Today we’re introducing a site upgrade which features two cool improvements and a whole host of little fixes:
First, we’re introducing “variations” into the mix. A variation is a riff on someone else’s tabblo- a way to re-purpose their creative investment. Here is how it works: first, as an author of a tabblo, you can let other people create variations of your work in the same way that you assign view permissions. This means that when a guest is looking at your tabblo, he can pick up where you’ve left off and add his own photos and words, change your template, or just plain start over- on a copy of your tabblo. What is this good for? Say you’ve both been to the same soccer game and happen to disagree about the critical shot that belongs at the top- with variations, you can each have your own take on it (and they will both be linked together for others to see). Ditto for concerts, vacations, or just about any other group activity. Think of it like a wiki for photos and words with style. And definitely check out sample variations here and here to see how we link them all together.
Second, we’re introducing a general overhaul to our layout engine. We launched Tabblo around the notion that we could provide you with a “personal art director in software” by codifying some of what we knew were basic rules about good design in the way that the layout engine works with your photos, words, and template choices. Over the last 100 days, many tabblos have been made with this art-director-in-software’s help and a common theme we’ve heard about repeatedly has been that some of its decisions when shifting the elements on tabblos around appear “random.” We launched unlimited undo to help reverse the choices you didn’t like, but today we’re also introducing more transparency in the layout decisions being made on your behalf with the new layout engine UI. It’s too hard to describe appropriately in words (see this movie for a demo), so just head over to the site, make a tabblo, and use the new “Shuffle photos” option (in the Advanced toolbar) to see magic happen to your tabblo. If you like cinematic effects, this one is for you. And even if you don’t, you should find some of the general improvements in speed and layout choices pleasing.
Finally, we’ve also got a whole host of improvements that have been driven primarily by user feedback: better (more robust) Flickr & Blogger import/export, general speed improvements across the site, and automatic captioning when using your mobile phone camera and auto-tabblos are just a few of these, so make sure to check them out.
