Unifying the flickr experience

If you are a long time web based user of flickr, you may be getting a little deja vu, “the Interface is being changed again!” However looking a bit deeper flickr is seeking to bring a “beautiful seamless experience across a range of platforms” and they have focussed on seeking an “elegant design that allows you to enjoy your images and your memories from any device, anywhere in the world”. This is a pretty high aim but will it be enough to please the faithful and perhaps even bring others back to what was once the home of photography on the net. I suspect it might.

The phone and tablet apps have been much improved, I already like the android app and it has a  prominent of my camera app panel, not that I’m doing a lot of uploading from there. The addition of groups from the phone app is a big deal because groups seemed to have been forgotten for a long time on flickrm a hole community ethos withered away and probably the main reason I drifted away too.

Having first experienced the new interface on the phone I totally get the changes on the web based pages. I like the extra white space, even though its probably only there to help the “adaptive” magic as the display fits to different size and shape screens. The ability to sort by date taken versus upload order is a nice touch as is being able to view everything or just the way the public and/or your friends see the photos is also commendable. So existing users don’t panic.

I still like the old three column view, with lots of white space, so I went searching for that and it is still under the photostream view but now the first item on the more sub-menu button over on the right of the header area. The upper menu bar has been heavily simplified and some items moved down on the photostream sub-menu but I have managed to find those aspects of flickr I normally use.

So here is a challenge for exiting flickr faithful see if you can find the Magic View in the Camera Roll, its rather nice, but not yet perfect.

The wed based flickr upload doesn’t seem so different to me its real benefit is still the ability to upload and organize many photos at once, including  being able to select a specific creative common style licence under user settings.

The one disappointment was when I downloaded the updated loadr app (still in beta) for my windows laptop I just got into a cycle of errors where I couldn’t log into flickr. Not a good look. So I’ll wait and check it a bit later.