ebolton
Number 7614
This is my opinion as well. And I really like having less white screen to constrict my pupils when I am looking at my contacts photos.
Flickr. Am I the only one who likes it?
- Thread starter segedi
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pdh
Established
You could not be more wrong; I didn't write my post in accordance with your apparently rather rigid preconceptions ...
mani
Well-known
Exactly. Apparently I'm also part of this bovine mass of proletarians "who don't really care what it looks like" as I vastly prefer the new design - at least over the scrappy pink-and-blue mess that was the tired old site.
I'm looking forward to some fixes to the underlying programming (especially the infinite scroll, that seems to cause 90% of the loading and performance problems), and then I'm confident the new flickr is gonna be a much better place to display and see photography.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
I'd honestly like to hear anybody explain how the new site is better in a reasonable way.
Aside from the dark background (which would be better as grey instead of black) I don't see a single sound design decision in the changes made.
The old design was clunky and long in tooth, but at least it was easy to navigate and straightforward to use. And faster.
Having the selection of thumbnails to the right of every image let you know what was next in either the user's photostream, or the group the image was in. You could select if you wanted to see the next image in the group, or the next image in the photog's stream too. That's great! Now you have to blindly click through using the arrow buttons without knowing if what comes next is even going to be vaguely interesting - or even maybe offensive to your eyes. You could change the size of the thumbnails and how they were displayed. The image titles were readily visible. Comments were also readily visible and easy to navigate. The worst part of the old flickr was basically that it was white.
Now we're missing those good things, but added a jumbled mess of high res thumbnails that scroll pseudo-infinitely. There's not enough gutter space between them. And the menus are wonk'd up but I assume that will be fixed soon.
Frankly though the old layout was far from being a "design classic" the new design is even farther away. It's just a glorified photobucket, that loads slower and has vestigial traces of flickr attached to it.
Aside from the dark background (which would be better as grey instead of black) I don't see a single sound design decision in the changes made.
The old design was clunky and long in tooth, but at least it was easy to navigate and straightforward to use. And faster.
Having the selection of thumbnails to the right of every image let you know what was next in either the user's photostream, or the group the image was in. You could select if you wanted to see the next image in the group, or the next image in the photog's stream too. That's great! Now you have to blindly click through using the arrow buttons without knowing if what comes next is even going to be vaguely interesting - or even maybe offensive to your eyes. You could change the size of the thumbnails and how they were displayed. The image titles were readily visible. Comments were also readily visible and easy to navigate. The worst part of the old flickr was basically that it was white.
Now we're missing those good things, but added a jumbled mess of high res thumbnails that scroll pseudo-infinitely. There's not enough gutter space between them. And the menus are wonk'd up but I assume that will be fixed soon.
Frankly though the old layout was far from being a "design classic" the new design is even farther away. It's just a glorified photobucket, that loads slower and has vestigial traces of flickr attached to it.
SausalitoDog
Well-known
Tunalegs-
I think the biggest thing is that free accounts now get 1TB of free storage - that's a pretty big deal.
I like the way the new site looks, but I think that Flickr is crazy, given the uproar, not to allow users to chose between old and new...or at least explain why they won't do that.
As far as I'm concerned, Steve Jobs is the only person I would trust to dictate 🙂
Some of the features you mentioned and miss were/are just not important to me, but it really does not make sense to take them away from someone who wants them. I'm not really a "browser" on the site - I just post photos that someone wants to see and I give them the URL, so I probably have missed a lot...
Tom
pvdhaar
Peter
The presentation of the images is definately an improvement. Sometimes a bit harder ro find what you're looking for, but that is probably a matter of getting used to the new interface. And as far as I can see, they're ironing out the wrinkles as time goes by. Speed's getting better, less bad pandas the last days..
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
Here's another bad analogy*: people like pizza, not everybody but they do in general. But there has only been Canadian bacon and onions on the menu. All of the sudden, it's just pepperoni. Pepperoni isn't bad for a huge percentage --it's my preferred pizza topping--, it's just that a lot of people got used to the canadian bacon and/or onions. There was neither a transition or an option to stick to what you liked until they took it away. It's poor planning, pure and simple. And on top of that, most people's pepperoni had a funny smell or was uncooked the first couple of days.
This leaves a horrible impression, except for the pepperoni lovers who got their pizza delivered just right and for free. Many of us got stuck with the bill.
* disclaimer: not calling any of your analogies bad, just commenting on general responses about analogies.
SausalitoDog
Well-known
I agree - the way it was done sucks to a lot of people so it was de facto a mistake...only Steve Jobs could do that sort of thing and make you like it. Marissa is not Steve Jobs.
Tom
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
I agree - this is about Ghandi vs. Spongebob Squarepants, because I completely got the point you made as you did mine.
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
Oh my, somebody's going to think I called Steve Jobs and Marissa either Ghandi and/or Spongebob Squarepants. ::sigh:: the internets.
SausalitoDog
Well-known
hteasley
Pupil
Your pepperoni pizza got delivered with a sign that says, "It's free, and now it's five meters square. If you paid for it and don't want it, because you were expecting Canadian bacon, we'll refund your money." The problem with analogies is that they're inaccurate in the way you want them to be. Let me recast yours:
Canadian Bacon & Onion Pizza Co has been losing customers for years to Pepperoni Inc. Customers are flocking there, and talk loudly about how CB&OP sucks. They look at their resources and their menu and decide they can't serve two different kinds of pizzas economically, at least not while making such a huge menu change, so they decide to serve the pizza that the world seems to be clamoring for. They switch to pepperoni, knowing full well that there are a few die-hard Canadian bacon lovers out there that will hate it, but there are many fans of Canadian bacon that also love pepperoni, and there are many more pepperoni-only folks out there to make up for the loss.
Is my version more accurately descriptive? No clue. Bad analogies get folks arguing about the features of the analogy, as opposed to discussing the actual thing that happened, and the actual consequences. Using Flickr is in no way like buying a car. It can barely be analogized to buying a pizza in any way that is informative.
tunalegs
Pretended Artist
So is the new flickr better then?
Does it have more features?
Is it better laid out?
Is it faster, more intuitive to use?
hum :|9
Does it have more features?
Is it better laid out?
Is it faster, more intuitive to use?
hum :|9
Sparrow
Veteran
free of copyright, feel free to distribute
hteasley
Pupil
It's subjective. I've given a few reasons that I prefer the new to the old. YMMV.
j j
Well-known
No new features that I know of but yes on all other counts. Pages take a little longer to load but now have 25X the number of pics so much quicker overall. Looks great.
mani
Well-known
I really do prefer the new look. Here's a few reasons:
1. the images are given far more prominence in the new site: they're bigger, they're presented centrally and not surrounded by an awful jumble of multicolored clutter
2. On some pages (such as the logged-in homepage) the images are displayed really large in a single column - on my screen they look so good they're almost pornographic. I'm discovering new photographers through some of these images every day.
3. The actual site is now monochromatic. Yet another reason the images themselves shine through. I really loathed the old pink-n-blue color scheme, it detracted enormously from pretty much any image.
4. I like the new display of large images on black. At first I didn't take to the black background (I never used to follow those ubiquitous 'View on black!' links) but after a few days it's grown on me. Considering how popular it used to be amongst virtually everyone, I find it ironic that so many people are complaining about it now.
5. The masonry display is a bit tight, and I'm hoping the infinite scroll is going to be axed, but I generally like the 'contact sheet' way of displaying streams: you get a good overview of a photographer's style from the new layout. I ought to add that I haven't experienced any sort of slowdown or performance problems with the new site - in fact, I've found it much faster than ipernity when I've checked there this week (I imagine ipernity is getting overwhelmed by the few thousand refugees - doesn't inspire confidence when you compare with the millions of flickr users).
6. Altogether the look is more contemporary and vibrant. The old look was insipid and very tired, imo. Other than the fact there was 'more whitespace' (mostly due to smaller images), I didn't ever see the visual appeal of the old layout.
Incidentally, a lot of things that people are complaining about (like the lack of thumbnails to navigate streams that someone mentioned in this thread) are not gone at all - that feature is still there, just below the black viewing area. A lot of the complaints are simply due to something moving a few pixels away from their familiar spot.
I still think we should give it time, and give flickr constructive feedback, to make things better.
1. the images are given far more prominence in the new site: they're bigger, they're presented centrally and not surrounded by an awful jumble of multicolored clutter
2. On some pages (such as the logged-in homepage) the images are displayed really large in a single column - on my screen they look so good they're almost pornographic. I'm discovering new photographers through some of these images every day.
3. The actual site is now monochromatic. Yet another reason the images themselves shine through. I really loathed the old pink-n-blue color scheme, it detracted enormously from pretty much any image.
4. I like the new display of large images on black. At first I didn't take to the black background (I never used to follow those ubiquitous 'View on black!' links) but after a few days it's grown on me. Considering how popular it used to be amongst virtually everyone, I find it ironic that so many people are complaining about it now.
5. The masonry display is a bit tight, and I'm hoping the infinite scroll is going to be axed, but I generally like the 'contact sheet' way of displaying streams: you get a good overview of a photographer's style from the new layout. I ought to add that I haven't experienced any sort of slowdown or performance problems with the new site - in fact, I've found it much faster than ipernity when I've checked there this week (I imagine ipernity is getting overwhelmed by the few thousand refugees - doesn't inspire confidence when you compare with the millions of flickr users).
6. Altogether the look is more contemporary and vibrant. The old look was insipid and very tired, imo. Other than the fact there was 'more whitespace' (mostly due to smaller images), I didn't ever see the visual appeal of the old layout.
Incidentally, a lot of things that people are complaining about (like the lack of thumbnails to navigate streams that someone mentioned in this thread) are not gone at all - that feature is still there, just below the black viewing area. A lot of the complaints are simply due to something moving a few pixels away from their familiar spot.
I still think we should give it time, and give flickr constructive feedback, to make things better.
aeturnum
Established
Personally I prefer the new layout (though I think users should be able to choose the old layout). I like it because it's more of what I want (photographs) and less of what I don't care about (stats, white space, license info). All that information is still available, it's just not front and center. I wish that there were display options for sets, but as a feed I think the new look is awesome.
I don't have a problem scrolling down a bit to check the next thumbnail or to switch between the photographers or groups stream. Personally, I really disliked the omni-present display of photograph titles. Comments also seem very similar to me - I didn't get the impression the re-design affected them much.
I certainly think the old way should be an option, and I'd like more options in general (greater borders around photos in the feed, title display, set display options, ability to disable the photo stream all seem like no brainers). That being said, I think the positives of the new design far outweigh those of the old design.
Ranchu
Veteran
Good word. That's exactly what it is and why I hate it. It's a feed.
Gabriel M.A.
My Red Dot Glows For You
It's like law school dropouts arguing the Constitutionality of arguing the Constitutionality of law school dropouts arguing!
