SmugBlog: Release Notes

We had two small releases recently that cleared up several angst-causing bugs.

• We made some fixes to keystroke navigation. In SmugMug viewing style, you can now browse using the arrows, and open light box using S, M, L, 1, 2, 3, O, A and X to close without any hiccups.
• Browsing using <Prev and Next> in a gallery now updates the URL to include the image key of the image you just navigated to. This is helpful if you need to grab the correct link for the current image.
• The Move to Other Gallery photo tool is now lightning fast.
• We found and fixed an elusive bug that caused problems getting proof-delay cropping changes to “stick”.
• In lightbox viewing, we changed to the word “Close” instead of a small “X”, which was getting overlooked.
• .CRW files can now have a jpeg generated when using them in SmugVault, if you have the Image Preview option enabled.
• We modified feeds to return content in the context of your custom domain, if you have one, meaning that map bubbles now have hyperlinks that point to your custom domain, rather than yournickname.smugmug.com .
• In case you want to get the party started early, we now have an 09 Happy New Year’s card ready to go.
• We fixed a bug with deleting custom categories. Their subcategories are now moved to the Other category instead of being orphaned.
• We updated to the new version of the Simple Uploader. No major functionality changes, but you might notice a bump in speed.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing guests from rotating photos.

• Fixed up our card creator and outfitted it with 4 new cards, all baby announcements. (Find it in the photo tools menu beneath any photo.)
• Fixed a flash slideshow bug, so it should work beautifully on all browsers now (including pre-caching properly in the latest version of Safari).
• Changed Smuggy on embedded videos. He’s now a discreet gray rather than smuggy green, and hides when the controls hide.
• SmugMug Video now works on Windows Live Spaces.
• Improved the Contact SmugMug help page.
• Made the Contact SmugMug link in our footer smart so it now sends visitors to our visitor help pages.

SmugShot

At the time of this blog post, thousands of people are already using SmugShot on their iPhones^TM… so “lagged” would be putting the situation mildly.

SmugShot is an application for the iPhone available for free via Apple’s App Store in iTunes.

Essentially it allows you to upload photos straight to your SmugMug account from your iPhone, complete with geodata, keywords, and captions. Read more on Don’s blog, our marketing page, and our help page.

Lower print prices

SmugMug’s price for glossy and matte 8×10s dropped from $2.99 to $1.99 and lustre dropped from $3.49 to $2.49. 5×7 prints are now $0.79 and $0.99 (from $0.99 and $1.25). 8×12 prints are now $3.49 and $3.99 (from $3.99 and $4.75).

The new prices are reflected in our catalog. If you’re a pro with custom pricing in place, enjoy the new, higher margin for these sizes!

Bug Fixes and Bonuses

• Pop Photo and American Photo have joined ClubSmug with a deal on magazine subscriptions for SmugMuggers.
• SmugMug’s sponsoring two sweet photography contests and we noted them on our news page.
• Fixed bug where quotation marks in filenames were causing a javascript error when viewing galleries in SmugMug style.
• Fixed a bug with backslash in the filename in single image view causing a javascript error.
• Fixed a bug where our IE6 friends would add a photo to their shopping cart, close their browser, come back later to crop the photo, and get booted.
• New version of MacDaddy uploader that supports SmugVault, adds auto-creation of albums from iPhoto (enable in preferences), and fixes a bug involving photos exported from Lightroom.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing Camino users from viewing in SmugMug ajax style.
• New install script for our Simple Uploader for Internet Explorer. We had some problems previously with people who had used a similar uploader for a different site being locked out of using ours. This should fix it but may require a rebooting of your computer. Sorry for the hassle! (You’ll be prompted to reboot if necessary)
• Fixed a bug with cropping square images in the shopping cart.
• Fixed a bug with loading video in FF3. Videos partially outside the viewable area should load fine, now.

Apple, the Apple logo, iPod, and iTunes are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc.

Things you might notice:

• Powerful new “buy multiples” interface so you (and your customers) can pack the new shopping cart to the brim. Print the whole gallery as 4×6 glossies, and add 10 photos as 5×7 lustre prints, 2 as mousepads, and a handful of 8×10s. All without leaving the page.
• Our homepage has a flash slideshow so you’ll get some variety when you visit.
• The “Arrange Photos” tool had an annoying formatting bug causing the toolbox to display at the top of the page. It’s now back on the left where it belongs.
• The “Save Photo” icon you get on your photobar when you’re logged in will now say “Owner Save” instead. As it turns out, everyone wanted that icon when they were logged in, but when we added it we caused some panic. Logout (or use Visitor View) and you’ll see a “Save Photo” icon, or no icon at all if you have your originals disabled.

Things you might not notice:

• Lots of changes to help pages, ClubSmug, and Give the Gift of SmugMug.
• Product changes on our 4×6 postcards and canvas prints.
• In the shopping cart, the catalog link in the footer now goes to our catalog page without prices.
• We added item numbers to the order confirmation screen, for easier reference.
• We fixed a bug that prevented the tracking number from being displayed.
• We now auto-generate passwords for logged-out orders, so your customers (or grandma) won’t have to hassle with creating and remembering an order password.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the order confirmation page for large orders to take an obscenely long time to load on FF2 on Macs.
• The “Items” total in the cart now reflects the total quantity, not just the number of different products. In other words, if you order 20 5×7 prints of the same photo, your item count is now 20.
• By popular demand, clicking on the thumbnail in the shopping cart now takes you to the Adjust Crop tool, instead of back to the gallery. You’ll see a “view in gallery” link added at the left.
• Fixed bug that was causing problems with shipping to a few countries. (Frustrating bug, but fun to see we had customers from Dubai!)
• Tweaked the in-cart Adjust Crop tool to be faster loading and more responsive.

This is a major release that vastly improves buying prints and gifts.

• It’s faster.  And it should stay fast after adding many hundreds of items
• It’s much easier to use.
• It’s prettier.
• It’s the key to adding features like coupons in the not-too-distant future.

We dedicate this feature to our customers in Iowa who lost everything from tornadoes and floods.

See 30Bone’s photos.

Here’s the overview and help page about SmugVault, and our Chief Geek’s blog.

We’ll try to answer some questions here that those pages don’t:

What is Amazon’s role, and what is yours?

• Amazon provides the physical storage, reporting, and billing.
• SmugMug provides the user interface for adding, retrieving, displaying, arranging, navigating, etc.
• SmugMug creates display copies from as many graphic and video files as we can, so you can see pictures as you browse, not just unintelligible file names.

How do I add and retrieve?

• We do everything in our power to enable you to add and retrieve your photos in as many ways as possible, including enabling developers to write applications with our api.
• You can use almost all existing SmugMug uploaders except for the Drag & Drop, which is being retired.
• Backup DVDs and SmugDav will also support SmugVault in the future.

How does bundling files work?

• For any gallery, when we see files with the same name but different extensions, we automatically link them into a bundle. For example, we would bundle Sunset.psd, Sunset.jpg, and Sunset.tif if they were uploaded to the same gallery.
• When we bundle, we add an icon to the display image to show it as a bundle.
• This way you only have to see one file but can tell it’s several file types of the same photo.
• You can use a new photo tool to bundle them manually, regardless of filename. For example, maybe you have 5 RAW files that you used to make a panoramic. You can bundle them together, along with the JPEG.

• We refer to files stored in your SmugVault as archives.
• When you hover over the large display size of your bundle, a save icon will appear. When you click it, you’ll see options to save any of the files in the bundle independently.

How do you navigate SmugVault?

• There are two ways: The same way you navigate any gallery with photos in it, and a SmugVault browser.
• You’re aided by a SmugVault graphic for non-displayable file types, like Word documents (see example, right).
• And you’re aided by an icon that indicates a bundle.
• If you click on the icon, you’ll be taken to a SmugVault browser.
• Note that there is navigation above the SmugVault browser that lets you see different levels.

How does displaying files work?

• A powerful feature of SmugVault is that we can convert many graphic file types so you can see what the photo is, not just guess from its filename.
• We can convert most RAW files and many other formats, but sometimes we’re foiled, so no guarantees.
• You have to enable this option in your control panel, on the settings tab.
• It doesn’t cost you extra because we don’t charge beyond your base subscription for storing JPEG files, and all this feature does is generate JPEGs for display.
• Note that when we convert from RAW, for example, we are only doing it for display purposes. So we make our normal display sizes, which is up to 1600×1200 if you enable X3Large.
• Some people could print from that and get good small to medium-sized prints, so use the image protection you normally do.
• Yes, if you have a pro account with watermarks turned on, the display copies will be shown with your watermark.
• No one can see or save your archives, only you. If you want to use SmugVault to transfer a RAW file to a friend, you’d need to give them a guest password if you’re a pro subscriber.

Size limits?

• Currently, each file can be up to 512 MB.
• We’re working on bringing that to 5 GB per file but have no estimated completion date.

Display priority?

• If you’ve uploaded a JPEG that becomes part of a bundle, it is the one used for display, not any preview files we would make from RAW files, for example.

Video archives?

• Video is a special case, because SmugMug does not currently save the unaltered original video you upload.
• Instead we convert it from whatever format you upload to h.264.
• And we may have to compress it more than you did in order for it to play smoothly across the Internet.
• There is an option in your control panel settings tab, to allow the file you uploaded to be stored as an archive in SmugVault.
• If you upload the video clips you used to make your final video, the same holds true. We wouldn’t know it’s a SmugVault item unless you check the option to archive videos. In any case, we will also make display copies so that you get more than just a filename.

As always, we love to hear your rants and raves so we can improve. You can post them to our happenin’ photography forum at www.dgrin.com, or send email (that we really will read and respond to): help at smugmug dot com.

All the best,

The SmugMug family

By popular demand:  The save photo icon is now visible when you are logged in even if you have originals turned off.  No worries, your visitors won’t see it.  To check that, you can log out — or click the visitor view button on your home page.

Sorry for the panic this caused for many people the first time they saw it!

More convenience:  If you uploaded PNG, GIF, and JPEG files that were over 12 MB for standard and power users, over 24 MB for pros, or over 48 megapixels,  we used to reject them.  We’d write a Dear John note about them in your upload log, not exactly convenient or endearing.  

Now we re-size them to sneak under our limits so we don’t send you scrambling for Photoshop.

Filenames are back!  In the bulk photo tools, we had many requests to bring back filename display. 

Bug fixes:  

One bug prevented Filenames from being converted to Keywords on upload. Now you can upload files with dashes, spaces, etc… and the filenames are properly converted to Keywords.

Another made the Slideshow button disappear when you forced your gallery to be SmugMug Small.  

Retired:  The Drag & Drop uploader lacked the error detection and retry goodness of the other uploaders and, sadly, had to be retired.  But you can still find it listed in fine print at the bottom of the uploader tabs.  If it works for you, great.

PayPal:  Did you know they introduced a plug-in that lets you use your PayPal as if it were Mastercard on sites like SmugMug?  We acknowledged that on the site.

Pro FAQ:  Version 2.0.

As always:  Many enhancements to the help pages including vastly improved help search.

Oh, one more thing:  Got RAW?  (A separate release note is in the works for this.)

After gathering feedback, we cleaned out some seldom-used and redundant photo tools, organized and shined up the rest, and fixed bugs along the way.

Every single tool was fussed over to make it more intuitive and faster. Keep an eye out for round 2 (and 3, and 4, and …) but round 1 brought major improvements with subtle changes such as button placement and the addition of breadcrumbs.

Extra goodies we added to several of our bulk tools:

• You can now select multiple thumbnails just like you would in your regular OS, by shift-clicking or clicking and dragging your mouse.
• We added additional photo info for each thumbnail, available on hover-over: A larger version of the image, the caption, and filename.
• Open your browser window wider and we’ll fill it with thumbnails. Less wasted space = less scrolling.

(More on this help page.)

The customize gallery page was also cleaned up. It’s shorter now, with less scrolling, and is better thought-out in terms of wording and organization.

Note that the option to dynamically arrange photos in the gallery is now called “Auto Sort” and if you’d rather arrange photos manually, you’d now select “Auto Sort: None” whereas previously you would have selected “Sort by: Position”.

Also in this release:

- The password change field in the Control Panel used to be case-sensitive when you typed in your email address. Annoying no longer.

- Shined up the “Forgot Password” routine on SmugMug’s login pages. It’s a bit friendlier and easier to follow.

- Updated the Simple uploader.

-Added Hackersafe logo to marketing and signup pages, since we are indeed safe from hackers.

- Added a call to theme designers on our jobs page.

- Updated lots of help pages so that the images match the current appearance of the site.

You may have noticed some subtle changes to SmugMug’s look and feel, especially if your galleries use SmugMug’s default theme like this one does.

Specifically, you’ll see less green, a more readable font, an off-black (rather than stark-black) background, new share button, capitalization where appropriate (also to improve readability), and an overall cleaner look.

Love it? Hate it? Can’t tell the difference? We gave our customers a heads up about the coming change last month on our forum, and that’s the best place to gush or gripe.

You can always change the theme for any or all of your SmugMug pages. Here’s how.

Video

When we released SmugMungous video several months ago, our customers were ecstatic. Finally, their photos AND videos looked better on SmugMug.

As the dust settled, however, we saw there was still room for improvement. For starters, videos can really light up a forum post or blog and our Quicktime video solution didn’t allow embedding. So, we decided to go with something a bit… flashier…

The move to Flash-based video is a win on many levels:

• We built our video player with an interface that’s easier to use and easier on the eyes.
• You’ll find a jaw-dropping full screen option. Keep in mind, the laws of the universe still apply: the higher the quality of your video is, the better it’ll look filling your whole screen.
• Your videos are now embeddable outside of SmugMug, in forums, blogs, or any web page you’d like. Choose either the 425 (web/small) version or 640 (DVD/large) version.

We had to make some tough decisions along the way, though:

• You need the latest flash player version to watch videos. Updating is easy and free, though, and you can do it here. If you are too out-of-date, you’ll see a friendly prompt when you try to play a video.
• Flash has significant performance issues on Mac-based browsers when playing high definition h.264 video. We love Macs, and wish it wasn’t so. If you’re on a Mac, you’ll see the flash player for the smaller video sizes when they are embedded on other web pages. However, to keep the herky jerky at bay and to maintain a consistent viewing experience, Mac users will see Quicktime for all video sizes played in your SmugMug galleries.

You can read our CEO’s thoughts on SmugMug’s video offering on his blog.

Sharing

We want to keep our customers happy AND their fans happy. So, we fixed up our share page. Now just two clicks stand between you and getting a meaningful link to thrill your fans.

1. Click the Share button on your gallery pages. Or click the Share button you see at the end of a video played using Flash.
2. Click a link. It’ll be copied automagically and ready to paste into an email, forum post, blog, or instant message.

New Goodies for Power and Standard Accounts

• Our custom hostname and right-click protection features are now built into Power accounts as well as Professional accounts.
• All SmugMuggers (Professional, Power, and Standard) can now force a viewing style for each gallery in their Customize Gallery settings.

Custom Categories and Subcategories

• The custom category and custom subcategory pages (accessible from the Customize tab of the Control Panel) were cluttered and none-too-attractive. We shined them up.
• The gallery creation page was confusing with regard to creating your own categories and subcategories. We tweaked it a bit to make this feature easier to understand.
• We also updated the help pages accordingly

Help Page Overhaul

Have you noticed both our full help pages and visitor help pages look much improved?

Some customers thought our help pages were hard to read. They were black, with small font (kinda like this blog, eh?), and we’re sorry we left them that way for so long. The good news is, you let us know and we stepped up and made some changes. They are now white and wider, with larger font to boot. Lots of pages were also rewritten for clarity and updated for new features.

Bug Squashing

• Fixed a bug where if you switched viewing styles from SmugMug to Critique, you weren’t being directed to the correct image.
• Fixed a bug with slideshow and stats reporting.
• Fixed an IE7 error in SmugMug style, at certain resolutions and with certain image sizes, the browser was hanging.
• Fixed a pagination error in Journal style.