[sociate] How'd they manage to make Flickr harder to use?

The  <http://www.flickr.com/> Flickr user interface has been overhauled, and
I have to say that it's a net negative for me.

The irritating changes are small, but they add up. The first small one is
that the "add so-and-so as a contact" link has wandered off to the right. It
used to be much more central and obvious. I can get used to that, I guess.

It gets much worse. When I scroll through someone's social network, I can no
longer easily tell who is already my friend and who isn't. They used to be
distinguished by easy-to-scan bold/not bold usernames.

In the old interface as I moused over a contact, it would pop up a
lightweight dialog that said "so-and-so is your friend; change?", and if you
clicked once in the dialog, it went to the add screen and asked if they were
friend or family. Minimal clicks.

So instead of knowing at a glance, for the entire page, who is already my
contact and who isn't, now I have to mouse over each picture, pause while
the pull-down arrow appears to the right of the picture -- still with no
information! -- click on the arrow, and only then the pull-down menu
appears. Because it is plain text, I still have to make sense of the textual
menu. No color cues to tell me quickly that this person is already a
contact, or whatever. Sheesh!

While doing this, if you mouse over the picture and mistakenly click on the
picture instead of that pick-list arrow that appears to its right, you're
off the current page and on to that contact's photos. Annoying.

That same pick-list arrow now drives the menu choices on your Flickr home
page. It's meant to simplify the interface, I'm sure, but

How'd they go from slick to lame in one "upgrade"?

I didn't notice any new features from the redesign. The changes I've just
described make things harder to use, and they're not balanced by anything
that's a pleasant surprise.

Here's someone with
<http://lloydi.com/blog/2006/05/17/whats-wrong-with-flickr/> more technical
beefs about the revamp.


posted by Jerry at
<http://www.sociate.com/blog/archives/2006_05_01_archive.html#11481535657558
6438> 11:22 PM

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