Phase 2 - New style preview

[onethumb]

Howdy!

We've got a bunch of new things up our sleeves and all hands are on deck over here at smugmug HQ as we test them. We're hoping to get all the cool stuff out tonight, but we need your help!

Here's a preview of the new Elegant style (renamed to 'smugmug'), with massive CSS customizability:



I'm not gonna go into all the new features on this new Style (gotta leave you some surprises and easter eggs!), but the important and immediate ones are:

- easier to buy photos since the buy and cart buttons are front and center, obvious!

- *far* easier to customize the entire page, since all elements on the page have their own CSS tags so you can fine-tune every little option, not just font colors and sizes for the entire page (which, of course, you can still do).

- easier-to-read details below the photos

- cleaner interface

So, the big question is, is there anything we're missing? Is something not right? Let us know, quick!

Don

[pumpkin]

it looks awesome! can't wait :)

[DJ-S1]

Looks great! Is the "more photo details" link still there somewhere? I use that a lot.

[Mike Lane]

Originally Posted by DJ-S1

Looks great! Is the "more photo details" link still there somewhere? I use that a lot.

Gah! I wish it weren't filtered at work.

[cjohn]

Don,

The page looks FANTASTIC!

I agree with the previous post about more photo details, will it still be there? It would also be nice to be able to select WHAT detail you want to show in every gallery, and not to have to do it via the EXIF data.

One thing that always bothered me is that the "Gallery Pages" buttons to switch to a different page are not very conspicuous. I'm always worried that people will not notice it and will assume that what they see on the page is all there is. I could live with more obvious clues that clicking on a button would bring you to a second page in this gallery....

Cédric

[Mac Write]

Can you put a demo on-line (static html pages) so we can go over it and make suggestions? Then we can catch all the stuff before it goes live (suggestion you need a testing server so we can see stuff before it goes live on the live sites to find all the bugs).

[pumpkin]

what's that google earth feed at the bottom? :P

[JamesJWeg]

Honestly I am quite pissed right now, I was walking out the door to be gone for the evening and have just over the last few days taken steps to get some traffic to my site, as in tonight/tom, and boom, a few hours warning. damn, can't we have a day at least? So am sitting here late for supper trying to figure out what my site will look like tom, and I can't really tell from what you are saying what will actually change. FWIW, these neon type colors you have started using look like 100% junk to me, I do not like them in the least, put bluntly I have used many curse words over them. The classy look and feel of SM had a lot to do with me opening my account and the resent trend is completly away from that. The fact that you put the feeds on the page in a hidious color with no warning was almost enough for me to close my account, had I known ahead of time that it would occur AND how to turn it off I would not have really cared. I understand the need/benifits of the technical changes, what I do not understand is forcing color etc changes on us. I and I do not understand at all why you continue to give us little warning of these large changes in apperance. To me that screen shot you posted looks like total crap, and I do not want a site that looks at all like that.

James.

[sberley]

Does this mean people can purchased framed pictures from the cart? If not, I'd be very hesitant to set an expectation I wouldn't be able to follow through on...

Steve

[Ben]

Originally Posted by DJ-S1

Looks great! Is the "more photo details" link still there somewhere? I use that a lot.

yes, it will be. That photo was just a -L.jpg I had taken from submissions on Dgrin and so it didn't have any embedded exif data. It will appear in there, looking very much like the other information under the photo.

[Ben]

Originally Posted by sberley

Does this mean people can purchased framed pictures from the cart? If not, I'd be very hesitant to set an expectation I wouldn't be able to follow through on...

Steve

actually, I suppose I can see how that screenshot is slightly deceptive in that regard. In that case, it is a photo that was submitted here on dgrin for one of our new features (see the News and Events gallery). He added that border/watermark himself. You can see not all the photos in the gallery have that... nothing has changed in that regard. Sorry for the confusion!

[photodoug]

Originally Posted by JamesJWeg

Honestly I am quite pissed right now, I was walking out the door to be gone for the evening and have just over the last few days taken steps to get some traffic to my site, as in tonight/tom, and boom, a few hours warning. damn, can't we have a day at least? So am sitting here late for supper trying to figure out what my site will look like tom, and I can't really tell from what you are saying what will actually change. FWIW, these neon type colors you have started using look like 100% junk to me, I do not like them in the least, put bluntly I have used many curse words over them. The classy look and feel of SM had a lot to do with me opening my account and the resent trend is completly away from that. The fact that you put the feeds on the page in a hidious color with no warning was almost enough for me to close my account, had I known ahead of time that it would occur AND how to turn it off I would not have really cared. I understand the need/benifits of the technical changes, what I do not understand is forcing color etc changes on us. I and I do not understand at all why you continue to give us little warning of these large changes in apperance. To me that screen shot you posted looks like total crap, and I do not want a site that looks at all like that.

James.

Ya man...too much....too awful gawdy....keep it sleek and professional

[cjohn]

Originally Posted by photodoug

Ya man...too much....too awful gawdy....keep it sleek and professional

Doesn't "massive CSS customizability" imply that you can choose to turn these features off by changing line color to your background color etc... ? I am myself in favor of simple and elegant design, but I think that before complaining about the new design we should give it a chance and see how it works. After all, this post is just here as a courtesy to us, to warn us ahead of time that things will change. It does not imply that your site will look neon green tomorrow, right?

[onethumb]

Originally Posted by cjohn

Doesn't "massive CSS customizability" imply that you can choose to turn these features off by changing line color to your background color etc... ? I am myself in favor of simple and elegant design, but I think that before complaining about the new design we should give it a chance and see how it works. After all, this post is just here as a courtesy to us, to warn us ahead of time that things will change. It does not imply that your site will look neon green tomorrow, right?

All of the colors and elements are CSS-changeable using the customization tools. Phase 4 will make customizing a total WYSIWYG breeze, but no promises on when we'll get there.

The default look-and-feel will have neon green, just like the default look & feel now has bright blue.

But it's totally easy (see this thread for more details as the day goes on) to change each and every green item to something non-green, either in one swoop, or individually.

Additionally, you can hide just about everything on the page yourself.

Hope that clears the air a bit. :)

Don

[Baldy]

Originally Posted by JamesJWeg

Honestly...

Hi James,

The only people who will be affected and have to make changes are (a) people who have used Stylesheet HTML, or (b) people who don't like the colors/fonts, etc., and want to customize.

In your case, you don't have any stylesheet HTML except to hide the RSS feeds, so what you see is what you'll get. The most powerful aspect of the new design, however, is you have control over the look. If you don't like the green, you can change it.

Unfortunately, we're in a position where we can't please everyone and have to go with the majority. The RSS feeds that didn't work for you, for example, are enormously popular. The all-silver color scheme was tough on consumers who didn't notice important aspects of the page.

You still have options to turn off features, just as before, but now you can go all gray if you want that.

All the best,
Baldy

[Baldy]

Originally Posted by pumpkin

what's that google earth feed at the bottom? :P

Eh?

[colourbox]

Originally Posted by onethumb

Additionally, you can hide just about everything on the page yourself.

I assume this means we can easily hide any individual element ourselves? I've been waiting for a way to hide just the path, for my event-specific private galleries where going up the path just shows you the "no galleries here, they might be private" warning.

Does the design expand to fill the monitor now? I have wanted the page to expand horizontally on wide screen monitors so that, for example, a 3-page gallery on a 1024x768 monitor might actually be able to become a 2-page or even 1-page gallery on a larger monitor, since you can buy some pretty ginormous monitors these days (1600x1200 and up).

Otherwise, it looks awesome, though my main source of excitement will be the more detailed access to customization through style sheets.

[DJ-S1]

Originally Posted by pumpkin

what's that google earth feed at the bottom? :P

I'm guessing that the example gallery in the screenshot was written so that when you click on the image it will map the location in GoogleEarth. That wouldn't be a standard thing on a Smugmug page.

[T4Tots]

I, for one, am excited! My new website was released today, so I too expect a lot of traffic to my site. But I love the idea of getting to "play" with my pages even more and the better placement and wording of the buy it now type cart buttons!

I am uploading a session now and can't wait to see what it looks like when it changes!!

Thanks for always trying to improve! (and many people use my RSS feed for Bloglines...thanks)

[PrevalentTech]

This is going to be great to have even more control with CSS. This should allow a pretty smooth flow between your individual site going into the smugmug galleries. I can't wait to see the changes and thanks for moving down this flexible and standard path for implementing this level of customization.