*RANT* The New Flickr Interface

[benlee]

Does anyone use Flickr photosite here?

I login to Flickr this morning and almost got a heart attack. The much touted new interface is an appalling and ill-thought out, absolutely useless wish-wash mess of unintuitive-ness and confusion. So confusing and almost impossible to navigating!

I am a long time Flickr user ( 7 years ) and for the first time I am thinking of switching to another site. The problem is I have tons and tons of photos to migrate. Why must people always try to twit with something that works perfectly just for the sake of "improvement"?

[Boothroyd]

Try Windows 8 sometime for an unintuitive interface.

And that's the problem with the cloud...they have your content, and you are subject to their whims, or face a big effort to change platforms. It's going to be much more of a problem in the future. Sorry you are going through it!

[benlee]

Think it is time I stocked up on terabyte portable hardisk!

[77T]

Been with Flickr for 5+ years - what I see is Yahoo's decision to make it more like a Tumblr interface. No biggie since I can adapt to this motif like any other.

What I would like - and throwing this out for an App developer to latch onto - is a "middleware" type of App that allows me to manage my presentation layers for all websites or Apps like Yahoo, GMail, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, etc...

In other words I would design how I want any website to appear to me in a "collage" of all websites - and let the middleware do the interfacing with the different site's motifs.

Any takers?

[benlee]

Originally Posted by 77T

Been with Flickr for 5+ years - what I see is Yahoo's decision to make it more like a Tumblr interface. No biggie since I can adapt to this motif like any other.

What I would like - and throwing this out for an App developer to latch onto - is a "middleware" type of App that allows me to manage my presentation layers for all websites or Apps like Yahoo, GMail, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, etc...

In other words I would design how I want any website to appear to me in a "collage" of all websites - and let the middleware do the interfacing with the different site's motifs.

Any takers?

Are you referring to customizable user interface? That will be cool if Flickr can allow that. But I kind of doubt it. Maybe this can be implemented thru a 3rd party App instead. Nowadays, companies just feel free to re-vamp their sites with little care to whether the majority of the customers like it or not.

The complain thread in flickr forum has grown to 119 pages long with many flickr users screaming their heads off over this change ( me included ). Let's hope they will take notice.

[77T]

Originally Posted by benlee

Are you referring to customizable user interface? That will be cool if Flickr can allow that. But I kind of doubt it. Maybe this can be implemented thru a 3rd party App instead. Nowadays, companies just feel free to re-vamp their sites with little care to whether the majority of the customers like it or not.

The complain thread in flickr forum has grown to 119 pages long with many flickr users screaming their heads off over this change ( me included ). Let's hope they will take notice.

Yes it's a 3rd party App idea - to the user any website would look the way s/he wants. The App would use middleware concept to interact with the target website(s).

Developers would offer it for a small annual subscription fee to cover their work to keep up with the many changes these websites make to their native GUI.

If you like your websites to stay the same, then it may be worth $5/year to keep things the way you like...

[Chris B]

Photobucket has gone south too, been a Pro user for ages but the latest unwanted update is a nightmare , bewildering layout, lost links , pics resized etc

Why do they think they have to re-invent the wheel?

[benlee]

Originally Posted by Chris B

Photobucket has gone south too, been a Pro user for ages but the latest unwanted update is a nightmare , bewildering layout, lost links , pics resized etc

Why do they think they have to re-invent the wheel?

Apparently to compete with the likes of Facebook, Tumblir. They figure out that attracting advertising avenue is more lucrative ( and important ) than providing a functional user interface for users like myself who are paying for this service. Flickr interface use to be one of the most elegant out there. Now it's an eye-sore. P/s : I also hate Facebook.

[427shark]

I been a photobucket user for some time now and the new update on iPad stinks. IMO every time something updates it gets less user friendly

[beshannon]

Never understood the appeal of Flickr

[77T]

Here's something to consider if you liked the old GUI. Try using their mobile site domain - http://m.flickr.com/#/home

It looks more like the old one.

Thoughts?

[psv]

Flickr was a ground-breaking idea in its inception which rich community/collaboration features built in instead of just storage of photos. Yahoo did great when acquiring them back/when but dropped the ball for many years.

During the last year, Flickr has regained a lot of the old momentum.

The redesign was long overdue and it was an absolute must for survival as the world move away from a PC-centric world to one of multiple devices to access and one that is driven by NUI (natural user interfaces). The old design was horrible to use on things like iPad or even larger touch screens. The new design is all HTML5 and has a very fast and fluid responsive design (i.e. it resized to fit any screen size).

Give it some time to get used to it. I think you'll like it as much as I do. Also, try out the lastest Flickr mobile app. I've stopped using Instagram (no thanks, Facebook) and soon Flickr will have much better integration with Tumblr.

Well done, Yahoo!

[benlee]

Originally Posted by psv

Flickr was a ground-breaking idea in its inception which rich community/collaboration features built in instead of just storage of photos. Yahoo did great when acquiring them back/when but dropped the ball for many years.

During the last year, Flickr has regained a lot of the old momentum.

The redesign was long overdue and it was an absolute must for survival as the world move away from a PC-centric world to one of multiple devices to access and one that is driven by NUI (natural user interfaces). The old design was horrible to use on things like iPad or even larger touch screens. The new design is all HTML5 and has a very fast and fluid responsive design (i.e. it resized to fit any screen size).

Give it some time to get used to it. I think you'll like it as much as I do. Also, try out the lastest Flickr mobile app. I've stopped using Instagram (no thanks, Facebook) and soon Flickr will have much better integration with Tumblr.

Well done, Yahoo!

You might have a point. The interface might be useful when browsing on a mobile device such as a smartphone or a tablet. But when I am using Flickr on my desktop computer with a large 27" display, I don't want my screen to be fill up with full size photos that takes ( and waste ) time to load. I use Flickr as my photo storage database ( such as my watch photos ) and to recall them for self viewing or to share with others. Under the old interface, it is easy to say navigate to a particular photo of my rolex watch to share it with the forum just by scrolling thru the thumbnails. Now, I have to wait for the entire set to load, navigating page after page of photos to find it. It's just doesn't make sense, not to mention maddeningly infuriating.

Also, in the past, when I have a collection of photos in the set, say a trip to a place of interest, I have titles shown write under the photos, perhaps to remind me the name of the place, or what interesting event happened when I took the shot. Now all these are hidden now and I have to click them one by one. Just horrible.

[psv]

Yeah, I hear you, there are actually quite a lot of photographers that are upset as well. Let's hope they can create a happy medium.

This thread has about 20,000 comments on it and counting. http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-...7633547442506/

[benlee]

Originally Posted by psv

This thread has about 20,000 comments on it and counting. http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-...7633547442506/

Incredible isn't it? And the CEO Marisa Mayer is still not responding. Perhaps she is busy doing this

[77T]

Marisa is busy with Tumblr road show.
Flickr is old world now

[Darmapow]

I think I'm starting to like it the more I use it. My user name is darmapow if anyone fancies adding a new contact.