Weekly Release Notes: April 30th - visual refresh, sell tab, image cropping & more

Discussion in 'Official Announcements' started by 7943_deleted, Apr 30, 2014.

  1. 7943_deleted
    7943_deleted Member
    A very beautiful release this week:

    Visual Refresh
    Today, we're rolling out a new look to our site that brings more focus to you, your products and your shop.
    Visually, we want the spotlight to shine on you. Our new look adds more space and clarity to the layouts, and brings the focus on products. Your images really stand out now!

    Sell Tab - go straight to your Shops!
    We are also introducing a new Sell tab to the top navigation. When Shop Owners visit Shapeways.com, we know that over 80% of the time they go directly to manage their shop. This new space is dedicated to simplify the selling experience and help Shop Owners run successful businesses on Shapeways. While many of the tools remain familiar, today you'll already find new shop owner tutorials. If you're one of the many Shapeways Shop Owners, we hope you enjoy the improved access to these tools.

    Image Cropping
    In addition to the visual update, we're improving how we crop product images that are not the correct size in order to make photos and products look more polished and professional. Images that aren't the correct size often have white space around the edges, so we will now crop them to fit to the closest dimension. Also, being sure to never distort the image, images which are uploaded at a size smaller than the default size (625px by 425px) will not be stretched to fill. From what we have seen, the cropping helps to bring the subject into focus (your product!) and remove extra white space around the edges

    Also, as a followup from last week, we added the designer's name next to the product title on every product page. :)

    Let us know what you think!
    Natalia
     
    Last edited: Apr 30, 2014
  2. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    I'm trying to use the Shop Inventory page. It seems that the bug of "blank" item numbers has been fixed... Thank You.

    however.. a couple of small things:

    1) When you type in a # into one of the sort boxes and hit Tab - it takes you to the EditModel link.. should take you to the SORT link instead.

    2) All updates to the page are done in Ajax or something... when you have a large shop and click on Search or NextPage - it seems as though nothing is happening for several seconds. It REALLY needs some form of "processing" or "please wait" indicator.

    3) I can't seem to make the Tag Selector Icons at the top of the page do anything. Search seems to work, but filtering by Tags seems to do nothing but come up with 'Sorry .. we didn't find any results".
     
  3. 7943_deleted
    7943_deleted Member
    Thanks for flagging Stony, I'll investigate!
     
  4. numarul7
    numarul7 Well-Known Member
    Cropping works good , really helpful. :)
     
  5. Thanks numarul7 :)
     
  6. stop4stuff
    stop4stuff Well-Known Member
    I'm still thinking that alongside [Shop]...[Design]...[Sell] could be a handy link to [Help] that could include all aspects of help available from Shapeways and the community.

    Paul

    [edit] premature submit... Doh!
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2014
  7. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    Image Cropping

    Hmmm can't see what's the purpose of the new cropping. At least for my shop it doesn't make sense the way it:s done.
    https://www.shapeways.com/shops/MinifigCustomsIn3d

    Currently can't see why it should be an advantage to crop some parts of a picture away.
    (maybe if there's white space all around then yes, but to center in the middle and crop some upper and lower parts away ???)

    Maybe you can give an example.
     
  8. AmLachDesigns
    AmLachDesigns Well-Known Member
    Thanks SW for messing up my shop photos! The cropping is now awful.

    When you make changes like this, you should not change existing set-ups. Now I will have to redo many of my photos that were perfectly fine before. Who says your ideas about white space are the correct ones?

    Another website change, another fail...
     
  9. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    Yes, automatic design changes on things show owners have configured that way are problematic. Costs me further hours of reediting ....
     
  10. numarul7
    numarul7 Well-Known Member
    Looks like cropping goes bad , due the fact not all users made a photo with a center on the design and second they end with cut out signature.

    Seen today on some shops.
     
  11. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    Can you provide examples?
     
  12. AmLachDesigns
    AmLachDesigns Well-Known Member
    Yep, mine.

    See also here
     
  13. woody64
    woody64 Well-Known Member
    And here:
    https://www.shapeways.com/model/1003590/pickelhaube.html?li= aeTabs

    I've spent already half a day to reedit my shop so I've added once more one of the original pictures. You can see the effect on the 2nd picture.

    In principle all items which are not shown alone will get troubles since the item won't be in the middle.In my case it will be out of sight since it's normally in the upper third of the picture.
    Since also the picture dimensions change and are different from platform to platform or shop to shop provider I don't want to change that to often.

     
    Last edited: May 30, 2014
  14. wedge
    wedge Member
  15. I admittedly don't update my shop frequently, but between the last order I placed for myself 2 weeks ago and now, I managed to notice weirdness with my item photos. Hence my comment here.

    So, I'll probably spend some time fixing my photos this evening. I'm ok uploading a fixed size, but it does mean that if the aspect ratio of images is controlled, then I will be placing my own empty space on images if possible. I'm hoping the tool doesn't literally crop anything I upload which is the exact size required.

    I may drop a before and after picture of some of my page to demonstrate what it is vs. what I think it should be. I understand that Shapeways must continue operating as a business, regardless of how disengaged its shopowners may be. However, I do think that the cropping notification should have been sent to me in an e-mail notification prior to its rollout. I love Shapeways and I love making whatever I can imagine become physical reality. As long as Shapeways makes an effort to inform me of changes, I'm happy.