Big release – September 4th, 2007
Last night we made some neat improvements, much-needed bug fixes, and… bumped up the file size limit on every SmugMug account! 
- We started hearing from Standard users that files straight from their cameras were over our 8 mb limit. True, they could compress them a bit and still see stunning image quality. However, we wanted to stay ahead of the curve with this so we decided to bump Standard and Power accounts up to 12 mb per file, and Pro accounts up to 24 mb per file. We updated the help page accordingly.
- The uploader page is now even better, and we’re proud to introduce the MacDaddy uploader, written from scratch in-house. It blows our previous Mac stand-alone uploader out of the water. More.
- We now correctly update the EXIF when we auto-rotate images on upload.
- Feeds now properly respect passwords and follow the rest of the site functionality. You’ll now see what you should see, depending on whether you’ve entered the appropriate site-wide or gallery password, whether you’re logged in as account owner, whether you’ve previously visited a sharegroup containing a private gallery, and whether you’re tagged as a “friend” and able to bypass the site-wide password. Clear as mud? Basically, feeds should “just work” now.
- We’re thrilled to announce two new partners on ClubSmug. In particular, Philips is giving SmugMuggers $70 off every Digital PhotoFrameTM ordered in the next month. Whoop!
- Go check out your SmugMug control panel. Words do not do the slick-tabbed-improvements justice. You’ll also see a new ClubSmug section where we’ll add new deals from our partners that we want to pass on to you!
- We made some more changes with UTF-8 characters, so we now support them in share emails. Some captions were breaking lightbox, and this is also fixed.
- Updated focal points in the EXIF for 1D Mark III and 30D cameras.
- Fixed a bug in the add to cart interface where the quantity displayed was slow to update.
- We implemented YUI 2.3 and cleaned up some javascript while we were at it.
- Lots of help page enhancements. Notably, we now have a visual indicator when a link will expand to give you more information (duh). Our new upload troubleshooting page is a good example.
- You’ll find some new links in the help page menu, including easy-to-find links to the Pro FAQ, the Customization FAQ, ClubSmug, SmugMug’s Artists-in-Residence, and Andy’s Fast Start for Pros.
September 5th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
First, thanks to all the smugmug people that got all this stuff out. Good work!
Why not give power users an 18 mb limit for uploads? It feels like we havn’t gotten a significant upgrade in a long time. By that I mean, either everyone got the same upgrade, or only the pro users did. Since I signed up as a power user, the only thing I can do differently is change my site. I can’t use the back printing (thats something a power user might find useful).
This may be an issue of perception, but maybe my definition of a power user is different than yours. What exactly is yours? In my mind, a power user is either an advanced amateur with enough computer know-how to be dangerous, or an advanced computer user with enough photo know-how to be dangerous on occasion. Personally, I fall in to the latter category. I like to muck about with panoramic and other high pixel count techniques, hence the potential for large images (though, FWIW, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that a compressed file that big).
I guess this sounds a little ranty. The reality is, I’m a very happy smugmug user, I’m glad to see the interfaces get the update as I have found them very cumbersome in the past. I’m just curious what SmugMugs definition of a power user is.
Thanks again for the good work!
September 17th, 2007 at 7:41 am
I love the new control panel. Major improvement. Keep up the good work.
September 18th, 2007 at 8:25 am
We are not all from an english speaking country; It means we would like to write words with accents (in my case in french). When are you going to fix the problem?
Thanks
September 18th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Along w/ the increases in filesize, are there any similar increases in the image dimensions (WxH)? I glanced at the Help page for filesizes, but didn’t see a mention there re dimensions. (The reason for asking about dimensions is mostly for stitched-together panoramas, which can be pretty darn wide.)
Thanks for any thoughts (and for the great improvements!).
September 19th, 2007 at 9:43 am
@renstar: Thanks for your feedback. The main differentiator (as I see it) between the power account and the standard account is the power to control more of the look and feel of your SmugMug site. Total customization for $20 more a year. There’s also the perk of video clip support, but currently our video support isn’t strong enough for that to be a draw for most people.
@Bill: Thanks!
@roberto: With the changes we made to support UTF-8, words with accents shouldn’t be a problem. We don’t support them in keywords, but everywhere else on the site should work. Give them a try!
@Mike: Good question. No bump on the megapixel limit, yet. It’s still 48 MP. That means a 12,000×4,0000 image is ok, as is a 24,000×2,000 image, etc. Stitching together images can definitely put you over that limit and we appreciate your feedback.
December 5th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I see YUI 2.2.2 being used instead of 2.3. Are there differing version on different parts of the site?