Feedback for new India Images section

Thumbnails showing in the "film strip" gallery displays in several cases are images belonging to other gallery owners, or to other galleries of the same owner. Thumbnails in a full gallery display sometimes do not belong to the images they reference.

The images in my galleries appear intact but there is a thumbnail display fault.

Nadreg, another thing that's been bugging me: You've fixed the user galleries issue, so you can now get to see their full galleries, if you want. And as linked to from their profiles (handy feature, btw).

However if people now create their own sub-galleries (Machadinha's Pics, My Days in Muzaffarpur, etc.), I think these can only be viewed as their own sub-galleries. There is no function to view that user's full galleries, all in one go.

Maybe this could be fixed by allotting something of an umbrella gallery on top of that to each user.

If you know what I mean. I could try and explain again

(So let's say I'd like to see all of member X's pics. It would be neat to be able to do that, as indeed you could before, without having it divided into their own sub-galleries, that you'd need to call up in full, one by one.)

Maybe schematically, what I'd like to see is:

- Machadinha's galleries (click here, to see all of):
| -- M. in Delhi (click here to see just this section)
| -- M. in Kerala (ditto)
| -- etc.

What you seem to have now instead is:

- Machadinha's galleries (clicking here leads you to only this section. Separated from, and not including, nor directly linked back to from, any sub-galleries created by the user, such as):
| -- M. in Delhi (click here to see just this section)
| -- M. in Kerala (ditto)
| -- etc.

ps

That may well be so, but you've nonetheless never initiated about 95% of the improvements that had been suggested by members, and that you'd promised to look into and to implement where possible.

I will, one day and when it suits me -- it is quite a task --, go over that whole thread regarding the Image Galleries renewal, and pinpoint what had been suggested, and that you said you'd follow up on, but you never have. Or some other stuff on it that you just never addressed at all, or not adequately. So many months after the fact. It is a lot.

I can well imagine that's just too much to handle (as indeed even I find it too much to just go over it), but then kindly just tell us that. And so maybe say look, it is now like this, and it's just grown over my head to change it back or to further adjust it. That would seem fair enough, and I suppose we can all live with that. As it is however, I still think compared to the previous one, the current galleries just stink. Sorry. They don't give me the user-friendliness and usability I was used to, etc. And so I don't find it an improvement, quite the contrary. I do imagine if it is so for me, it will be so for others; and no few of them far more picky about this stuff than I am, mind you. And they have told you so, in no uncertain terms. I'm relatively easy to shrug my shoulders here. To others, it would appear to be their main reason for being here at all.

I haven't been on the photo gallery since it was changed. Not because I don't want to but because I can't figure it out. It takes way too long to load & I can't begin to find what I'm looking for anymore. I'm a member of many photo intensive sites and have no problem navigating on or using them. However, this current photo arrangement on Indiamike is a logistics nightmare. The rest of the site is fine with me though & the brief hiccups that occur occasionally at the top of the hour is not an issue.

I have, once or twice, no more, and I too find it difficult to navigate. I put it down to the inability of an old dog to learn new ticks, so I gave up.

Pity, am sure there are some great pics out there that I am not seeing anymore.

Thinking about it - I used to love going on the photo galleries - but for some reason I don't anymore. Better for your data usage I guess - I used to just press "Refresh Random Photos" (or whatever it was) again and again and again.......
It was a very nice feature though.

Folks, I've moved the posts from the Site Notification Thread to this thread, as they are offtopic in the original thread.

Mach, your very kind offer to go through the thread and identify items I may have missed is awfully nice of you. It is possible that you have missed it, but I had done so previously in this post: http://www.indiamike.com/india/1305381-post1/.

If you do choose to do another pass, please PM the list to me privately. It was not possible to implement 100% of the suggestions because some of them were not possible, either from a technology standpoint or because they didn't match the vision for the section going forward. And, I would hate to publicly criticize anyone (I'm sure you are loathe to do so as well) by pointing out items that were not implemented for whatever reason. Again, thanks so much for the offer.

As for the overall change in the section, I understood when I made the decision that it was a pretty drastic departure from the old way of navigating the image section, and that some members would have a tough time adapting. However, the tagging of images and individual user galleries is the direction that the rest of the websites are going to, rather than a set list of admin defined categories that you could post to. I would hate for IndiaMike to stagnate.

I like the idea of a random image generator, though. I'll take a look to see what it would take to implement it.

I was a bit put off by the new look and some of the earlier implementation features. It was much more difficult, for instance, to browse the latest additions "in bulk." So, I forgot about the image section for a while.

Revisiting it, I don't think there is actually much problem any longer. Once the thumbnails link is clicked (could this be a more prominent button perhaps?) I see a page of images just like I used to see. There are slightly fewer per page, but it is an small difference, and certainly not enough to make browsing through a few hundred recent thumbnails significantly slower or harder work.

Visually, the difference is that it looks more up to date, and, obviously, the theme matches the rest of the site.

What's to figure out? Click on

View: By Thumbnails.

And you see, more or less, what we used to see.

I haven't tried searching for anything specific: usually I just browse. If you give an example, it might be easier to explain or for Nadreg to address.

For starters - I can't figure out how to reduce the # of thumbnails / page & bring up the recent comments made. Also the image info appears to be only available via a mouse hunt (mouseover) now - this is very user unfriendly and a real turn off for quickly scanning images - where is the soft switch to change this as before?

Finally an aesthetic recommendation, the 'Falkland road red' is way too bright a hue for a sidebar on a photo intensive page & the thumbnails need more border/barrier to lessen the amateur look and to give some much needed respite to the eye.

Here's what's to figure out: how to sort the photos in your own gallery chronologically so that you can keep track of what you have uploaded. I've given up on that, and my visits to and interest in the images section have also dramatically declined. Since many of the images posted here are poor and/or faked and/or ripoffs, it is essential to be able to sift through large numbers quickly to get to the interesting stuff. This is no longer possible.
The overall page look, however, is marvellous.

@ abracax,

You are terribly concerned about photographic quality and about perceived fakes. It is a favourite topic of yours. But "photoshopping" of photos is so common place nowadays! Why should it not be used?

What is under discussion here in this thread is the layout of the Images section, as compared to the old Photo Galleries. The value judgements on individual photographs are neither here nor there.

That is something I miss in the new Images section too. In the old one it was possible to see a list of recent comments at the bottom of the page and it was a quick way to find the photos which were attracting attention. And there are often interesting things said in the comments.

Another thing - it appears that links which were posted in comments before the transfer to the new Images section no longer work. I don't know if it is even possible to post links in comments any more. Here are a couple of examples of photos with non-functioning links in comments:
Nice Eyes by Lou Wilson (Lou himself had posted a link to another photo of his)
Funky Bird by Darklord (RWHFY had posted a link to the OBI database)

Are comments on photos covered by the new search engine? I hope they are; I've never tried it.

I would also like to see Random Images again. I would have been a casual visitor to the old photo section - I've only uploaded a very few snaps myself, and I wouldn't generally be searching for anything in particular - but I liked seeing what Random Images brought up (as IndyBoy said).

Less defensiveness and more reading of actual comments.

I've also noticed an increasing trend towards inability of anyone associated with this site to take criticism lately - especially when it comes to fixes to things what wasn't broken to start with.

And I am entitled to my opions whether you like them or not.

Yes, me too. Very useful, that feature on the home page.