Weekly Release: March 24th, 2009

Please return to the old format of the photo albums.

Bug report:

When you click on the thumbnail displayed under an event to view a specific image, the image displays in the new album format for just a brief time before being replaced by the first image in the album.

Surely, if a user selects a specific image to view, it will be because they want to view THAT image. Quite possibly AFTER they have viewed that image, they may wish to view others. But not allowing them to first view the image they selected just causes frustration. If this behaviour is by design, it is an example of terrible design. If it is not by design, it needs fixing.

Len

I tend to agree that it was nice to see many photos as thumbnails at once.

Just one more thing, I don't like the word "EDIT" right after the caption, so it looks like edit is a word in the caption. small detail. I know it just appears this way for the O but its an annoying place to see the word EDIT.

It's new and will take some getting used to. Some positives, some negatives, but it is what it is.

But I did find another bug: w/ Vista and Firefox 3.0.7, I can successfully upload my images but I cannot edit the caption. When I try, I get the text box to enter the caption, but the Add button doesn't work.

The one big piece of functionality I miss is the ability to create the caption when I upload the image.

PLEASE RETURN TO THE OLD FORMAT OF THE PHOTO ALBUMS
This new system is not only arranged poorly across the page (making it impossible for people who are not very good with computers to even find the other albums!) and we had pages and pages of albums with tons of images from every one of our events! now all you can see is the main image and a slideshow that does NOTHING when you click on it if your group is embedded into a website!

I TOTALLY HATE IT & HAVING DEFECTIVE PAGES IN MY GROUP IS *REALLY* ANNOYING ME !!!!!!!
Please change it back!!!!!! It may not be a big deal to groups who do not use photos much but for me it's a deal-breaker!

Michelle
My group embedded into my site:www.rubyscrumptious.com/forums
Greenwich (UK) Chihuahua & Toydog meetup with RubyScrumptious group

Please return to the old format of the photo albums.

Couldn't have put it better myself!!!!

If you agree with these comments please all email support@meetup.com and if we bombard them enough they will hopefully change it back!!!!

Michelle
www.rubyscrumptious.com/forums

without going into much more than most are saying about the new (nobody asked my opinion) photo viewer...Its terrible! I surely don't like chasing the nav bar all over the place to view a photo or go to another folder. Please give us an option to go back to the one that worked! I wasn't complaining about what was working fine. Thanks. -t
Cioncinnati Photoshop Group
and for
NY wedding and fashion photographers

Seeing as so many Organizers are complaining why have we still been left with this awful photo screen???
Do Meetup have any idea how hard it is to get some members to use the group pages in the first place without you making it more difficult for them? - and apart from that it looks terrible!

Michelle
www.rubyscrumptious.com/forums
Greenwich (UK) Chihuahua & Toydog meetups with RubyScrumptious

My Two Cents:

Pro:
- Like the new upload. It is a bit slow to load but I can over look that to get the images up.

Con:
- Myself and most of the members that have looked at the photo navigation all agree. It is a very unpleasant experience. Sorry to say that. Love the big picture and fade but the navigation is at first not clear where it is at for the new user. It is a game of hide and seek. Users hate that. Second it eats up the lower 1/3 of the pic. It adds way too much clicking around to get to the next pic. Ideally it should be below the big picture with arrows for those that do not know how to go to the next pic.
- I seriously dislike the photo album thumb nails on the side. It hides most of the albums from view. I thought the old display was perfect. Why ruin a good thing?
- Lastly I understand the desire for comments on photos. However we need a way to turn them off. Why because it is one more place and site organizer has to police and that takes time to review all the time. We need an option to turn off comments for those who do not want them.

Notes:
- I am using Ubuntu Linux 8.10 and all seems to work fine.

Thanks!
Patrick

Bug report:

When you click on the thumbnail displayed under an event to view a specific image, the image displays in the new album format for just a brief time before being replaced by the first image in the album.

Surely, if a user selects a specific image to view, it will be because they want to view THAT image. Quite possibly AFTER they have viewed that image, they may wish to view others. But not allowing them to first view the image they selected just causes frustration. If this behaviour is by design, it is an example of terrible design. If it is not by design, it needs fixing.

Len

Nice catch, Len! Thanks for the report, we're on it. Sorry for the trouble.

I've made suggestions in the past for the photo galleries but what you've
come up with here is a bit of a disappointment.

Since I run two photo groups, I expect I'll be inundated now with questions
and complaints. They've already started as of this morning.

I tried navigating the page using my antiquated mac 10.3.9 and 10.4 computers
and ended up shaking my head yes and no. It worked on one (somewhat) and less
so on the other.

The area below the main image could be better served with clickable cover images from
past galleries, in their descending order.
Comments could be much smaller or put to the side.

Okay, gotta go...my members are calling!

When you click on the thumbnail displayed under an event to view a specific image, the image displays in the new album format for just a brief time before being replaced by the first image in the album.

Surely, if a user selects a specific image to view, it will be because they want to view THAT image. Quite possibly AFTER they have viewed that image, they may wish to view others. But not allowing them to first view the image they selected just causes frustration. If this behaviour is by design, it is an example of terrible design. If it is not by design, it needs fixing.

Oooo! I had not realized this! You are right! YUCK! While I was thinking the new format was pretty cool (once it actually worked on my system), the feedback I'm getting is not good.

Our folks are finding it really cumbersome and confusing. For people on dial-up it completely sucks; and for the less tech savvy - they just give up and quit. NOT what I want happening.

Once again, I get the feeling that we have been handed something we didn't ask for, the product of some late-night techie brainstorming session. But for regular people (remember us???), it's a PITA. Sorry.

- Beth