The most significant difference is that photos will now be shown at 640 pixels default on the Flickr page rather than 500 pixels. Flickr has also added a lightbox option where you can simply click on a photo to enlarge it to an even large size on a black background (you can also press the “f” key on your keyboard to toggle back and forth between lightbox view). It is interesting that they are using an old version of the Flickr logo (without the “from Yahoo” tag) in the Lightbox view. They’ve also significantly enhanced the geotags associated with photos, offering three different map views far away, closer, even closer as you move your mouse over the geotag thumbnail image.
Additionally Flickr has consolidated many of the view and functions associated with an image into “action menus” at the top of the page above the photo and integrated favorites into the comments section.
After playing around with the new page for about a half hour or so I have to say that I think I like it. It feels much cleaner, slicker and easier to navigate. I like the keyboard commands you can use to advance through a photostream. Some of the small differences will take some getting used to, but I think showing off photos bigger is *great.* I think I’d like to see the thumbnails in the sets link slightly bigger, but that’s a small complaint. Overall I think that this refresh of the photo page is a welcome improvement for the Flickr experience and am happy to see it.
There is a “gut reaction” thread where Flickr users are expressing their opinions on the new page design that you can check out here. Right now it feels like initial reaction is trending positive on the change over negative by a meaningful margin from the Flickr community.
What do you think? Do you like it? Hate it? Not care either way?
Update: TechCrunch has a review on the new redesign as well including comments from Flickr Head of Product Matthew Rothenberg here. Rothenberg is apparently saying that with the redesign pages should load “greater than 50% faster in almost all cases,” according to TechCrunch.
