General announcements & discussions

vikkyvik · Tue Jul 26, 2016 6:12 pm

Also, in case no one mentioned this....

Now that there's only one watermark color (light), there's no need to have that menu. It's just another thing we have to select, for no reason now.

Also, for what it's worth, I uploaded a bunch of shots last night. After getting through a couple of them, I got quite used to the new process. Just REALLY needs a watermark preview, and I'll be pretty happy.

One thing I forgot to mention: it's actually too bad that the dark watermark went away. We'll see how the light one works now, but in the past, for shots against bright backgrounds, it was all but useless, even at max strength (sure, I could put it over the aircraft, but I don't do that).

Would be nice to have a dark option, but limit the opacity to maybe 40%.

airkas1 · Tue Jul 26, 2016 8:45 pm

vikkyvik wrote:
Also, in case no one mentioned this....
Now that there's only one watermark color (light), there's no need to have that menu. It's just another thing we have to select, for no reason now.

I thought the same and it's on the list

Thanks though!

vikkyvik wrote:
Also, for what it's worth, I uploaded a bunch of shots last night. After getting through a couple of them, I got quite used to the new process. Just REALLY needs a watermark preview, and I'll be pretty happy.

I'm happy to hear you got used to it fairly fast. I agree we need the watermark preview, which is on the list. Perhaps we can take care of that after the thumbnail and homepage stuff that I think is happening this week.

vikkyvik wrote:
One thing I forgot to mention: it's actually too bad that the dark watermark went away. We'll see how the light one works now, but in the past, for shots against bright backgrounds, it was all but useless, even at max strength (sure, I could put it over the aircraft, but I don't do that). Would be nice to have a dark option, but limit the opacity to maybe 40%.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a return of the dark watermark. I agree it's useless for a light background, but when people put it right over the fuselage, it does more harm than good in my opinion.

bombayduck · Tue Jul 26, 2016 8:58 pm

Kas
I know we are not returning to a dark watermark, would this work instead. Would it be possible to have just a dark outline for the watermark, this way if people put it over the middle of a white fuselage or a bright back ground it should not distract from the picture.

vikkyvik · Wed Jul 27, 2016 1:31 am

airkas1 wrote:
I wouldn't hold my breath for a return of the dark watermark. I agree it's useless for a light background, but when people put it right over the fuselage, it does more harm than good in my opinion.

Few options on that:
1.) If a photographer wants to ruin his/her photo by putting a watermark right over the airplane, it doesn't matter to me. Seems stupid, but it seemed stupid with the light watermark too.
2.) Another option - don't provide a center-center option for watermark placement (since that's where the aircraft is located in most photos here). Or don't provide it for the dark watermark.
5.) That's why I suggested limiting the opacity of the dark watermark. So it would be visible on light backgrounds, but not completely cover an aircraft.

kulverstukas · Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:00 am

The sole purpose of watermark is prevention of photo theft, right? So forcing photographer to put watermark anywhere except main object on the shoot for a viewer pleasure is a bit of strange move. It will not prevent thief of using photo with one simple operation of "content aware fill" in PS but still spoil it for regular visitor. Majority of "new" watermarks was placed last month because of lack of A.net copyright bar. With this fixed, in short time - I think - watermarks will be removed from photos by most photographers. And for those paranoid about photo theft proposed watermark use restriction will not help to feel safe.

airkas1 · Wed Jul 27, 2016 6:46 pm

Regarding the watermarks, I'll keep your suggestions in mind for when the time comes. I think we'll deal with more pressing cases first now and then we can re-evaluate the watermarks. I'll let you know once there is news about it.

walter2222 · Wed Jul 27, 2016 8:41 pm

vikkyvik wrote:
airkas1 wrote:
I've read it could take up to 24h (Los Angeles time) for all indexing and retrofitting to be done.

Are Los Angeles hours longer or shorter than the rest of the world? Could explain why I feel like I'm aging faster than normal....

(sorry, just had to get that in )

Thanks for your continued updates.

That really made me laugh!! Thanks for that Vikkyvik!!!

Indeed thanks to Kas for his continued updates and explanation! He even got the counter of one of my shots going

Best regards,

Walter

len90 · Fri Jul 29, 2016 5:11 am

airkas1 wrote:
len90 wrote:
I have the following: 27 in total

Thanks, passed them on.

Kas,

Those images never got the copyright bar. Any idea with what happened? If they can't get the bar added I would probably ask to get them reuploaded or removed from the site. Seems like those were all images that were in the queue when the migration to this new site took place. The image that had the watermark come on was one that was added to the queue after the migration took place.

airkas1 · Fri Jul 29, 2016 9:16 am

len90 wrote:
Those images never got the copyright bar. Any idea with what happened?

I'll ask and will let you know.

airkas1 · Fri Jul 29, 2016 8:43 pm

I processed all. I noticed a problem with the group of images in the 27****** range by Gusti that I'm looking into, appears it still has the black copyright bar on the source image from before.

airkas1 · Sat Jul 30, 2016 5:39 am

Since I know not all of you look in Site Related, here's the most important photography-related info of the most recent update:

- The updates for editing of photos in screening queue, submitting photo corrections and [C] Tool links for DB Editors are all still being tested. This change affects a lot of areas so we want to make sure it's 100% before letting it into the wild. Current ETA is middle of next week but we'll definitely let you know before it goes out. This one has taken longer than expected but it should resolve a handful of issues and the way we're building it will allow us to troubleshoot any issues with uploading/editing of photos more easily in the future.

- Thumbnails: We're working on generating the new image files needed for the "clean" versions of thumbnails. This process is in motion and we should have these ready early/middle next week. This change will eliminate all watermarks and copyright banners from thumbnails.

- Home page update: I did not have time to push out this change today, but attached you can see what we're planning to do (note by me: screenshot looks just like the old site top 5). We're reverting back to only thumbnails (no slideshow) for the Top 5 images on the home page. We'll be monitoring next week to see how this change affects view counts for the Top 5 images. Feedback so far tells us most users (and crew) prefer the thumbnails for Top 5 instead of the slideshow.

spompert · Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:50 am

Great! I might be uploading again soon when things get better!
- I still see the featured photographer on the main page is still not moving. Quite irritating if you ask me.
- I also noticed something new (not sure it`s on the list yet). When there are more than 5 comments on a photo the other comments (sometimes a lot more) are not visible.
- Would also be nice if the caption is being showed higher in the list with info on the detailpage or even in the thumbnails (not sure if this is a good thing).
- No information available about how the Photographers Choice is being made.
- Would be nice to see some view statistics, I can see total views like 32.3K but would be better more detailed like 32.323 and more statistics like views per day, average views, etc (like we had before).
- The notifications in the photosection is not working. So I am not able to see when friends upload or when others comment on one of my photos. This function would be awesome and a great improvement over the old site but unfortunately not working yet.

Thanks and greets
Stefan

airkas1 · Sat Jul 30, 2016 10:09 am

spompert wrote:
- I still see the featured photographer on the main page is still not moving. Quite irritating if you ask me.
- I also noticed something new (not sure it`s on the list yet). When there are more than 5 comments on a photo the other comments (sometimes a lot more) are not visible.
- Would also be nice if the caption is being showed higher in the list with info on the detailpage or even in the thumbnails (not sure if this is a good thing).
- No information available about how the Photographers Choice is being made.
- Would be nice to see some view statistics, I can see total views like 32.3K but would be better more detailed like 32.323 and more statistics like views per day, average views, etc (like we had before).
- The notifications in the photosection is not working. So I am not able to see when friends upload or when others comment on one of my photos. This function would be awesome and a great improvement over the old site but unfortunately not working yet.

1) Still on the list.
2) Added to the list.
3) Still on the list.
4) ??? People can vote for Photog. choice, just like on the old site.
5) Still on the list.
6) Still on the list.

bombayduck · Sat Jul 30, 2016 11:13 am

Kas
One more for the list, sorry if I have missed this. On the old site a certain photo could be in a number of albums shown at the end of the picture along with the comments of said picture, instead of being in say twenty albums now shows a small fraction of this. I have a picture of a NWA DC10 which was in eighteen plus albums now just showing in four albums.

aal151heavy · Sat Jul 30, 2016 8:09 pm

Thanks for continuing pushing changes. The site is now more visually appealing and not as appalling as when initially rolled out. I really hope you can regain all the lost customers.

I uploaded some photos today to test the upload page. Some feedback:

By default, the autocomplete ticks off "No Match Chosen". When there is just one match for both the reg and the location, the default tick should be on the matched reg and location. From my experience, 99% of the time the auto match is correct.

The upload page is way too long. Just like the photo page, each data field takes up so much space resulting in a lot of scrolling. I know this set up looks a lot nicer on a tablet, but given the majority of the photogs are going to upload via their desktop versus tablet, there is no need to space apart all of the data fields.

After upload confirmation, there should be a button to quickly go back to upload another shot (like what we had before).

airkas1 · Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:02 pm

bombayduck wrote:
On the old site a certain photo could be in a number of albums shown at the end of the picture along with the comments of said picture, instead of being in say twenty albums now shows a small fraction of this. I have a picture of a NWA DC10 which was in eighteen plus albums now just showing in four albums.

I've noticed this as well, not sure how/why. I'll add it to the list.

aal151heavy wrote:
- By default, the autocomplete ticks off "No Match Chosen". When there is just one match for both the reg and the location, the default tick should be on the matched reg and location. From my experience, 99% of the time the auto match is correct.
- The upload page is way too long. Just like the photo page, each data field takes up so much space resulting in a lot of scrolling. I know this set up looks a lot nicer on a tablet, but given the majority of the photogs are going to upload via their desktop versus tablet, there is no need to space apart all of the data fields.
- After upload confirmation, there should be a button to quickly go back to upload another shot (like what we had before).

- I'll add this to the list.
- The upload process probably takes the equivalent of the amount of 'work' it cost on the old site. Previously, you had the same, but spead out over 2 pages. So I'll give you the less scrolling point, but in my humble opinion it's doable like this too. However, I will ask the developers to clean up the page, so we have less white space and thus less scrolling.
- This is indeed on the list.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

derekf · Sat Jul 30, 2016 11:04 pm

That's odd. I said much of what aal151heavy said about the upload page a few weeks ago and it was dismissed as I didn't know how to use the page - now it's being altered. Well, well. There you go......

airkas1 · Sun Jul 31, 2016 5:48 am

I went through this thread twice but can't find another post by you.

derekf · Sun Jul 31, 2016 3:28 pm

That's because it wasn't in this thread. It was in this one.

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1338379

airkas1 · Wed Aug 03, 2016 7:07 am

Developers wrote:
Quick update to let you know of some minor updates we just pushed out. We're viewing this updates as "experimental" and they may not be permanent so please let us know what you think and please pass on any good feedback from non-Crew users if you'd like!

1) Top 5 Photos slideshow on the home page has been replaced. We are now showing only the thumbnail version of the Top 5 Photos and users will need to click through to the details pages to view higher-quality versions of photos. The thumbnails shown at top of home page are no longer cropped and will appear at original aspect ratio. Also, we are in the process of removing the "Top Photo" ribbon from the #1 photo so that will be gone shortly.
2) Thumbnails in the sidebar of all pages are no longer cropped, original aspect ratio is respected.
3) The default search results page has been switched to the detail view which uses uncropped photos. The "card" view is now the secondary search result layout.

If you're willing and able, we'd love to hear your thoughts on all 3.

spompert · Wed Aug 03, 2016 8:47 am

airkas1 wrote:
Developers wrote:
Quick update to let you know of some minor updates we just pushed out. We're viewing this updates as "experimental" and they may not be permanent so please let us know what you think and please pass on any good feedback from non-Crew users if you'd like!

1) Top 5 Photos slideshow on the home page has been replaced. We are now showing only the thumbnail version of the Top 5 Photos and users will need to click through to the details pages to view higher-quality versions of photos. The thumbnails shown at top of home page are no longer cropped and will appear at original aspect ratio. Also, we are in the process of removing the "Top Photo" ribbon from the #1 photo so that will be gone shortly.
2) Thumbnails in the sidebar of all pages are no longer cropped, original aspect ratio is respected.
3) The default search results page has been switched to the detail view which uses uncropped photos. The "card" view is now the secondary search result layout.

If you're willing and able, we'd love to hear your thoughts on all 3.

The top 5 is much better now! Personally I prefer the cardview of photos instead of detailview. It think viewing detailview takes to much space and the info about the photographer is not very interesting. I prefer the cardview as default but than with caption included.

310815 · Wed Aug 03, 2016 10:33 am

1) Good move - the slideshow just prevented people from clicking on the shots. So therefore unpopular with photgraphers.
2) Again good News.
3) I agree with Stefan. I acutally liked the cardview, it was quite modern.

Another point I noticed this morning.
When I access the mobile site on my smartphone and check out my personal (or anyone elses) gallery there is now quite some Information underneath a shot. The info bracket is 2-3 times larger than the shot, which is quite confusing. Until yesterday the info was more compromised (and better). Is this due to the change of Nr. 3?

Again I'd generally appreciate if the infos underneath a shot would get shortened, still some useless information there and I think the caption should be placed higher.

Still thanks for the effort, to me the site is already much better back in blue with the smaller top 5. Keep it going!

airkas1 · Wed Aug 03, 2016 11:37 am

JKPhotos wrote:
Another point I noticed this morning.
When I access the mobile site on my smartphone and check out my personal (or anyone elses) gallery there is now quite some Information underneath a shot. The info bracket is 2-3 times larger than the shot, which is quite confusing. Until yesterday the info was more compromised (and better). Is this due to the change of Nr. 3?
Again I'd generally appreciate if the infos underneath a shot would get shortened, still some useless information there and I think the caption should be placed higher.

I will put this one the list and investigate. Shortening the info underneath the photos is still on the list though and we have suggested to move the caption to the top spot.

solro · Wed Aug 03, 2016 11:42 am

All 3 are major improvements!!!
The next thing that should be done, in my opinion, is to find a way to go from the search results directly to the large view of the photo. I know that this is available for registered users of the site, but the unregistered ones give a lot of views which are now gone...

trevisan26 · Wed Aug 03, 2016 9:18 pm

Nice changes, except by the number three imo.

spompert wrote:
The top 5 is much better now! Personally I prefer the cardview of photos instead of detailview. It think viewing detailview takes to much space and the info about the photographer is not very interesting. I prefer the cardview as default but than with caption included.

Totally agree. Top 5 is much much better now and the cardview could be easily improved in many ways, like using 5 photos width like the print below I made, much less time and scroll consuming.

aal151heavy · Thu Aug 04, 2016 3:51 am

airkas1 wrote:
Developers wrote:
Quick update to let you know of some minor updates we just pushed out. We're viewing this updates as "experimental" and they may not be permanent so please let us know what you think and please pass on any good feedback from non-Crew users if you'd like!

1) Top 5 Photos slideshow on the home page has been replaced. We are now showing only the thumbnail version of the Top 5 Photos and users will need to click through to the details pages to view higher-quality versions of photos. The thumbnails shown at top of home page are no longer cropped and will appear at original aspect ratio. Also, we are in the process of removing the "Top Photo" ribbon from the #1 photo so that will be gone shortly.
2) Thumbnails in the sidebar of all pages are no longer cropped, original aspect ratio is respected.
3) The default search results page has been switched to the detail view which uses uncropped photos. The "card" view is now the secondary search result layout.

If you're willing and able, we'd love to hear your thoughts on all 3.

Like all three!

For #3 - I like the detailed view better than the card view. If the intent is to replicate the old site, then this meets that intent (which I like). I would like to see the specific aircraft version in the photo details instead of generic/basic aircraft type.

airkas1 · Thu Aug 04, 2016 9:06 am

Thanks for all the feedback everyone! Much appreciated

310815 · Thu Aug 04, 2016 10:33 am

What happened now?

In the gallery thumbnail are extremly small now?! Not everything on the old site was better, the new larger thumbnail were a great improvement, I mean monitor resolutions have evolveld.
Check out how small they are now (and I have default Settings of 125% Zoom on my browser!):

I can only hope that this is a mistake, as this would be a huge step backwards. This size maybe suited for 1.280 px screens, but hey we're not in 2005 anymore.

View at 100% on a 1.920px screen. Sorry for my harsh words, but you can only be kidding. I really hope this happened by mistake.

airkas1 · Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:20 am

I'm working on it.

ptrjong · Thu Aug 04, 2016 11:22 am

Basically nice changes..

However, I agree with JK that the thumbnail in the detailed view now really looks too small on a desktop...

I would like to see the specific aircraft version in the photo details instead of generic/basic aircraft type.

I second this, it's my biggest irritation with the new site now. For many aircraft it's just silly to provide the 'generic aircraft type.'

For example Fokker 70/100, as if you guys don't know which of the two it is.
Or 'McDonnell Douglas V-8 Harrier', where the generic name is competely artifical because no one has ever called an AV-8 a V-8.

Peter

airkas1 · Thu Aug 04, 2016 12:09 pm

I've E-mailed the developers regarding the small thumbnails. The version vs. generic is still on the list.

kulverstukas · Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:12 pm

JKPhotos wrote:
What happened now?

In the gallery thumbnail are extremly small now?! Not everything on the old site was better, the new larger thumbnail were a great improvement, I mean monitor resolutions have evolveld.

I can only hope that this is a mistake, as this would be a huge step backwards. This size maybe suited for 1.280 px screens, but hey we're not in 2005 anymore.

View at 100% on a 1.920px screen. Sorry for my harsh words, but you can only be kidding. I really hope this happened by mistake.

New site design with tiles are dynamical now (intention to make one site for both desktops and mobile devices with different screen resolutions and orientations). Try to resize browser window on your desktop (change width) and look what's happens. Last time I checked thumbnail sizes was dynamical too, so it's just bad implementation and lack of testing on some screen sizes/resolution which leads to such funny layouts as 100px thumbnail with 1900px wide caption.

310815 · Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:34 pm

kulverstukas wrote:
JKPhotos wrote:
What happened now?

In the gallery thumbnail are extremly small now?! Not everything on the old site was better, the new larger thumbnail were a great improvement, I mean monitor resolutions have evolveld.

I can only hope that this is a mistake, as this would be a huge step backwards. This size maybe suited for 1.280 px screens, but hey we're not in 2005 anymore.

View at 100% on a 1.920px screen. Sorry for my harsh words, but you can only be kidding. I really hope this happened by mistake.

New site design with tiles are dynamical now (intention to make one site for both desktops and mobile devices with different screen resolutions and orientations). Try to resize browser window on your desktop (change width) and look what's happens. Last time I checked thumbnail sizes was dynamical too, so it's just bad implementation and lack of testing on some screen sizes/resolution which leads to such funny layouts as 100px thumbnail with 1900px wide caption.

True, when I decrease my browser window, the thumbnail gets larger, but only when I use like half of the available size, which is odd.
And yeah it is like this the descriptipn is now several times larger than the thumbnail.

garry · Tue Aug 09, 2016 9:29 am

It seems from my recent experience that images are being re-sized & compressed upon upload. I added 5 each set at 1024px on the longest side yet they were all interpolated to 1280px on longest side.

It also seems the opportunity to remove the awful compression applied at upload has been missed in the redevelopment of the site - still around 40% of the original upload.

310815 · Tue Aug 09, 2016 8:24 pm

garry wrote:
It seems from my recent experience that images are being re-sized & compressed upon upload. I added 5 each set at 1024px on the longest side yet they were all interpolated to 1280px on longest side.

It also seems the opportunity to remove the awful compression applied at upload has been missed in the redevelopment of the site - still around 40% of the original upload.

This happened to me as well, one of my latest uploads (ID 3924035) is so compressed now, that the sky is really blotchy now.
On the original there isn't any blotchiness, I uploaded the shot as well to another site and there it does neither show the blotchy sky.

I knew photos were compressed on the old site as well, but I never experienced such a severe change.

Any news concerning the small thumbnails?

airkas1 · Tue Aug 09, 2016 8:29 pm

Are you looking at photos in your photo corner? If so, then it's 'normal' that you see this degraded quality. Like mentioned several times before, the photo corner pages still need to be modeled after the public display pages.

bombayduck · Wed Aug 10, 2016 1:08 pm

Kas
I have just noticed at the bottom of certain pictures, which used to show which albums of said picture was in, this is missing all together now. The comments are still there although they are missing some comments as opposed to the old site, which showed more.

airkas1 · Wed Aug 10, 2016 1:25 pm

bombayduck wrote:
I have just noticed at the bottom of certain pictures, which used to show which albums of said picture was in, this is missing all together now. The comments are still there although they are missing some comments as opposed to the old site, which showed more.

I've put it on the list.

Fly-K · Tue Aug 16, 2016 7:56 am

I received a screening and upload confirmation for this photo (and can click on the link) but it doesn't show up in the database or when searching for it, could this be checked please? Thanks!
https://www.airliners.net/user/photo-cor ... to/3921613

miamivice · Tue Aug 16, 2016 8:34 am

I had the same problem with two shots accepted yesterday. Ican see them in my "photo corner" but not in the search result page or in the page that i opened when I click on my name.

The photos are:

https://www.airliners.net/photo/EasyJet- ... 11/3919793
https://www.airliners.net/photo/Ryanair/ ... AS/3919797

miamivice · Tue Aug 16, 2016 10:45 am

Update: now it seems to be back all ok! All the photos are visible.

airkas1 · Tue Aug 16, 2016 11:14 am

miamivice wrote:
Update: now it seems to be back all ok! All the photos are visible.

Good to hear!

Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:45 am

There seem to be some delay in the indexing if new photos at the moment

310815 · Mon Aug 22, 2016 7:45 pm

Hi,

any news concerning the small thumbnails?

Mon Aug 22, 2016 8:10 pm

I don't think the thumbnails will change much since that was a request for change from a lot of photographers

airkas1 · Mon Aug 22, 2016 8:23 pm

They're going to reduce horizontal space and make 2 columns of photos. So picture the current lay-out smaller on the long side and then another column of the same next to it. This would pobably make things more proportional and would reduce scrolling at the same time. I do think it'll take some getting used to (atleast for me). I'm not sure when the update will roll out, but I'm expecting it this week.

310815 · Mon Aug 22, 2016 9:09 pm

Sorry, but I did read nowhere that photographers requested smaller thumbnails except for the frontpage, but perhaps I did miss something.

The new 2 column layout is online.

It is not a bad idea, but again one could not have made it any smaller. That is not really fitting to current monitor resolutions and makes the site look really old.
Really I am badly suprised how small everything now is.

The "new" bracket view was way better in my opinion. Not everything about the new design was bad. but obviously I am alone with this opinion.
Even with the new re-design in blue and the large thumbnails the site looked really good to me.

airkas1 · Mon Aug 22, 2016 9:41 pm

I'll save my opinion for tomorrow when I have a fresh pair of eyes again.

In the mean time, the edit button for the queue photos is back!

solro · Wed Aug 24, 2016 12:13 am

After the latest update the site switches to "mobile mode" when the size of the window is below aprox. 1400px. So this make a.net homepage unusable (and really crappy) on my 1368px laptop.
I appreciate the job of the developers and I have to congralute them for making the page so adaptive, but I think a "Web/Mobile" version button is needed.

scbriml · Wed Aug 24, 2016 7:44 am

solro wrote:
After the latest update the site switches to "mobile mode" when the size of the window is below aprox. 1400px. So this make a.net homepage unusable (and really crappy) on my 1368px laptop.
I appreciate the job of the developers and I have to congralute them for making the page so adaptive, but I think a "Web/Mobile" version button is needed.

Yeah, I noticed this yesterday. It's quite/very annoying.

Who is online

Popular Searches On Airliners.net