"NEXT" YouMagine pre-release. RFC!

[youmagine 0]

The NEXT release has now been applied to WWW! So that's upgraded now!

Hi All,

Request for comments!

We're preparing a new release (again) with most of the improvements mentioned in the original topic. The rating is still in there (right now), but we want to change it to a printability rating (easy or hard to print). What do you think, @kolia, @Skint? We wanted to add a more sophisticated "printability indicator", but this could be a first step.

The new releases will be prepared and released on "next.youmagine.com" first, before being released on www. This is to prevent us from releasing too soon without enough eyeballs to discover problems.... On next.youmagine.com, there is an extra auth screen so the site is less easy to stumble upon by accident. The login will be username "beta" and password "tester". After that you need to register to the NEXT website, because login information of WWW isn't copied to this testing website.

Some highlights of the planned upgrade:

 

• Much faster page loads (in most browsers)
  
• Major framework upgrade (lots of little improvements)
  
• Should be more stable
  
• We will get better info when you get a page: "Oops, something went wrong"
  
• Privacy fix (no longer can a web-crawler find your e-mail address)
  
• Some changes to the 3D viewer (needs more work)
  
• Fixed the "Mark as primary" for images you've added to a design.
  
• The report/complaint functionality now also tells us who files the complaint so we can get in touch or ask for more information.
  
• Blender icon added
  
• Many smaller improvements...
  
• After this release we'll be improving more frequently...
  

 

Note that the servers for next.youmagine.com are now in Europe which will make it faster for the majority of users but slower for USA audience. WWW will not be moved right now, but may move in the future, depending on where the most visitors are located by then.

Also, we've changed the speed upgrade to not include turbolinks which caused problems in the last release (which was reverted). We did add a lot of caching of pieces of HTML which should speed up page loads quite a lot!! We hope you'll notice a lot of difference!

Please visit NEXT.YOUMAGINE.COM if you want to help testing this new release before it goes live! Feel free to use this thread to give (constructive) feedback. Thanks a lot!

 

[drayson 75]

Great news!!! Thank you for providing this "beta" !

[IRobertI 521]

I guess I'll do my usual thing of sounding critical

What's the deal with the orange hi-light when hovering over a model? It obscures details and actually adds size to it, very weird. For example, looking at the basketball without hovering you can clearly see the grooves in it, when hovering the orange hi-light obscures some of that detail. The viewer also needs a speed boost, the basketball object is really really jerky and laggy to rotate. And that's with a fairly hi-end machine (770GTX, 16Gigs of RAM, i5-4670K).

What's the meaning of the red outline stuff that appears if you click on a model and then move your mouse away from it? Again, it makes it hard to see the actual model and I have no idea what it's supposed to represent.

The measurements that are shown are great however, very useful info. And thank you for disabling auto rotate by default, that drove me nuts.

I want to be able to view larger images, please. The way I do it now is to right-click -> middle click "View image" to open it in a new tab -> and then zoom in using the mouse zoom extension I have installed. Or maybe I should just get glasses...

I still can't seem to figure out how to affect the score of an object but maybe that's because we can't log in yet?

I'm not a fan of the filename "watermark", it doesn't really serve any purpose IMHO.

Page loads do indeed seem a lot faster as far as I can see.

From this page: https://next.youmagine.com/designs/world-cup-mascots I clicked on what looked like a yellow net on a blue background under "Other designs by this user". I ended up on the front page with an error of "You are not authorized to access this page.".

Image sizes and width/height ratios need to be standardised and made clear to whoever tries to upload something. Looking at the main image of a design on the front page and comparing it to the same image on the design page you can see that it is cropped differently (on the design's page the top and bottom are cropped harder). This makes it very hard to upload an image that represents your design the way you intended it.

Under the big blue download button there's a white space before the social media buttons. I assume that's just a place holder for something else? Or maybe move the download counter there?

IMHO you should move all the category/tags/Licence stuff to the bottom or off to the side. When I first look at a design I'm more interested in reading what the designer has to say about it.

There, just a few random thoughts from a tired brain. And this was just a "surface" check, I didn't create a new account and try uploading stuff and so on. Maybe tomorrow, too tired right now.

 

[youmagine 0]

Hi IRobertl,

Thanks for the extensive feedback and for being and sounding critical. It's very helpful!

I'm also a bit bothered by the hi-light. I'd love that to be turned off until we're displaying multiple separate parts and the selection actually means something. However this can be changed after the release. I actually want the 3D viewer to be optional, something you can enable with one click. The red outline is meant to be able to select and save a specific (part of a) shape.

For voting you need to be logged in, indeed (and thus registered).

The watermark is important especially to make sure YouMagine is getting traction. These images are frequently used on blog postings and new articles. I must add that a non-watermarked version is ALWAYS kept on record (and will be made available).

@ Page loads: Great!

@ Cropping/image size: The aspect ratio and cropping behaviour will be addressed after this release, but will definitely be addressed!

@download: if you're logged in this is where you can favorite a design...

@ tags / license: makes sense but it's not a very large area. It does put the description almost under the fold, so I'll have to think about this one.

Thanks a lot, again!

 

[IRobertI 521]

Ok, so there's a good reasoning behind those hi-lights at least even though they're a bit counterproductive at the moment. Sounds good. I also like the sound of being able to choose whether or not to use the 3d viewer.

I was talking about the top left "watermark" (in quotes since it isn't actually part of the image) that shows the filename. It looks ugly and it doesn't really serve any purpose that I can see. I mean, why would I care that the image is called "IMG_8919_2.jpg"? The bottom right Youmagine logo I'm ok with, I think.

@download: Perhaps include the buttons/images that allow you to do that but grey them out with a "tooltip" that says you need to log in to use them? That way it doesn't look like there's something missing in the layout.

 

[nallath 1,125]

You did not implement the '418' error code.

 

[skint 62]

1) I like the printability rating. Maybe that will inspire users to give feedback in their comments on methods they used to print things. Something I often look for when searching thingivers etc, is any specific info regarding supports or speeds etc.

2) I agree with Robert, shift the boring stuff to the side or below. Tags, license etc.

3) On the homepage that large colourful banner annoys me, its just a little too big. LOL a bit picky I know

4) Pages loading MUCH faster. Nice job!

5) I still cannot view the other images under the main image, by clicking the left / right arrows or by clicking the image itself. Nothing happens. Only way I can open them is by right clicking and " open link ".

6) just being picky again, but personally I would shift the designer info up to the top next to the main image, and put the download button below it. It just seems fairer..i dunno...makes the image look like the owners...

7) downloads. favourites. When mouse pointer passes over these headings it changes to the hand, suggesting I could click it and be directed elsewhere.

If you would prefer, I will register and add more comments later. Overall there is deffinate progress. Its much faster which is one of the biggest gripes. Next one to fix for me are the images below the main image, they do nothing.

I will try all this again when I get home later, see if anything differs on a different machine

 

[skint 62]

Couple other things:

1) On the discover pages the thumbnails show number of likes, with the heart. I would also like to see No of comments.

2) Not sure if its just because its a tester, but when uploading a model I guess you have to select a " Category " to upload to. If I look at the world cup mascots, they appear as " Miniatures ". But when I select the miniatures link on the side, they do not appear in it.

Ta

 

[jbeale 0]

Maybe I'm just vain, but I like the Thingiverse "dashboard" feature that shows a graph of how many views, and downloads you've had each day across all of your models. Gives me a sense that I am doing something worth while :smile: (or is this feature already present in Youmagine and I just don't know how to access it?)

Also, when you look at a CAD file, is there some reason you don't get to see a still image of the object while you wait for the 3D model to load? Looking at a 2D image tells you something about the model. Looking at a generic progress bar indicator does not, so it's more frustrating.

 

[dirkels 0]

2) Not sure if its just because its a tester, but when uploading a model I guess you have to select a " Category " to upload to. If I look at the world cup mascots, they appear as " Miniatures ". But when I select the miniatures link on the side, they do not appear in it.

 

 

This categories side menu always points to design_ideas (https://next.youmagine.com/design_categories/miniatures/designs).

 

[youmagine 0]

@ "IMG_8919_2.jpg" that will go... we will stop displaying the file names unless you download them (als future functionality).

@nallath: 418: LOL. Nice one... let's add a brewing options with a REST interface!

@Dirkels & Skint: Well spotted! I have no idea how this bug got introduced, but it sure is a bug! We'll fix this one before we release. Thanks! Will be fixed!

@jbeale: definitely a nice one, and sure is on the list of improvements. We'd also like to tell you when you hit certain milestones with your designs (downloads or fav's), this e-mail is of course unsubscribe-able.

 

Also, when you look at a CAD file, is there some reason you don't get to see a still image of the object while you wait for the 3D model to load? Looking at a 2D image tells you something about the model. Looking at a generic progress bar indicator does not, so it's more frustrating.

Good point. At first there was only the image, but now we added the viewer. I don't like the glitch you get (very short impression of the model and then the "Loading" progress)... I think what you describe sounds good.

 

[IRobertI 521]

I noticed that the laggy 3d view happened only when your mouse pointer is on top of the object. If you go full screen so that there's plenty of space on the side of the object you can keep your mouse pointer there and spin the view around lag free. I think it's when it's trying to detect if the pointer is on top of the object and turning that annoying orange hi-light on and off that it starts getting laggy.

 

[youmagine 0]

Hi IRobertI, good finding @ pointer slow down. I've noted down the bug.

 

[Blizz 53]

Still trying to locate a page where I can see my starred designs in one go. Perhaps it's there but I've been unable to find it, both in the original site and the "next" one

 

[Daid 306]

https://next.youmagine.com/education

That's pretty empty for a top header link...

 

[cleven 4]

Can anyone view? Doesn't seem to allow me to login.

[youmagine 0]

Hi Cleven.... what do you mean by view? I can log in, are you sure it's related to the update?

 

[jbeale 0]

If YouMagine eventually becomes very popular, there is going to be a problem with your URL links.

Compare "youmagine.com/designs/fanduct-another-idea" with "thingiverse.com/thing:340161"

On YouMagine, it looks like I have to choose a globally-unique name for each thing to avoid colliding with another page that might already exist. Thingiverse does that for me by assigning the number. WIth this system, eventually on YM people will have to avoid using common names for things and invent new words, and that hurts any search functions.

I know a random 6-digit number is not very meaningful to a person, but at least it's a unique link which won't (necessarily) go stale if someone else wants to name their thing the same as I did, and it is also usually shorter than the title of an object, shorter is often a good thing in URLs.

 

 

[cleven 4]

I don't know if it is due to the update . But I am unable to login. I can log into the normal site...

 

Hi Cleven.... what do you mean by view? I can log in, are you sure it's related to the update?

 

[youmagine 0]

Hi jbeale, it also allows use of URLs with a number, but those aren't as Search Engine friendly. http://youmagine.com/designs/1391

You can find the ID through this json URL: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/fanduct-another-idea.json

However YouMagine will always create a name with a number added to it if that's needed to avoid a collision.

 

[cleven 4]

I am on an iPad here (on vacation) maybe this is he issue?

 

Hi Cleven.... what do you mean by view? I can log in, are you sure it's related to the update?

 

[youmagine 0]

I don't know if it is due to the update . But I am unable to login. I can log into the normal site...

 

 

On NEXT, the pre-release version there's a htaccess login. You can use that site with user "beta", password "tester". After that you can register and login, however the accounts aren't copied from the production site. It's meant for testing.

 

[cleven 4]

Ah ok didn't see that previously. Thanks!

 

On NEXT, the pre-release version there's a htaccess login. You can use that site with user "beta", password "tester". After that you can register and login, however the accounts aren't copied from the production site. It's meant for testing.

 

[youmagine 0]

FYI, for those who didn't notice it yet: The NEXT release has now been applied to WWW! So that's upgraded now!

 

[jbeale 0]

Here is another issue with YM: it crops the images. Look at this one:

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/files.youmagine.com/uploads/image/file/46629/medium_Shield-20140508.png

this is supposed to be a dimensioned drawing, but due to the YM crop, some dimensions are cut off the top and bottom, so the drawing is not useful.

Thingiverse does this also on their in-frame view, but there you can just click "expand to fill screen" button, and see the full extent of the original image. If that option exists on YM, I am not aware of it.