Featured Photos don't link to featured photos

darryl · June 18, 2004

So I've buried this in the Bugs and Feature requests thread, but I'm just curious whether I'm the only person that this bothers:

- Featured Photo should link to that Photo (Elegant styles) or the page of the gallery that Photo appears on (Traditional, Journal styles.) [However *text link* for a gallery should still link to first page, first photo of a gallery.]

Baldy wrote:

But my reaction to clicking on the featured image and being taken to it is, why didn't I think of that? That's exactly the way Google news works and come to think of it, I hate it when I see a featured image (the best ones are usually featured) and then I have to muck around endlessly searching for it. Great idea.

Anybody else have thoughts? Agree/disagree? Hello? Is this thing on?

Erik Olsen · June 18, 2004

I have to agree. The feature photo is like having the "HOT" neon sign @ Crispy Cream Donuts turned on. I also belive that if the gallery is set for random thumbnails, it should also take the person directly to that photo. (Text links to the 1st default gallery page).

Erik Olsen
www.manevideo.com

Anybody else have thoughts? Agree/disagree? Hello? Is this thing on?[/QUOTE]

georges · June 18, 2004

I disagree -
I disagree. Most of my family members are very casual computer users. The featured photo is very often not the first photo in a gallery and this type of incosistent navigation will be very confusing for them.

The photo and the gallery name should take you to the same place, the beginning of the gallery.

If this were a configurable option, I think it would be quite nice. Otherwise, I'd much rather it not be changed.

Thanks, gs

Baldy · June 20, 2004

Hi Georges and Darryl,

So this is one of the reasons we didn't make the change quickly. The code in this case isn't hard to do but the user testing takes time. I really thought it would be clear to all users that when you click on the photo, it would take you to the point of the gallery where the photo is, but clicking on the link takes you to the beginning. But we have some indication that most people's expectations are just to be taken to the start of the gallery and would be surprised to find themselves in the middle somewhere and confused about how it happened.

More when we know more.

Thanks,
Baldy

wxwax · June 20, 2004

Perhaps users could make their featured photo the first of the gallery?

darryl · June 20, 2004

I will do some grandma UI testing today and give you the results. :-}

Georges appears to be speculating as well. I bet if Smugmug implemented this as an option, that his family members would figure it out.

I really think it's more likely that they are sometimes confused/irritated when the picture they click on does not appear after clicking.

I agree with wxwax though that making the first photo the featured photo would alleviate any confusion at all, if Smugmug happened to implement this not as an option.

But yeah -- options for everything! That "customize gallery" page isn't long enough. :P

georges · June 20, 2004

Sorry Darryl, no speculation here. I do this for a living.

This is a tough one. Different visitors will have different expectations. For this one I'm on the side of the real novices. They won't expect a photo that resides directly next to a link to take them anywhere other than the same place as the link.

More experienced users may expect that the photo could take them to a larger version of the photo, but all of them won't.

If the kind folks at Smugmug make it work the second way, I'll change my galleries so the featured photo is always number one. I may do that anyway, it's probably better practice.

This may be more important to me because I often use the Journal style. It'll be very confusing for some of my visitors if they jump to a single big picture instead of the top of a photo sequence. I'd rather not confuse them.

The problem, as I see it, with making it configurable, is that it breaks the predictability of the user interface across the whole of smugmug. This might not be good either.

As Baldy says, this is one that will take some user testing.

Not a big deal. I'll work around it either way.

See you later ,gs

darryl · June 21, 2004

Hey George, Baldy:

So I got back from my UI test with grandma today.

Yes, she expects the photo that she clicks on to be the big one.

But she also expects that to be the *first* one.

So, yeah, making the first one featured is probably the best practice, even though I personally really like the "random" feature.

*Sigh* -- moms.

--Darryl

Baldy · June 22, 2004

george, darryl, wxwax —

Great thread. It was a very good suggestion and in the end of the day I'm glad we hashed it out like this. For my own galleries, I'm going to place the featured photo first where I can in the future and see if I can incorporate this into our help sections or tips.

darryl · November 27, 2006

I knew I posted about this before.

I just encountered this problem on Phanfare, and knew I had complained about it for Smugmug too, and it's still a problem:

- Clicking on Featured Photos does not take you to that photo.

So two years ago, I sat my mom down and she didn't like that the photo she clicked on wasn't the one she got. And that it wasn't the first photo.

This is easily solvable by setting the first photo of the album to be the Featured Photo.

But I *like* the idea of random photos from an album. People will see different photos from each album when they come back, and they may be prompted to click on an album they've never looked at before because it has an intriguing photo. But after clicking, they end up at the beginning of the album, when the photo in question might be 3 pages back.

This is confusing, and annoying.

I think this is true for Category Featured Photos as well. The textual link should take you to the Category, but the Photo should take you to the photo. People click on a photo, and they want to see a photo. I still stand by this.

At any rate, it would be super-swell if this was a user-configurable option, so that we could stop debating it and just make it optional. I mean, I did file this feature request 2 years ago. :-}

encosion · November 28, 2006

I'm leaning towards the way it is currently to be honest... Especially for categories... It's a whole can-o-worms otherwise!

I think confusion could be alleviated the addition of a "View gallery" action button, and having all of it as one hypelink...

[ xxxx ] Gallery Title
[ xxxx ]
[ xxxx ] View gallery >>

darryl · October 12, 2007

encosion wrote:

I'm leaning towards the way it is currently to be honest... Especially for categories... It's a whole can-o-worms otherwise!

I think confusion could be alleviated the addition of a "View gallery" action button, and having all of it as one hypelink...

[ xxxx ] Gallery Title
[ xxxx ]
[ xxxx ] View gallery >>

Hi all:

Yes, this thread is super-old. But recently I've started managing a SmugMug site with a ton of galleries and photos, and this issue still annoys me.

Encosion makes a good point about categories being confusing. I don't know, maybe clear ALT/tooltip text would help?

Like, [Click here to see this photo in the gallery], and [Click here to open up this category]?

And then, within the category:
[Click here to see this photo in the gallery], and [Click here to view this gallery]?

Gah. Maybe it's just me, but when I click on a picture, I expect to see it. Or maybe it's just me that I don't mind (I don't think I'd mind, anyways), if that picture wasn't the first one?

Maybe that would be weird.

Maybe I should mock it up and do some usability testing. :-}

--Darryl

Featured Photos don't link to featured photos

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