Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

Discussions about the Ward Directory and Map tool on churchofjesuschrist.org.
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing FIX: RESIZE TO 900 KB

#11

Post by mevans »

EbenVisher wrote:I solved the problem by resizing photos. Still, today, the Church's photo-upload web app simply hangs and does nothing if the photo is larger than somewhere in the low 900 KB range.
I had to upload some new photos today and I did some larger ones, just to test things. I had photos in the 1.3 - 1.7 MB range and they all uploaded quickly and assigned just fine.
ebenvisher
New Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:43 pm

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#12

Post by ebenvisher »

Mevans,

Thanks. That provides another data point. Maybe there's another mechanism (also) involved. That's one thing I've always found frustrating about bugs - they're so buggy. Irregular, seemingly. Hard to track down.

Let's hope our experiences serve others well if they encounter upload issues such as I and many have had.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. I like the feeling that we're all in this together, helping an utterly *amazing* product.

--Eben
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#13

Post by mevans »

EbenVisher: I just had a thought: we should make sure we're both trying the same thing. There's more than one way to upload photos, and my experience has been that they behave differently.

I'm using the Upload Photos tab on the Local Unit Directory page (lds.org/directory). I'm doing a drag/drop operation to upload the photos. Is that what you're doing?
ebenvisher
New Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:43 pm

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#14

Post by ebenvisher »

Mevan,

I had been doing it as you describe. I was uploading a bunch at a time, and some would fail. Lately, I've done this:

* Identify the cleaned-up, final version of a person's pic
* Go to that person's entry in the directory by using the Filter Results window in Directory > Households
* Verify that the person does not already have a pic I might accidentally overwrite
* Click the Edit button of the "Edit | View" pair above the entry
* Use the Change button under the photo in question
* Upload by browsing to the image (rather than drag and drop)

If the picture fails, I resize and it works. Oddly, sometimes pictures under my 900K threshold, fail. Say, one is at maybe 800K but fails anyway. Trying again always fails. Instead, I resize the picture to, say, 700 K. I do that by resampling. If it is, say, 2000 x 2000 pixels, perhaps I'll resample to 1900 x 1900. (I use Photoshop)

--Eben Visher
mevans
Senior Member
Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#15

Post by mevans »

Eben - When the bulk Upload Photos hasn't worked, the workaround was to do as you mentioned and individually upload pictures. It's more time consuming to upload them that way than in bulk, but when I had to do it, it usually worked. My main problems in the past were with the bulk Upload Photos tab.

You can also upload photos from LCR. I haven't tried that. I guess I'm scared of LCR photos after I had a significant data loss editing photos in LCR. The church told me they made some improvements, but that data loss hurt bad and I'm still scared because they never could reproduce the problem. I was trying to clean up pictures after the church forced the circle mask on all the individual photos and decapitated people in the process. I didn't have originals of some of those, as they were member uploads and some of those were for people we don't see very often, if ever.

I'm guessing the LCR photos uses the same back-end web service as the directory photo upload. Maybe I better get over my fears and give it a try again next time I have to upload photos.
ebenvisher
New Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:43 pm

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#16

Post by ebenvisher »

M. (I’ll assume Evans is your last name),

The other day, single picture uploading in the Directory kept failing on pictures that were ok-sized. I switched to LCR for my single-photo uploads (right in the person’s page, upload a picture from my hard disk). That worked wonderfully. So that is one place LCR worked when Directory failed.

Yesterday I wanted to upload from my iPhone X, using Chrome. Nastily, Directory refused to treat me as a “real” web browser. It insisted on giving me the mobile page. Chrome can request that a site treat it as real. That is, it can *explicitly* request the desktop page instead of the mobile page. In what I consider an egregious bug, Directory simply ignores that request.

SO, back to LCR. LCR *accepted* the request to treat my iPhone as a “big boy” and give it the *real* (desktop) page. Great! I knew I was almost there. I used LCR as usual, drilled down to an individual, and uploaded their picture. I did that with several.

To recap: In two different situations, LCR has allowed me to upload individual pictures at times when Directory failed. LCR is my friend. :-)

—Eben Visher, Sacramento, California
ebenvisher
New Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:43 pm

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#17

Post by ebenvisher »

M.,

Oops, correction. On my iPhone X, LCR did *not* honor Chrome's request to receive the real website instead of the mobile version. In other words, LCR has the same bug that lds.org has.

The way I talked to LCR, therefore, to see the real, full, LCR pages was.... Wait, why should we/I care, anyway? Answer: The mobile version of LCR omits a *lot* of functionality. So, I used a browser on my iPhone X specifically designed to never get mobile pages. It always tells websites that it is a full browser, not a baby one. The iPhone app I used is, "Browse", at this URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/desktop ... 76212?mt=8

Browse is by Spicy Apps. In the "developer name" spot, right under the name of the app (in the App Store app), it gives the author's name as, "Browser".

The point is that ultimately, LCR would upload a given single image when Directory would not. At least on several occasions.

--Eben
eblood66
Senior Member
Posts: 3907
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2007 9:17 am
Location: Cumming, GA, USA

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#18

Post by eblood66 »

EbenVisher wrote:The way I talked to LCR, therefore, to see the real, full, LCR pages was.... Wait, why should we/I care, anyway? Answer: The mobile version of LCR omits a *lot* of functionality.
LCR uses what is called 'responsive' design. It's not really a matter of mobile devices and desktops but rather a matter of screen size. If the browser reports a small screen size then LCR will use the mobile layout. If the browser reports a larger size then it uses the full layout. You can see this by shrinking the window on a desktop version of Chrome. When it get's small enough it switches. The 'mobile' mode doesn't actually change to a different site, it just adjusts the layout of the page. All the same functionality is still there but laid out to fit the smaller size screen. So there really shouldn't be anything that you can do in the 'full' version that can't be done in the 'mobile' mode except see as much information displayed at once. I couldn't find anything missing when I looked (although admittedly some reports are a lot easier to view with more room).

Having said that, on my Android device if I use the 'Desktop Site' option in Chrome it does show the full layout (with everything zoomed way out so it's all really small). I don't know what's different about iPhone Chrome that it works differently.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
Posts: 34418
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#19

Post by russellhltn »

EbenVisher wrote:The mobile version of LCR omits a *lot* of functionality.
I used to think that about the Help Center. It turns out the options were hidden under a button labeled in a way that didn't help me find it.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
ebenvisher
New Member
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:43 pm

Re: Assigning Photos - taking forever or failing

#20

Post by ebenvisher »

Eblood66,

Thanks. That helps. I'm glad to learn that all the same functionality is there.

The issue of no user choice remains, however. Soon I'll upgrade to the iPhone X Plus, with a 6.2" screen instead of my "little" 5.8" one. Then maybe I'll discover that some programmer made the decision that "6.0" inches and less is stuck with Mobile, while > 6" gets "real". So suddenly the whole user experience changes just because I changed my phone.

I LIKE the idea, don't get me wrong. What I DON'T like and think should be fixed, is that *I* and not someone else should decide if I'm happy looking at this site in 4 point text (because I'm viewing it on a little screen). *I* know how good my eyes are, they don't. *I* know how much grief I can stand today as I try to learn an entirely new interface with new widgets and new behavior, they don't know my pain limit.

Regarding the different behavior of different widgets, here's a perfect example:

In the mobile version of LCR now, under Manage Photos, there is a multi-selection box that by default shows, "Individual and Household". I wanted to switch to Individual. I hit the pull-down button at the right side of the widget. This opened a little window docked against the bottom of the screen. It contained a scroller that offered,
Individual and Household
Individual
Household

I scrolled "Individual" into the correct place. NOW WE SEE THE WEIRD WIDGET BEHAVIOR! There was no way to say, "OK, I want this one". Or, "I'm done with this scroller, take me back to the screen." The only choice was to *cancel* (close) the scroller by hitting its "kill" or "close" button in the top right, which was an X. Lo and behold, I finally gave up and hit X since there was no Done or OK. Look what happened! The X was really "Done" in disguise! The choice widget, up above on the screen, now displayed "Individual".

Wow, I sure thought hitting X to mean "Done" was strange (this, from a computer programmer who has actively written software for 50 years; that's why I could take an educated guess to try the "X"). Whether someone else is comfortable with this strange and (to me) unpleasant behavior, misses the point. The point is, *this* multi-choice widget acts *completely* differently from the same-intent multi-choice widget on a big version of the page.

THAT is precisely my complaint.

Simple solution:
Let the user choose.
Keep both mobile and desktop versions...
But again let *me* decide when to switch, not some committee/person who said by fiat, "From now on, 6.0376" and below means Mobile."

Thanks. I hope some of this goes to the right person/people. Maybe I there's a place for posting suggestions, where I could put it?

I love all our Church membership software. I remain in utter *awe* at the hundreds of person-years behind what look like simple interfaces. Thanks, all you who help or build or support. It sure makes my life easier and richer.

--Eben Visher
Post Reply

Return to “Ward Directory and Map”