -- like the ones on ADVrider where I posted a L image and specified in HTML in the post that it was 800px high.

2. Only resize the Larges going forward to 800 px wide or 600 px tall.

The downside is legacy Large images would make you scroll when viewed in the new smugmug L style. The upside: they would look as they did when they were originally posted in forums and blogs.

3. This one's messy... When the image is requested externally, give it up in it's original 800 px-high glory; when it's requested inside for a smugmug L gallery, resize on the fly to 600 px.

Which of these is the least of evils? Can you think up a fourth, more elegant solution?

Thanks!
Baldy


EDIT: Nov 30th, 2007: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=77553 :evil
«1345

Comments

  • KMCCKMCC Registered Users Posts: 717 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    Maybe I've had a long day, but I'm having trouble understanding the need for this change and I don't find much merit in any of the proposed solutions.

    Kent
    "Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."- Ansel Adams
    Web site
  • cmasoncmason Registered Users Posts: 2,506 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    #1 seems the best to me. Oh and I welcome this change...Large is too small!

    I go on the assumption that most blog posts don't force the image size, as most probably refer directly to the smugmug file. I also suspect that a great many do not post too many Large photos, but that is just my experience. Finally, those who have forced the sizes likely are doing some customization, so would be skilled at correcting if needed.
  • cletuscletus Registered Users Posts: 1,930 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
  • jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    I vote for 2a
    Baldy wrote:

    Which of these is the least of evils? Can you think up a fourth, more elegant solution?
    Yeah for larger images!

    #1 seems out. Like it or not, smugmug is an image hosting site and more than a few people use links to smugmug hosted images in web pages (forums and other types of web pages). You just can't unilaterally assume that your users haven't assumed the image was a certain size. Even if it isn't coded to a certain size in the image tag, the whole layout of their HTML page may have assumptions about it's size.

    You could leave the -L image as it is and create a new -L2 that followed the different rules, but if someone links to the existing -L image, I think you can't change what they get.

    #2 is probably the best compromise. Existing -L images stay the size they are, but Smugmug isn't burdened with forever supporting the existing size on new galleries. You could even give the user a control on a gallery basis or a site-wide basis to "upgrade" their Large images to the new size. If you think you have a reliable way to communicate with your customers, you could even announce that everyone will get converted in 12 months, so if you have any external links that rely on the current -L size, they should get fixed.

    #3 seems overly complicated, fraught with some difficulties (it won't always work perfectly) and forever burdens Smugmug with maintaining this legacy support which I think would be bad for all of us to drag on this complexity forever.

    So, I'd vote for 2a which is to automatically make newly created galleries to the new size of Large, give the user the opportunity to "upgrade" their existing galleries to the new size Larges and optionally announce that everyone will be upgraded in 12 or 18 months. This seems like it achieves simplicity in the long run, provides a graceful transition period, gives new galleries the immediate benefit of the new size and gives customers plenty of time to adapt.

    In another twist, it seems like user created themes or CSS customizations that assume a particular size of Large image might also have problems with the new size.
    --John
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  • Mike LaneMike Lane Registered Users Posts: 7,106 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    My $0.02:

    I think Smugmug is in danger of gallery style fatigue. Filmstrip? Sure! Critique, uh... well okay. Super large? Uh guys... I know that it's probably mostly the lazy themer / smugmug site designer in me, but when I already have to worry about styling:
    • The homepage (that is a gallery after all)
    • Smugmug
    • Smugmug Small
    • Traditional
    • All Thumbs
    • Slideshow Small
    • Slideshow Medium
    • Slideshow Large
    • Journal
    • Filmstrip Small
    • Filmstrip Medium
    • Filmstrip Large
    • Single Image Small
    • Single Image Medium
    • Single Image Large
    • Single Image Original
    • Category pages
    • Sub-category pages
    • Password required pages
    • empty gallery pages
    • Make sure all the above styles work in the keyword galleries (which just go easier to do. Thanks!)
    • Same for the Date pages (again, just got easier ... thanks!)
    • Same for popular pages
    • And of course the lightbox rolleyes1.gif
    I'd really rather not have to worry about Smugmug XL or Smugmug Gigantor or whatever it'd be called. Actually let's not forget all the other styles that will be affected. This is what I see being added to this list:
    • Smugmug Gigantor
    • Filmstrip Gigantor
    • Slideshow Gigantor
    • Single Image Gigantor
    • All of the above for Keywords
    • Same for Dates
    • Same for Popular
    • And my money is going on their eventually being a Critique gigantor too.
    Obviously I know that the list that poor wittle me would have to update is smaller than your guys' by leaps and bounds. But the way I see it adding the gigantor image size would add 25% more galleries to worry about.

    Okay, almost done...

    Also I'm thinking that as a user who isn't all that familiar with Smugmug, being inundated with gallery styles wouldn't be a good thing. My limited experience watching people navigate my site who aren't familiar with Smugmug (and may have been a smidge tipsy :uhoh - not me, them) was that they got frustrated by all the gallery style choices. Plus there seems to be some overlap with the gallery styles. Do we need an all thumbs and a traditional? Why not All Traditional (or captiony thumb goodness)? Single image and critique? Why not critique small, med, large? Filmstrip and non FS slideshow? Why not filmstrip with a FS slideshow button?

    Combine, consolidate, and then expand thumb.gif If you did consolidate the gallery styles, I'd be all over the gigantor styles like DavidTO on a Mac deal.gif But now I'm thinking, ugh, I'm not sure if $500 is enough of an incentive for me to do a theme and maybe it's time to think about increasing my rates.

    Of course, I'm just one lazy guy with an agenda. ne_nau.gif
    Y'all don't want to hear me, you just want to dance.

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  • pat.kanepat.kane Registered Users Posts: 332 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    I like the idea of a larger size, but like Mike wonder what the overall impact is. Themes have been slow to roll out in any large quantity. This will make their completion even more difficult.

    I've been looking over the images provided and am really at a loss right now for providing any constructive criticism on a better way to do it though. I'm sure if it's implemented, everyone will find a way to adapt.
  • dmcdmc Registered Users Posts: 427 Major grins
    edited April 17, 2006
    Journal Large.... All my galleries use it...(I upgraded to Power user just for this customized view) If I could select how many pictures per page, I would like that....I would just up it to 50 pics per page, Large!

    I just like to view my pics by dragging the scroll bar down, no clicking, black background, simple.

    I am surprised you still haven't offered Journal Medium and Journal Large... It was an easy mod. (I mean, put options on the Journal view, don't make a bunch of new styles).

    I know, I didn't respond to the original question, it was too complicated... my eyes glazed over... I just wanna see my pics.

    It works so good now, I use smugmug to browse my pics, I don't even bother with my desktop software... iloveyou.gif

    Enjoy the Butterflies Here
    64844217-M-1.jpg
  • asdasd Registered Users Posts: 115 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    I can't wait for larger images! I think that was one of the first things I wrote to support about after signing up last year.

    I like jfriend's reasoning and vote for his solution. I guess that's #2.

    At the same time I also get Mike Lane's complaints. I don't have the time to tinker and get in-depth with customizing my own site (and want to save visitors confusion), so I've instead forced all of my galleries to a specific style. A solution to Mike's problem might be to let us decide which styles are available to visitors of a gallery, just as we can do for product availability.

    At any rate, I can't wait for the larger images!!
  • joffunjoffun Registered Users Posts: 97 Big grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    #1 Definitely
    I don't know how many people post large images externally on forums etc, but as a proportion I would imagine that it is small.

    Having different size images in the same gallery (#2) would look very odd & not at all streamlined IMO

    As others have said, #3 sounds just sounds a bit messy

    So out of the three I would go for #1
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited April 18, 2006
    I agree w/mike (thats twice in 2 days...something must be wrong w/me)

    while i agree w/most of his points from a styler POV, i believe the bigger issue to be the user POV. There are just too many gallery templates. I'm sure you guys have staticstics that support your decisions, but from where I sit, I just dont see the need for filmstrip, critique and both allthumbs and traditional.

    As a pretty knowledgeable user, I spend most of my time in sm-small style even though i have pretty hi rez displays (1280x1024) i vary rarely have a browser maximized to my full window and sm-small lets me see everything on one screen w/out having to scroll. If i need to find an image fast or use the bulk zoom hack, i'll switch to allthumbs. Anyone else i've ever watched use SM has only used SM style and maybe slideshow.

    my suggestion, would be before or in concert with adding new huge image styles, to consolidate your existing styles:

    - One smugmug style in the style picker then the user could select sm/med/lg/gigantor once in the gallery (like slideshow)

    - combine allthumbs/traditional and allow users to select options for captions and number of thumbs per page

    - let the user select sm/med/lg in journal style

    - throw a big party, thank them for their service and then retire filmstrip and critique. yes i know critique has been incorporated in the new browse page...but it could be replaced with 'Most popular Sites/Photographers' mwink.gif

    so that's my .02, but since you asked I vote for option 1.
    Pedal faster
  • JamesJWegJamesJWeg Registered Users Posts: 795 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    KMCC wrote:
    Maybe I've had a long day, but I'm having trouble understanding the need for this change and I don't find much merit in any of the proposed solutions.

    That is two of us. I have never really liked the idea of differant size depending on portrait vs landscape. How about having xl OFF by default so we don't have to go through all our exsisting gallies to change it if we don't want it? 1024x768 is getting too easy for people to steal the shot and get a good print, at that size it would be easy to get a good print of a protected photo. Maybe you could script it to have xl off by default on all exsisting galleries that are protected.

    James.
  • gblottergblotter Registered Users Posts: 176 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    I'm not sure I see the need for XL either (change is bad, we fear change) ...

    But if you are determined to move forward with XL, then I think option #1 is the only solution. Having all these provisions to display a differently sized "Large" photo will only be a support nightmare in the future - users will not be able to figure out what smugmug is doing and they will be bugging you constantly with questions. So just pick a size and go with it everywhere.
  • ivarivar Registered Users Posts: 8,395 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    #1, i think the amount of problems occuring in forums, blogs etc will be minimal. Number 2 will give more people problems, and number 3 just sounds terrible.

    I am also in favor of removing the critique/filmstrip and the possible traditional style. I am wondering if you guys at smugmug have any form of statistics about the number and type of forced styles. I wonder if alot of people force the critique and filmstrip styles. personally i have forced all my galleries in something other than those...
  • {JT}{JT} Registered Users Posts: 1,016 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    ivar wrote:
    I am also in favor of removing the critique/filmstrip and the possible traditional style.

    I think comments like this are the most surprising to me. No one forces you to use any of those styles - and no one says that you have to choose them in your gallery, so why the animosity?

    I for one LOVE traditional. I usually want to see more thumbs than smugmug and larger than all thumbs view without the risk of stumbling on a gallery with 2000 photos (you know who you are! split those galleries up!)

    As for critique and filmstrip - you'd be surprised at the good things we hear about them :)
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    ivar wrote:

    I am also in favor of removing the critique/filmstrip and the possible traditional style.

    Lots of pros using Filmstrip.

    Critique - it's a special purpose style - loupe, exif laid out nicely, it's all good thumb.gif
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited April 18, 2006
    Andy wrote:
    Lots of pros using Filmstrip.

    Critique - it's a special purpose style - loupe, exif laid out nicely, it's all good thumb.gif

    *Andy Williams is a compensated endorser for filmstrip and critique gallery styles
    Pedal faster
  • rainforest1155rainforest1155 Registered Users Posts: 4,566 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    jfriend wrote:
    #2 is probably the best compromise. Existing -L images stay the size they are, but Smugmug isn't burdened with forever supporting the existing size on new galleries. You could even give the user a control on a gallery basis or a site-wide basis to "upgrade" their Large images to the new size. If you think you have a reliable way to communicate with your customers, you could even announce that everyone will get converted in 12 months, so if you have any external links that rely on the current -L size, they should get fixed.
    I agree with John that you should announce the images are started to get converted after let's say 6 or even 12 months like John proposed and at the same time give everyone the possibility in the control panel schedule the conversion now.

    But I've also to agree with Mike and BWG with their concerns about the gallery style confusion. The whole style collection has get more streamlined as most visitors probably won't change the style at all - they just want to view some photos and not fiddle around with different possibilities to browse a gallery. So at least giving us an option to select the range of styles visitors can choose of would be very nice. I just can't think of a common visitor coming through google changing his style to filmstrip or critique.

    Additionally I agree with others that say that the possible new XL-size should be disabled by default for pros. I also would go so far to propose that power-users can turn it off too as 1024px is a huge picture size and as a former power user I wouldn't be very happy that people out of a sudden can download any picture at that size without any trouble and I couldn't do anything about it. (I've larges enabled, but XL is too much from my point of view)

    Thanks,
    Sebastian

    PS: I use Traditional view almost exclusively as it gives me a quicker overview.
    Sebastian
    SmugMug Support Hero
  • ivarivar Registered Users Posts: 8,395 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    {JT} wrote:
    I think comments like this are the most surprising to me. No one forces you to use any of those styles - and no one says that you have to choose them in your gallery, so why the animosity?

    I for one LOVE traditional. I usually want to see more thumbs than smugmug and larger than all thumbs view without the risk of stumbling on a gallery with 2000 photos (you know who you are! split those galleries up!)

    As for critique and filmstrip - you'd be surprised at the good things we hear about them :)
    I've said that pretty much because of the same reason Mike/BWG gave. In all the smugmug sites i have seen from people, very few i have seen forcing the critique / filmstrip. That's also why i asked about the stats, of course if it is a well running style it should never get retired.

    Personally these are a few things of those two.
    -filmstrip: no clear beginning/end, no idea of how many photos there actually are and what you have seen already. It says how many photos there are , but in my head i don't get the same feeling. What doesn't help is the continuously moving strip, which makes me get loose track
    -critique: i just don't see that many people would use it, only one image at a time, big with a lot of information that most people don't care about. Especially not the average Joe who is looking at family or vacation pictures. It would be great for people who are trying to learn from other people's photos though.

    Don't get me wrong, i don't mean they are bad styles, i just don't see that alot of people would use it. And also, i could be totally wrong about the amount of people using those styles. I am seriously interested in stats about the use of them, if you have them and willing to share.
  • flyingdutchieflyingdutchie Registered Users Posts: 1,286 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    I agree with Mike:
    I totally agree with you, Mike!

    I would not mind new gallery styles if (and only if) we, as smugmug gallery owners, could select which gallery styles are available to viewers.

    Now, we only can force a gallery to be one style or allow all gallery styles. It is not possible to select more than one allowable gallery style (but not all).

    I just don't want to be forced to go in and spend hours and hours styling the new gallery styles (Smugmug L and XL). If the feature i mentioned above was implemented, we could disable Smugmug L and XL until our styling of these gallery-types was done.

    But thanks for the heads up, though! :D
    I can't grasp the notion of time.

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  • jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    Allow us to set the initial gallery style and limit gallery style choices
    I would not mind new gallery styles if (and only if) we, as smugmug gallery owners, could select which gallery styles are available to viewers.

    Now, we only can force a gallery to be one style or allow all gallery styles. It is not possible to select more than one allowable gallery style (but not all).
    I think flyingdutchie is on to something here.

    This is a little off topic, but something that has long been missing from smugmug (yes, I've put it in a feature request thread before), is the ability for a gallery owner to set the initial gallery style, but still allow the user to change the style. I have a newly created gallery that I wrote a travelogue description by each image so I want people to initially see it in the Journal style, but if they want to switch to another style, I'd like to let them. As it is, I either have to force and lock the Journal style or assume that they will never see it in the Journal style.

    It seems that the solution to the style proliferation for the stylers is to let them pick which styles are enabled for a given gallery or site. Then, if they were doing a bunch of custom CSS, they could decide which styles to support and not have to support them all with their custom CSS.

    P.S. To the other stylers it's probably possible to limit the style choices today using JavaScript by simply removing choices from the drop-down and making sure the initial style isn't an unsupported one.
    --John
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  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    I dig both dutchie's and john's ideas

    Not sure if they are do-able by the engineers, but I like 'em :D
  • dogwooddogwood Registered Users Posts: 2,572 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    my two-bits
    As a pro user who rarely allows for large view (I'm not fond of people ripping off my photos-- this still happens in medium view, of course), I'm fine with the settings right now. If I want XL, I simply enable original with a watermark-- on an 8 MP camera that is plenty big enough to fill several screens!

    Anyway, just make it so we can turn the XL feature off and that would be great. I'm starting to think there should be different defaults for the pro accounts versus folks looking more to share photos-- seems like there are a lot of features lately that I've had to turn off (photo ranking, lightbox, camera info, etc.) And I know I'm not alone.

    Thanks for asking for feedback though-- that feature I do like!

    Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
    website blog instagram facebook g+

  • ivarivar Registered Users Posts: 8,395 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    that sounds good, if i can eliminate certain style from the menu, i would be very happy iloveyou.gif
  • dmcdmc Registered Users Posts: 427 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    I don't see enough reason to mess with Portrait Larges, even though I see the point of it. ... (Maybe the style could drop down 1 size when it comes across a portrait pic to make it fit better i.e. if viewing Large pics, use the Medium pic if it is portrait.) ... nahh.

    I agree that having XL would be great... we definately need something between large and Original (which can be way too big now). Of course, allow users to disable their use (just add a "customize gallery" option after Allow Originals)

    If you want to add a feature, give the lightbox a feature to view oversized images by allowing the user to "drag" the picture around... just like Google maps. The old mapquest was blown away when google maps came out and you could click and drag the map around in the window...(i.e. no scrollbar's) The first picture sharing website to do it wins!

    Btw, my picture is popular today...( I don't know how long this link will work :D )
  • bwgbwg Registered Users, Retired Mod Posts: 2,119 SmugMug Employee
    edited April 18, 2006
    bigwebguy wrote:
    - combine allthumbs/traditional and allow users to select options for captions and number of thumbs per page

    i would like to revise my statement.

    i'm sure you guys have already seen this...being so web 2.0 and all (i had forgotten about it since it sucked so hard when it was introduced), but something like this for allthumbs/traditional would be pretty sexy.

    http://www.live.com/#q=andy%20williams%20&scope=images&page=results

    If only the dynamic fetching of more images was implemented, it would be pretty useful for those 2000 photo galleries.
    Pedal faster
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    dogwood wrote:
    that I've had to turn off (lightbox, camera info, etc.)

    Pete, do you really like that popup instead of a nice overlay? The popup seems so yesterday....
  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    bigwebguy wrote:

    Dang. Who is that guy using my name? Looks like they painted his teeth white rolleyes1.gif
  • dogwooddogwood Registered Users Posts: 2,572 Major grins
    edited April 18, 2006
    yup
    Andy wrote:
    Pete, do you really like that popup instead of a nice overlay? The popup seems so yesterday....

    Andy:

    I do like the popup and I've tested it compared to lightbox on friends and family. The basic pop-up just makes more sense to them. I can see where some folks would like the lightbox feature-- I'm just trying to keep my site really basic and really easy to navigate. I haven't even put the slideshow in there (luckily for people like you on the customization forum who would be helping me!)

    Here's a quote from photographer Anoush Abrar in American Photo May/June 2006: "For me a website must be quick. You must find the information very fast. If the pictures are nice you don't need to put fancy stuff around them to make them nicer."

    I couldn't agree more.

    Portland, Oregon Photographer Pete Springer
    website blog instagram facebook g+

  • greenleegreenlee Registered Users Posts: 1 Beginner grinner
    edited April 18, 2006
    Does it even need to be a style change? Option 4 proposed
    Baldy wrote:
    The whispers for a larger image size have turned to a low rumble and we know what that means: the march of monitor pixels will increase the rumble volume, so we're thinking about an XL image size.
    I 100% agree that the current "Large" version is too small for most monitors. The current sizing appears to be Small=400pxls-wide, Medium=600pxls-wide, Large=800pxls-wide & Original=3000+pxls-wide. There's a HUGE gap between Large & Original, and with my 1600x1200 monitor, the Large version of images is too small, and I often end up clicking on the Original view then having to scroll through the picture to see the areas of greatest detail/interest. Hence the rumble for a larger view size.

    Now, I've been reading as many of the replies for this thread as I can with my relatively-short attention span, and it seems as though the agreed-upon way to tackle this problem is to create an additional gallery setting. I don't necessarily agree with this approach.

    OPTION 4?: Why not just leave the site-owner settings the way they are and allow the viewers to either A) click on a ZOOM button to go beyond the current Large size in 200-pixel (wide) increments or B) click on a FULL SCREEN button to view the current photo in full-screen mode the way they're presented in the Slideshow mode? I don't think that an XL setting necessarily needs to be made into a gallery-wide setting. We all know that it's a rare treat to find a smugmug gallery in which more than half of the images deserve an XL view. Why not let smugmug save bandwidth and allow a zoom option only for those individual images that really beg for a closer look?

    That said, SOME option must be selected. Kudos to smugmug for constantly monitoring customer rumbling!! clap.gif

    Last comment: Stay away from a 1024x768 size or else you'll end up with scroll bars on the edges of the pics for those size monitors. 1000x750 would be better.

    Thanks for reading!!!
    Ken Greenlee
    greenlee.smugmug.com
  • BaldyBaldy Registered Users, Super Moderators Posts: 2,853 moderator
    edited April 18, 2006
    Wow, tough topic but we're very grateful for how much thought and insight you've put into this.

    Armed with this thread, we had quite a spirited meeting and here's the general plan:

    1. We're going to start generating an XL size. As you can tell, some people are thrilled and some don't like it. We think most who fall into the don't-like-it camp have very valid concerns about image protection.

    We'll automatically block access to XL if you've blocked Large, turned on image protection, or blocked originals.

    If you haven't done those things, an XL link will appear beside the L link for single image view.

    2. John's arguments for the large size dilemma and #2 being the best option resonated with us. There's no painless solution to this but we think the best compromise is to make larges at 600 pixels maximum for portrait-oriented shots and 800 for landscape (just for images going forward, not replacing the current larges in the database).

    Those two things are the only ones we'll do in the near-term. The rest can wait while we think through the gotchas and work on other priorities. But here's what we're thinking, pending more feedback:

    3. We're also concerned about the style-dropdown getting too long and complex, if it isn't already. We think the right thing to do is take the suggestions we've heard to enable an option in the control panel that lets you choose which gallery options will appear to your users. You will be able to enable/disable critique, etc.

    Note that this will be for a user's entire SmugMug site — not on a gallery-by-gallery basis. Gallery customization is complex enough as it is. We'll hear some feature requests about that.

    4. You'll also be able to set the default style that your users can override — a long-time feature request.

    5. We think the right way to handle both Journal and SmugMug styles is to auto-select. Unless of course you override that preference in your control panel and force Journal small, for example.

    In other words, by default the style drop-down would look the same as it does today, but additional Journal and SmugMug sizes would silently be added. Users would see them if their browser windows are big enough.

    If you were with us our first year, you'll remember the problems the SmugMug style initially caused. People with big monitors loved it but hell had no fury like the person with 800x600. Once SmugMug small came along and we went into monitor detect mode, it was like pouring oil on troubled waters. We think that was one of our best decisions.

    So you'd be able to force Journal small, Journal medium, or Journal auto, for example.

    6. We're looking into what to do about single-image XL display when you click the link to get it. It's the problem we have with original display now. You don't get a good experience because we limit the horizontal display of the image to 800 pixels to keep them from breaking themes. Theme designers tended to favor that solution but people who want to see the image without scrolling say, "themes schmemes! Give me as much image as you can with no new scrollbars, man!" Open to ideas (Google maps idea noted).

    Jimmy or Onethumb: if I've been unclear or gotten something wrong, set the record straight.

    Everyone else: you're having a big impact on our direction, so keep fighting for your point of view if you think we're off base. :toni

    Thanks!
    Baldy
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