Comments on: Speed, Beauty & Brains – January 22nd, 2007

By: Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 06:14:40 +0000

A few more gripes. On the Custom Pro Pricing page, the Save buttons are missing and the Apply button does not work! Same goes for the Customize Gallery page, no save button! I am using IE 7. Do I have to swith to Firefox? And my customers too?

By: Dennis

Dennis — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 05:48:23 +0000

What happened? I can no longer see the large version of a photo on the right side of the browser window after clicking on a thumbnail when in the
default SmugMug template view.

By: Josue

Josue — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:20:23 +0000

Thanks a lot you guys! This is by far the best site I have ever seen for posting pictures. I am not a pro and nor I intend to be, but this is way more than I could expect. All my friends and family are really impressed with the site and the way my pictures looks in it. The upgrade has just made it better. Keep the good job. Thanks

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:32:49 +0000

My gosh, I absolutely love this upgrade. It’s beautiful! This site was great when I first signed up 2 years ago and it gets better and better. It’s like Christmas. Thanks again!

By: Tim Watt

Tim Watt — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 10:56:37 +0000

Giving Smugmug a try and prepared to give it a fair try, as the intention seems good but, to me, there seems a long way to go to match the usability of Flickr…

1. Why, when reading instuctions about how to do something, are you told to go somewhere else (like the tools sections) instead of being able to do it from that point, or having a direct link – that’s poorly thought out.

2. No drag and drop – eg for the bio photo you have to upload an image to a gallery then point to that image – it should be at least one process fewer. This seems to apply in many places.

3. Why can’t I see all photos in a gallery at once instead of pointing to next or a number? The site should all be about images!

4. Worst design error – amending images in a gallery should be much easier. Rotate for instance should happen instantly so you see the result happen not wait MINUTES and you can’t see the result. Flickr fixed this only a few months ago but that’s a big improvement.

5. Mac Uploader buggy, and very poor implementation. Crashes are very annoying where you have to find what’s uploaded and not – and you find out only in the morning. You shouldn’t need to have to monitor this manually! Would prefer to upload direct from iPhoto or Aperture á la Connectedflow.com

6. Comic Sans!!! No!

Hope constructive! Tim

By: Eugene Worley

Eugene Worley — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 17:23:58 +0000

I like the new interface, but what happened to the handy links for inserting pictures in blogs and other websites. That was very useful information, but i cannot find that now. I sure it is somewhere, but I don’t know where.

Thanks

By: Jim Carl

Jim Carl — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:45:01 +0000

I love all the changes, except for the fact that there appears to be a known bug that prevents the large version of the photo on the right side of the screen in the default SmugMug template from appearing. Argh! It works great in FireFox2.0, but not in IE7. HELP!!!!

By: Jamie Shafer

Jamie Shafer — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:19:18 +0000

I have a large flat monitor 20.3 and I find the small, medium, large sizes to be all what I consider small. Then there’s original which in my case – since I put very large photos on Smugmug – is huge and much bigger than my monitor screen and slow to load besides although I have broadband. If I want a nice big pic I must use slideshow, which is not convenient for just one or two photos. How about a large which is truly large? I checked your “large” photo and it’s 600×800, which is really pretty small. How about a large that is 768×1024 at least. Then one would not have to go to slideshow for a good big image.

By: onethumb

onethumb — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:10:11 +0000

For the record, the response has been overwhelmingly (>99.99%) positive, with a small and very vocal minority opposed.

Our destiny, though, isn’t to have a single super-happy customer – it’s to have millions of super-happy customers. But we can’t please everyone all of the time.

By: Mattias Jonsson

Mattias Jonsson — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:44:03 +0000

I am also surprised by the “I hate it” comments about the interface. What has been done on this website is awesome! It’s virtually a perfect implementation of AJAX with none of the usual AJAX downsides. I have yet to find a bug, and all the navigation and bookmarking works seamlessly.

For the pros who are complaining above, maybe you can implement a “Luddite” option. But they do have a valid point about not updating the look and feel without user consent. Maybe when new features come available they can be offered to each user the first time they log into their account. Great work – thanks!