Flickr. Am I the only one who likes it?

[redisburning]

like I said in the other thread my main issue is that it runs so ****ing slow even on a high end pc that I have to wonder if it was programmed by a bunch of freshman CS majors on internships.

seriously I once took a compsci class in highschool and my stat scripts are way less problematic than this. truly embarrassing.

 

[farlymac]

So I logged on the other night, and started typing out a mail reply to a contact, hit send, and "Whoa!", the darn site had changed. That was a shock, even though I had read there were changes coming.

So I start to rummage through the site to see what was going on, and ran smack head-on into all kinds of issues. Started to look through the FAQ, and Feedback listings, and found nothing but complainers there, so I dug around until I found the place to send an e-mail to the Flickreenos (gawd, what an idiotic name). Stated what I was having problems with, and asked would they please fix it.

Their replys all sounded like they were read straight out of the "Help Desk for Dummies" book. The standard "You've got to change your browser" thing really ticks me off when I get that. Why should I? Are they too lazy to set up their site to work on any browser? Or did they just take so much time designing it for an iPhone that there was none left to fulfill the "Queen of the Internet"'s commands promptly?

So after all this back and forth with the nameless, faceless, clueless Flickreenos, I finally broke down, crawled out of my Luddite shell, and installed Google Chrome. That actually took care of 98% of the problem. The rest is resource hogging, speed busting , loading up 300 photos crap that I guess we'll never get them to admit is a mistake. And so far, I've not been able to read the narrative I write beyond the first two lines when I set up a set through the uploader. Lot of good it does to go through all that trouble, only to have some programmer forget to include the feature in the rebuild.

I'm keeping my Flickr account, especially now that they have caved and said it won't cost anymore to renew. Doesn't mean that later on they won't up the price anyway, but it's still a good deal. I may also open up an account on Ipernity, as some of my best photo community friends are heading that way.

This whole fiasco just shows what kind of corporate mind-think is going on in this country. Yahoo doesn't care what you as the customer thinks, all they want is to able to tap you for advertising revenue. Bottom line, sweet and simple.

I feel for the folks over on Tumbler when Ms Mayer finally gets her hands on the code.

PF

 

[colyn]

like I said in the other thread my main issue is that it runs so ****ing slow even on a high end pc that I have to wonder if it was programmed by a bunch of freshman CS majors on internships.

seriously I once took a compsci class in highschool and my stat scripts are way less problematic than this. truly embarrassing.

I suspect the slow issue you have/had is the high amount of bandwidth because of the people who were checking it out. It regained speed now that these people have checked it out and are gone for now..

I just loaded my Flickr in Firefox with a total of 4 other open tabs and it loaded in 4 seconds.. I do agree that it probably loads slow on the iPad as well as the Android tablets. I got rid of my iPad a couple of months ago because it was so slow.. My desktop and laptop run fine with it..

 

[tunalegs]

I suspect the slow issue you have/had is the high amount of bandwidth because of the people who were checking it out. It regained speed now that these people have checked it out and are gone for now..

I just loaded my Flickr in Firefox with a total of 4 other open tabs and it loaded in 4 seconds.. I do agree that it probably loads slow on the iPad as well as the Android tablets. I got rid of my iPad a couple of months ago because it was so slow.. My desktop and laptop run fine with it..

I don't think it is possible to implement endless scrolling with full res, justified photos and not have it load down the computer. I can't have another tab open while a photostream is loading or firefox stalls.

Plus endless scrolling is completely pointless on a site that isn't constantly updating like Twitter for instance. 🙄

 

[semilog]

always hated the clunky old Flickr. it was reminiscent of early 2000's, big white areas that could have been used better.

Now there is no white space. Even worse. Horrible design. The pictures cannot breathe; they suffocate.

 

[colyn]

I don't think it is possible to implement endless scrolling with full res, justified photos and not have it load down the computer. I can't have another tab open while a photostream is loading or firefox stalls.

If you have your browser set to delete cashe/history/ etc it will have to reload. I've tried it on both Firefox and Chrome with multiple tabs open with no issues whatsoever. Chrome was 1 second slower than Firefox at 5 seconds to Firefox 4 seconds. If you have a slow computer then I can understand your argument.

Plus endless scrolling is completely pointless on a site that isn't constantly updating like Twitter for instance. 🙄

I don't get endless scrolling. Mine loads up 156 images then I have to click the next page for more. And my images are usually uploaded at high resolution. Most in the 5-15MB size.

 

[tunalegs]

One more example of flickr "beta testing" - I can see why they thought we were all ready for this update!

I could show you guys more but it's an upsetting mix of hilarious and horrifying.

 

[redisburning]

turning my cache back on helps significantly.

of course, you know I invested some cash and my own time into building a properly decent PC so I could run my browser with no cache and full reloads. I can run PS, a 3D game at max settings, my usual 15+ tabs in Opera with 2 simultaneous game streams, MOG with a song playing AND skype with no slowdown. I can open Flickr or Hulu (the two worst offenders IMO) in a completely new browser with all of that stuff turned off and it's horrendously slow.

I think in 2013 it's reasonable to ask that your sites performance not be "complete ****". design evolves and is subjective. performance is objective and flickr's BLOWS.

 

[Ranchu]

The endless scroll of brick road layout is truly a bunch of happy horse****. That's enough for me to abandon it forever.

 

[ebolton]

I have a HP touchpad (the now orphaned HP web OS model), and flickr actually works OK on it. That sort of indicates the web coding for it must be pretty good/robust, because a lot of sites don't work well on it at all.

 

[segedi]

I'm not getting all of the complaints... The ones posted from the beta tester screenshots are, well, out of touch with the realities of running a huge, money hungry online business. Design changes weren't forced on any of us, we aren't and never have been in control of the design. It's as if these users are saying "Host my images cheaply(or free) in the manner I demand!" Want that? Create your own Web site or research what it would take to create an alternative product... Don't like it? Your choice. Membership? Also your choice. Pissed off? Leave Flickr.

Change happens and is only as unsettling as you make it.

 

[Ranchu]

I'm not getting all of the complaints... The ones posted from the beta tester screenshots are, well, out of touch with the realities of running a huge, money hungry online business. Design changes weren't forced on any of us, we aren't and never have been in control of the design. It's as if these users are saying "Host my images cheaply(or free) in the manner I demand!" Want that? Create your own Web site or research what it would take to create an alternative product... Don't like it? Your choice. Membership? Also your choice. Pissed off? Leave Flickr.

Change happens and is only as unsettling as you make it.

I left, I won't be back. I really don't care what flickr's reasons are, mine are the ones that matter. And the point is NOT that it's changed, it's that it was fine and now it truly sucks, not 'is different' - 'truly sucks'. Are you getting what I am saying?

 

[jarski]

I left, I won't be back. I really don't give a **** what flickr's reasons are, mine are the ones that matter. And the ****ing point is NOT that it's changed, it's that it was fine and now it sucks ass. Are you 'getting' what I am saying?

Sure. Don't let the door hit you on way out...

 

[Ranchu]

Sure. Don't let the door hit you on way out...

Dude asked, now he knows.

 

[redisburning]

Sure. Don't let the door hit you on way out...

yeah but there is someone who doesnt think that's ok.

the people paying for the advertisements.

oh well it's a good day for adblock, huh?

 

[tunalegs]

I'm not getting all of the complaints... The ones posted from the beta tester screenshots are, well, out of touch with the realities of running a huge, money hungry online business. Design changes weren't forced on any of us, we aren't and never have been in control of the design. It's as if these users are saying "Host my images cheaply(or free) in the manner I demand!" Want that? Create your own Web site or research what it would take to create an alternative product... Don't like it? Your choice. Membership? Also your choice. Pissed off? Leave Flickr.

Change happens and is only as unsettling as you make it.

So far as I know all the beta testers were pro (paying) members though I may be wrong.🙂

Change can be unsettling but - honestly? The new design is slower to use and slower to load. They moved a lot of stuff around and didn't provide ANY help to the testers (or any users for that matter) - which is a big problem. This wasn't a new feature, where a lack of any instruction or hints would be acceptable - they moved everything around - changed menus, changed locations of menus, functions, etc. Given that they also deleted self explanatory menu titles like "share" for instance and replaced them with cryptic symbols - I think the tester's reactions were entirely justifiable. It's not immediately obvious where things are put. On top of that because the new layouts were rushed out without adequate testing a lot of stuff wasn't even working the first few days which only made things more confusing.

Change is unsettling enough, but when change is also bewildering and half-functional people get frustrated. It works better now than it did a couple days ago though... although it's still pretty unwieldy compared to the old layout in several ways.

 

[rfaspen]

http://www.ipernity.com

Seriously. Give it a try. I love it more than Flickr. There is much about ipernity that I wish Flickr had all along. Seriously. Check out Ipernity. I think many of you will find it compatible.

I was worried it would not have "community". It does.
I was worried it would not be laid out as nice as Flickr. Its better.
I was worried it would be more ad driven and Facebook/new Flickr like. Its not!
I was worried it would be a lot more expensive for annual membership. Its not.
Groups, contacts, comments, tags, keywords, community, everything's there.

And, perhaps most importantly. I've noticed a LOT of new Flickr people on Ipernity. They seem very happy on Ipernity. Most of the groups that were on Flickr are being created (ported?) to Ipernity. I just feel at home there. A great new alternative that's even more for me than Flickr was.

My 2 cents.

 

[hteasley]

It's clearly a response to Picasa and 500px.com, it seems to me. I like it as a better version of either of those sites: Picasa goes for a lot more smaller photos in a justified layout, and 500px goes for square everything, also smaller, with marginally more border space between photos.

Flickr is showing larger versions of photos, doesn't do Picasa's infinite scroll but comes close, and has made the viewing of contact photos a lot easier. 500px square cropping every photo in previews is annoying, and Flickr isn't doing that.

Adding a photo to multiple groups is a *lot* easier now.

Overall, I like it. It's especially nice on my Chromebook Pixel, with the super high resolution and great color reproduction.

 

[hteasley]

Change is unsettling enough, but when change is also bewildering and half-functional people get frustrated. It works better now than it did a couple days ago though... although it's still pretty unwieldy compared to the old layout in several ways.

In this sort of situation, testers need to be listened to in the correct frame of mind. For a lot of folks, change is anathema, and they'll just rebel the whole time.

Then there are folks who are incredibly intolerant of any change that doesn't have 100% of the old functionality right away: the developer is in the position of having to choose between being feature complete before showing anything, or choosing to get feedback on big changes while some functionality is yet to be delivered. These folks are also hard to deal with, when trying to get feedback on what you have delivered (it's always complaints about what you have yet to deliver).

Then there is the social dynamic of forums, where opinions influence other opinions, and small things can appear huge. And of course people are most likely to post opinions when they feel passionately about something, and usually when that passion is negative. Happy folks post opinions less often, and less passionately.

This isn't to say that testers should be ignored: far from it. It's just that there's more to sussing out usability and appeal of something like this than looking at what only appears to be universal negative reaction with testers.

 

[user237428934]

Just took some time and looked at ipernity. The background is white...that's it. Tried to discover it and stumbled over a photo that was displayed using the Ken-burns-effect. Awful.

I use the groups in flickr a lot to look for countries, cities, cameras, lenses. Great resource and I put my photos in groups too. In ipernity they have the group functionality but almost no groups. 1 Leica group that covers all with not really much in it. That still needs years of work and uploading that it reaches the quality of flickr.