Weekly Release: March 24th, 2009

One other "new" bug:

The selection bar never goes away (even when the mouse if nowhere near the image - like the hover_over command applies to the entire page. Yes, some of us are still using IE6 and won't use IE7 or higher.



Idea, make the selection bar pop down under the photo rather than above and into the photo.

New example of unusable UI design:

What is the point of listing the URL of each image size? I want to be able to select the largest image, not see links. Clicking a small image to see a larger image is a working paradigm. So clicking the displayed image should do one of two things: nothing, or display the next larger size. You don't have to invent something new here.

If you have complaints its to hard to link to an image (say for this discussion board), fix that rather than break the photo gallery. Though a right click to copy a short cut has always seemed pretty easy for me.

Tim

...
What is the point of listing the URL of each image size? ...

This has been one of the most useful features released recently. It will save me personally a lot of time as I regularly use multiple sizes of images for different purposes. In the past I have not only had to right click, to get the properties of the image to copy the link, but then manually edit the link to substitute the image size I required.

As for pop-down I agree; the rest I'm afraid I have to disagree with.

Len

Thanks for adding a date to the photo albums. The date you added is when the photo album was created. We need to see the latest date a photo was added. It's already in date order and the way it is now, I have to go through EVERY SINGLE album to see the latest photos added. Just a tad bit too much work for me.

Thanks for fixing other things though.

In Mozilla, the thumbnail scroll bar at the bottom of a photo will not go away no matter where I place my mouse. Very annoying to say the least. Is this a bug or by design?

...
What is the point of listing the URL of each image size? ...

This has been one of the most useful features released recently. It will save me personally a lot of time as I regularly use multiple sizes of images for different purposes. In the past I have not only had to right click, to get the properties of the image to copy the link, but then manually edit the link to substitute the image size I required.

As for pop-down I agree; the rest I'm afraid I have to disagree with.

Len

Len,

Sorry to differ, but this "feature" is to make up for a lack of ability (known as a defect) in other places. Otherwise known as a workaround and generally a bad practice to follow (its better fix the defect). If you want to insert an image somewhere, say in a discussion board, why not simply allow an image rather than a link to an image?

Why a link rather than "inserting" a photo is because it cost Meetup.com money to put pictures on their servers. If they only link to it then they need less server space to store photos. It's all about money.

I doubt its all about money.

It would be plain stupid of meetup to insert an image into the database as a blob every time someone put it in a post. The image does already exist on the image server. It is just foolish, not to mention very bad practice to duplicate data already stored elsewhere and readily accessible in a database multiple times the way you are suggesting. As individual blobs they would also incur a redundant bandwidth burden for each repetition when a post was quoted.


Len

It is a practice referred to as hot linking or inline linking.

http://en.wikipedia.o...

It is a practice referred to as hot linking or inline linking.

http://en.wikipedia.o...

Thanks Jeff.
However hotlinking is almost always used to refer to illegal use of offsite content, and in a negative tone. I am not suggesting that meetup is using this practice in a negative manner. There are positive internal uses for legitimate content too. When used internally it is not bandwidth theft but actually potentially conserves bandwidth to some extent when images are repeated, quoted, or re-used.


Len

I doubt its all about money.

It would be plain stupid of meetup to insert an image into the database as a blob every time someone put it in a post. The image does already exist on the image server. It is just foolish, not to mention very bad practice to duplicate data already stored elsewhere and readily accessible in a database multiple times the way you are suggesting. As individual blobs they would also incur a redundant bandwidth burden for each repetition when a post was quoted.


Len

What is "stupid" (using your words) - is to post an image to a photo gallery (an image that might be 5MB and is there for no other reason than you wanted to post it in a blog), just to let a user link to it and choose a size appropriate for a blog.

Instead, let users upload images to the blog directly, trim to a size that is appropriate. It saves time, space (and storage costs). And makes the service easier to use. The only risk of duplication is when everyone "quotes" every image. That too is easy to deal with: simply don't allow images in quotes.

When thinking these issues through, need to understand the use case(s).

There is also a desire to link to images OFF the Meetup server. And the new "link" page doesn't address that at all. And probably shouldn't have to.