MetaChat - Is it me, or is Flickr getting harder to use?

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20 June 2006

Is it me, or is Flickr getting harder to use? →[More:]I hate their new organization interface. The Flash pop-ups (or whatever they are) are glacial. It used to be much easier to sort and edit new photos. Now it's a huge pain in the ass.

And furthermore, their logo always said "Flickr Beta." Now it says "Flickr Gamma." Doesn't that mean they're moving away from Alpha?

Dudes. You're going the wrong way!

Harrumph.

That is all.

post by: mudpuppie at: 14:38 | 18 comments

Alpha doesn't mean an application is closer to being finished than beta.

Alpha usually means there are known bugs that aren't corrected and functionality that isn't implemented yet. Beta usually means that all functionality is implemented but you're unsure if any bugs remain.

posted by sveskemus 20 June | 14:42

I don't know. I think the set organizing thing has gotten a lot better. It used to be a total pain in the ass to move photos in and out of sets and now it's relatively painless and much, much faster. And I like having more pictures on your front page. But it took me forever today to find that thing where it tells you what your 200 most interesting photos are, and I liked that thing.

posted by mygothlaundry 20 June | 14:42

More info on alpha and beta software here.

posted by sveskemus 20 June | 14:44

Oh yeah, I can never find that thing. Where is it?

posted by agropyron 20 June | 14:46

On the front page of your photos, under popular. I don't know why it took me so damn long to find it earlier; I think it used to be under explore or something.

posted by mygothlaundry 20 June | 14:47

I dunno if I mind the new interface, but I do find it crawls nowadays. One of the slowest loading sites I visit.

posted by richat 20 June | 15:01

Is this the place where it's OK to admit I always hated flickr? it's irrational, I know

posted by dabitch 20 June | 15:21

Flickr gets on my nerves because it's so incredibly slooooooow to load from links. I'm nearing the point where I'll mouse-over, and unless I really have a compelling reason, I'm not going to click on a flickr link.

posted by taz 20 June | 15:26

All the new shit is pissing me off too. The flash "organizr" was much easier to use (and quicker to load for me).

posted by kyleg 20 June | 15:35

I feel the same way about YouTube links. If you can't be bothered to tell me who the artist is and what song it is, I can't be bothered to download it.

And yes, flickr is ridiculously slow.

posted by iconomy 20 June | 15:36

Flickr needs more horsepower, it is slow for me too.

And I feel horribly guilty about not keeping up on all of my contacts new photos but its just overwhelming.

I wish there were a way to break out contacts a little more easily because only about 10 percent of my contacts are folks I really, really want to keep up on (and yes, I do use the RSS feeds to have my favorites fed into my Bloglines).

posted by fenriq 20 June | 15:52

Never been a flickr fan, myself.

posted by chewatadistance 20 June | 16:18

I got an invitation to try google's picasa online web album thingy, and I've just been playing with it, but it's waaaay beta at the moment. In my test albums, it seems to be enlarging thumbnails (with tons o' jags of course) to show as the actual image. Ugh. WTF? That seems like a pretty basic element to have worked out before even the earliest release.

It does have what seems like a nice software interface, so it'll be interesting to see how it develops. Butt ugly, though, as is flickr. I want to be able to customize my pages.

posted by taz 20 June | 16:24

*shrug* it dosn't seem very slow to me, and I like the new interface, much cleaner.

posted by delmoi 20 June | 16:44

but really, organizing photographs online is stupid. The way to do it is to organize pictures on your desktop, and then upload the new organization.

posted by delmoi 20 June | 16:45

I don't find flickr particularly slow and I don't know what popups ..er.. popup. Might it be because I use Firefox?

posted by deborah 20 June | 17:47

If works spiffy on Safari.

posted by birdherder 20 June | 20:05

I like flickr, but the interface is maddeningly opaque at times. It's when you need to find that one setting to change that you really want to break your monitor.

posted by selfnoise 20 June | 22:01

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