Flickr has been working on its new “photo experience” for a quite a while, and now the completely overhauled image viewer has finally left its test phase and is available to all users. According to Flickr, the new design focuses much more on content than the old one, putting the photo and the accompanying information in the foreground. In addition, it offers not only an improved, more concise, and more beautiful way to look at Flickr images, but Flickr says images load faster when browsing though photo collections.
Compared to Flickr’s old image viewer, the new photo experience has a radically new design, of which almost every aspect has been changed. The first thing you’ll notice is the new color scheme, which is now much darker with white text on a black background. The image is positioned to the left and remains static, while all the information including comments, like, and share buttons, and thumbnails from the “set” the image belongs to, are now positioned in a scrollable bar to the right.
This makes image viewing much more pleasant, as you don’t have to scroll down a single static page anymore. Instead, the photo you’re currently looking at always stays in the same spot, and everything else is in the sidebar to the right of it. In addition to the new look, Flickr claims that image loading times have been improved by up to 20-times when going from one photo to the next, in the new photo experience viewer. This should make browsing sets and galleries an even more enjoyable experience.
But there’s even more: It’s now much easier to “fave” a photo (Flickr’s version of the “like”) and to see who else faved it. EXIF information – that is, information about the camera and settings an image were taken with – are now all in one place and concisely arranged. If you like a particular photo, the new context tab shows you similar pictures by other photographers, and more pictures from the same photographer. And, finally, sharing your own photos or the photos of others is easier than ever.
If you’ve been participating in the beta testing of Flickr’s new photo experience, this should all be familiar to you by now. However, if you’ve been using the old image viewer up until now, make yourself ready for a completely new experience when using Flickr. And don’t worry, the new design is much more enjoyable to use than the old one, and you’ll get the hang of it in no-time.
(Via Flickr)
