Beta Is SO Passe

May 16, 2006 11:02 AM

Gamma is the new beta. Web 3.0 is here, via the new Flickr interface. And it's sexy.
posted by keswick (75 comments total)

That's just stupid. Call it 1.0 and be done with it.
posted by empath at 11:06 AM on May 16, 2006

Beaten to the punch by Keswick. (With a controversial single link post.) Well at least it was someone decent. ;)
posted by Jofus at 11:09 AM on May 16, 2006

Sexy, yes. Speedy, no.
posted by onalark at 11:10 AM on May 16, 2006

Ok, one of my long standing gripes has been corrected. I can now get to my contacts list in one click.

The login interface is still decidely Web 0.5alpha, however. 3 screens to do what could easily be accomplished in one?
posted by dvdgee at 11:14 AM on May 16, 2006

Fuck that shit, Mu or bust!
posted by Kickstart70 at 11:18 AM on May 16, 2006

So, did some group of web technologists get together and decide that it had been far too long since they had completely borked up the back button, or am I just getting cranky as I enter my internet-teens?
posted by Mr Stickfigure at 11:22 AM on May 16, 2006

Where's the gamma-ness of it all? My flickr site hasn't hulked out since being exposed to these alleged gamma rays.
posted by boo_radley at 11:25 AM on May 16, 2006

Flagged as other. Is it really necessary to make an FPP about a not-groundbreaking interface update to a single website? Is this GYOB-worthy?
posted by Plutor at 11:25 AM on May 16, 2006

That Zeldman article (Web 3.0 link) is one of my favorites of his. Lest we take ourselves too seriously here on the intarweb, don'tcha know.
posted by dammitjim at 11:26 AM on May 16, 2006

I agree with Plutor.
posted by vacapinta at 11:28 AM on May 16, 2006

Probably the best place to post this, seeing as it's all going away anyway. ^^
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:30 AM on May 16, 2006

The flickr page is hardly any diffrent at all. It is a little slicker though.

It's nice to see some websites willing to change their interface to make it better, rather then worrying that their customers won't be able to handle any change (*cough* amazon, metafilter...)
posted by delmoi at 11:36 AM on May 16, 2006

i keep seeing these upgrades to the web but i have yet to see a CHANGELOG.
posted by Mach5 at 11:38 AM on May 16, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Damn! The new MacBooks are Sexy! AND Fast!
posted by onalark at 11:39 AM on May 16, 2006

Mach5: "i keep seeing these upgrades to the web but i have yet to see a CHANGELOG."

The official blog entry is about as close as you're going to get.
posted by Plutor at 11:45 AM on May 16, 2006

oh wow that's slow. back button seems to work though.
posted by bonaldi at 11:46 AM on May 16, 2006

What's different? Sorry I can't figure it out through the marketing speak.
posted by geoff. at 11:48 AM on May 16, 2006

Oh never mind that pseudo-CHANGELOG works. Web 3.0? Jesus Christ is that what you have to tell your boss now to justify the upgrade expense. "Right well, listen we have this revolutionary new way, so revolutionary we'll call it Web 3.0 if you'll allocate us more resources."
posted by geoff. at 11:49 AM on May 16, 2006

Is the Web 3.0 thing about flickr that they have drop down menus on their nav buttons now?

Isn't that a web 1.5 thing? (Wait, what was DHTML... was that 1.0? I get confused)
posted by illovich at 11:53 AM on May 16, 2006

I remember when Alpha and Beta were usually used to describe Skaggs (at least in my part of the country).

The one big deal is that the Organizr is no longer Flash but that AJAX crap.
posted by dw at 11:55 AM on May 16, 2006

Did you guys see the organizer thing? It used to be in flash, but it's all now in dhtml, and it looks more like iphoto in a browser than ever. That's pretty impressive.
posted by mathowie at 11:56 AM on May 16, 2006

OMFG, you're all so damn cool.
posted by yerfatma at 11:58 AM on May 16, 2006

Yahoo has a new home page, too, with a nifty tour.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:19 PM on May 16, 2006

The only thing I used Organizr for was to put photos in sets after I uploaded them. Do people use it for more than that?
posted by smackfu at 12:20 PM on May 16, 2006

I actually really liked the use of flash in the old Organizr. It was intuitive to my average user brain. I could stumble out of bed without having eaten or showered yet and figure out what to do through bleary eyes.

Now, I feel like I'd need to eat breakfast before wanting to deal with it.
posted by birdie birdington at 12:26 PM on May 16, 2006

Uh, after playing with it a little more I feel it's safe to say that the ajax organizer is fucking awful.

It's clunky, anti-intuitive, slow, stupid. Double click?

What a seriously awful change for the worse. Depressing.
posted by birdie birdington at 12:30 PM on May 16, 2006

The support threads are a clusterfuck. Little old Flickr has gotten a little too big. They're cramming every support question into one thread and locking any new questions with a redirect link to the Official thread, but then none of the Staff are pitching in. It's like everyone's been herded into a free speech zone and then systematically ignored. Progress!
posted by airguitar at 12:33 PM on May 16, 2006

but then none of the Staff are pitching in.

What do you mean? Heather is very active in there. Here she is 20 minutes ago.
posted by vacapinta at 12:43 PM on May 16, 2006

Fuck that, I won't be impressed until they get to Omicron.
posted by danb at 12:44 PM on May 16, 2006

but then none of the Staff are pitching in.

We're all here at Metafilter, a much more entertaining clusterfuck!
posted by ericost at 12:45 PM on May 16, 2006

(Actually, this is pretty awesome. Flickr was long overdue for an overhaul. Keep on keepin' on, guys.)
posted by danb at 12:46 PM on May 16, 2006

Eric... Shhh! You've blown our cover.
posted by heather at 12:46 PM on May 16, 2006

---

2.0 is the new 1.0

---

posted by blue_beetle at 12:46 PM on May 16, 2006

I think the Flickr crew is going to find that changing minor aesthetic things gets a response way out of proportion to what they expected.
posted by smackfu at 12:54 PM on May 16, 2006

Heather is very active in there.

Right you are. I guess I should just settle in ... and keep reading. It's like hanging out at the DMV, I'll take a number. You know, they might burn through the workload using fewer keystrokes with a Gamma FAQ that reflected Forum questions on-the-fly, but I digress. I like (most of) the changes! ... hi flickr people.
posted by airguitar at 1:04 PM on May 16, 2006

We're burning through "versions" of the web at an accellerating pace. Is there a Moore's law of ostentatiousness that's applicable to overhyped web services?
posted by slatternus at 1:06 PM on May 16, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

At what point does Flickr cease to be and just become Yahoo Photos™?

I ask because I was trying to remember why I didn't have a flickr account and then when I went to the sign up page I saw Yahoo's crappy logo in the corner. Sorry - I don't care how 3.0 Flickr is - it's owned by folks who think it's OK to turn over evidence to the Chinese gov't to lock people up.
posted by photoslob at 1:10 PM on May 16, 2006

A cube that changes colors to match the title image on the (signed out) front page and an AJAX organizer? Sexy? Blech.
posted by prostyle at 1:21 PM on May 16, 2006

We're burning through "versions" of the web at an accellerating pace. Is there a Moore's law of ostentatiousness that's applicable to overhyped web services?

I'll offer you my three laws of web ostentatiousness:

1. The hype associated with anything on the web is directly proportional to the amount of venture capital available.

2. Whenever using numbering in naming any web product or service, remember that this one goes up to 11.

3. Things given acronyms for names are always cooler than things with "normal" names.
posted by dw at 1:30 PM on May 16, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

I still don't know what web 2.0 is.
posted by 517 at 1:34 PM on May 16, 2006

Me loves Flickr, but, yeah, the new interface ain't that great and neither is this FFP.
posted by fixedgear at 1:50 PM on May 16, 2006

Does anyone else have a giant delay whenever they visit Flickr? I'd hoped that this would be fixed by the redesign, but nope, I'm still waiting over a minute just to see a goddamn photo of a monkey.

I'm on a gigabit network here, for crying out loud! "Waiting for www.flickr.com..." And don't tell me that the new release is causing extra load -- it's always been this way.
posted by breath at 2:10 PM on May 16, 2006

I agree with photoslob. No matter how cool Flicker is, it's still yahoo. I use smugmug bcause they aren't owned by a big company and don't have any ads.
posted by Lverner at 2:16 PM on May 16, 2006

The bad aspects have certainly been covered, so I'm just going to mention the thing that I love - more pictures on each page is great! That has fixed my one long-term gripe with the site.

However, it seems that they may have created some new ones...
posted by pinespree at 2:18 PM on May 16, 2006

How about giving me a pro account again ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 2:21 PM on May 16, 2006

isn't beta supposed to be the last stage before final release? wasn't that why flikr was called beta in the first place?
posted by shmegegge at 2:22 PM on May 16, 2006

shmegegge : "isn't beta supposed to be the last stage before final release? wasn't that why flikr was called beta in the first place?"

"I'm gonna count to three, and then I'm comin' in!! ONE......TWO......TWO AND A HALF......TWO AND THREE QUARTERS......"
posted by Bugbread at 2:27 PM on May 16, 2006

Sold to Yahoo? Check.
Made Newsweek? Check.
Ok, now we can bork the interface.
flickr beta gamma delta bet your ass we're gonna beltcha.
Goooo web 2.0!
posted by jmignault at 2:47 PM on May 16, 2006

I noticed that everytime someone starts a support thread on how to make it so that the "Share" button on my Kodak camera will send my pics to Flickr, some admin comes in and locks the conversation.

That seems kind of annoying.

(I know you can do this with a mac, but I'm not sure how to do it with a pc).
posted by washburn at 2:50 PM on May 16, 2006

I agree with photoslob. No matter how cool Flicker is, it's still yahoo. I use smugmug bcause they aren't owned by a big company and don't have any ads.

Flickr dosn't have any ads.
posted by delmoi at 3:23 PM on May 16, 2006

Soon they'll be naming releases after hurricanes.
posted by eatitlive at 3:27 PM on May 16, 2006

Does anyone else have a giant delay whenever they visit Flickr? I'd hoped that this would be fixed by the redesign, but nope, I'm still waiting over a minute just to see a goddamn photo of a monkey.

I always assumed it was all that lovely, bulky Javascript code that runs the interface loading. Gmail does a similar thing for me (if a bit quicker than Flickr). But you're right, it even tends to create a pause over fast networks - maybe it's the browser pausing to interpret all that code. Welcome to client-side web applications, man.
posted by Jimbob at 3:31 PM on May 16, 2006

i keep seeing these upgrades to the web but i have yet to see a CHANGELOG.

0.1: Implemented HTML, HTTP. The back button works.

0.5: CGI, cookies. The back button doesn't really work predictably.

1.0: JavaScript, embedded Java applets, Flash, ActiveX, the <blink> tag. The back button doesn't work any more

1.5: XHTML, RSS, CSS, the Semantic Web. The back button may or may not work; no one knows, because the Content-Type header is wrong and somebody fucked up a CDATA section so it's not rendering anyway

2.0: Remember JavaScript? Who knew it provided an open-standards, pedant-compatible way to recreate the worst excesses of ActiveX? The back button has now been overloaded by some clever developer to perform intriguing and unexpected actions, such as auto-submitting forms. Your explanations to your boss that you totally didn't intend to send that e-mail fall on deaf ears.

3.0: Descent into self-parody. Clicking on the back button now summons down fire from the heavens to smite you dead. This solves all statelessness problems once and for all.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 4:41 PM on May 16, 2006 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm glad to see other people talking about how slow Flickr can be. I spend very little time at the site, but I visit a lot of photoblogs, and the ones that use photos from Flickr are pokey as hell. Maybe they'll fix that next time around.
posted by diddlegnome at 5:08 PM on May 16, 2006

Every time I go to flickr, I'll end up hitting something that freaks my firewalls out.

This time it is: TCP Hijacking Tool [68.142.214.24], which resolves back to flickr.
posted by dejah420 at 5:18 PM on May 16, 2006

It's weird though because yahoo photos is fairly speedy, and they're owned by the same company. Is it the architecture, the user habits, the resources devoted by the parent compay?

Flickr is utterly amazing because the quality of tools they offer is matched by the quality of the userbase. Yes, other photo services have more pictures and more users, but Flickr has the good pictures and good users. It's amazing for current events, as well, such as the shots from Ukraine, France, and other places of civic unrest.
posted by cell divide at 5:20 PM on May 16, 2006

organizr: infinitely better
page layout: much cleaner
more photos per page: YES YES YES
person menu: neat
gamma: it made me laugh
the only thing i miss: a very gentle border around photos
posted by whatnot at 5:30 PM on May 16, 2006

Aw, I like it. I like that the photo borders are gone. I think the new UI is an improvement. I like the new Organizer. And I think that calling it "Gamma" is hilarious. I've rarely had a speed problem with Flickr, and none since the UI changes.

Some people just aren't into Flickr's brand of whimsy. Such fusspots can stick with SmugMug, which I've heard is a very good photo sharing site.
posted by sidereal at 6:05 PM on May 16, 2006

I've loved the Flickr longtime (since the shoebox and realtimey chat was the focus), but it's been sllooooooow for me since it took off. To the point where I've found it unuseable. I've let my Pro account (thanks again, kokogiak, if you see this!) lapse, in part because I couldn't countenance actually paying for a service, good as it is, that was mostly unusable. A shame, because, as others have mentioned, there's just so much good stuff there now.

Still, yay to the Ludicorpers (are they, now that they've been indentured to Yahoo? I dunno...) and yay again.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:16 PM on May 16, 2006

I've never had a problem with load speed on Flickr. In fact, it was Fotolog's glacier-slow speed that drove me to Flickr.
posted by dw at 7:47 PM on May 16, 2006

I really like the Web 3.0 link.

Hear hear. (I'm a developer/programmer/designer/whatever the hell you call me these days.)
posted by blacklite at 9:11 PM on May 16, 2006

I'll have to play with the new organizer more, but from first glance it still seems not up to task for working with large amounts of photos (i'm at 2400 and i know that it's nothing compared to some). Still, the organizer looks to be a bazillion times faster than the old one.
posted by thecjm at 10:11 PM on May 16, 2006

Oh and I'm happy that more photos are displayed per page. A simple layout change but a very good and needed one.
posted by thecjm at 10:12 PM on May 16, 2006

I miss the date slider in the organizr. Now I have to individually drag every single picture in order to put them into a set? What the hell is up with that garbage?

Oh, wait, there's a teeny tiny little "select all" link. Still not as nice as the old date slider. Attention Web x.0 developers! I cannot read your teeny tiny little fonts! Make your fonts bigger!

As for speed? I have never had any problems with speed on flickr. I've only been using it for the last year or so, but it's always seemed pretty damn speedy to me. Maybe it was ULTRA LIGHTSPEED fast beforehand, but I doubt it.

Also, what's up with the "Back button is broken" stuff? I've never had issues with not being able to use the back button in Flickr... anybody have any examples of what they're talking about?
posted by antifuse at 1:32 AM on May 17, 2006

As for speed? I have never had any problems with speed on flickr. I've only been using it for the last year or so, but it's always seemed pretty damn speedy to me. Maybe it was ULTRA LIGHTSPEED fast beforehand, but I doubt it.

I just tried Flicker then. Took 10 seconds between hitting enter on the URL and the page being displayed. A lot of time looking at a white screen before the page appeared. I think the main issue, that makes it seem slow is that nothing on the page displays until it has all downloaded. When I've accessed it by 56k modem, it's often been painfully slow before you can do anything. I'm talking 30 seconds before anything displays.

Also, what's up with the "Back button is broken" stuff?

Well, I don't think people were referring to anything specific to Flickr here...but it's a fairly common thing on websites now, both on poorly designed commerical websites that seem to disable the back button for no good reason. Hitting back leaves you on the same page as you're already on. (For an example, try playing with the Australian Yellow Pages website - if you're looking at the details for an entry, you can hit back as many times as you like and you won't get back to the listing of entries). And also on AJAX websites, where hitting the back button doesn't return you to the previous state. I used to have this problem in Gmail for instance. If I was reading an email, then hit Back, it didn't return to my inbox, it instead returned me to the Gmail login screen. It looks like this has been fixed now, however.
posted by Jimbob at 2:28 AM on May 17, 2006

When I've accessed it by 56k modem, it's often been painfully slow

Ah. Ok.
posted by sidereal at 2:53 AM on May 17, 2006

Hrmm... just clicking on Flickr now, it took me two seconds before the page loaded. Same as Metafilter, same as google, same as every other page. Strange indeed. Organizr takes an extra 2-3 seconds at the "Loading..." page.

Ahhh, so it's not Flickr that has people up in arms about the back button. I was very confused. Now that I understand what people are angry about, this has been a problem for as long as scripted web pages have been around. It's hardly a web 2.0 issue. Also, the back button worked fine for me on the Australian Yellow Pages...
posted by antifuse at 2:57 AM on May 17, 2006

Perhaps my speed issues have been because I'm in Korea, which would be weird. But I've got a 10Mb downstream pipe at home, and Flickr's always slow. I've got similar bandwidth at work -- no better.

Thus and so.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:21 AM on May 17, 2006

Just for the sake of being non-handwavy: according to one of my Firefox gadgets, it took 14.61 seconds to load the home page, and 17.962 seconds to load the Organizer just now. That's waaaaay faster than I've seen it in a long time, too.

Ah well. Like I said, Flickr good. Just slow as, for me, at least.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:11 AM on May 17, 2006

stavros - may be a latency problem, not a bandwidth problem. You can have high bandwidth but slow ping if you get routed through a circuitous route.
posted by Bugbread at 6:03 AM on May 17, 2006

Stavros, I am told that the problem with Flickr speed in Korea is known, though the exact cause of it is not, except that it is a latency problem caused by a network in between Flickr and you.

Which is a shame, cause we likes us some wonderchicken.
posted by ericost at 6:38 AM on May 17, 2006

DAMN I really miss the soft border too. =I wonder if that's something that people were complaining about in the forums or if they just decided to nix it.

also, I'm one more person that doesn't have any kind of speed issues with flickr.
posted by ryran at 7:50 AM on May 17, 2006

Stavros: Now ericost has me all curious. How about running a traceroute to flickr from Korea and seeing where the latency spikes? I'd be curious to know.
posted by Bugbread at 8:42 AM on May 17, 2006

Thanks ericost! Glad to know that it's not just me....

bugbread, here you go:

Tracing route to www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  x.x.x.x
  2     1 ms     1 ms     1 ms  x.x.x.x
  3     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  219.252.18.1
  4     3 ms     2 ms     2 ms  219.252.11.162
  5     4 ms     3 ms     3 ms  219.252.0.41
  6     9 ms     8 ms     8 ms  219.252.1.33
  7     9 ms    25 ms     8 ms  219.253.1.19
  8    19 ms    12 ms    10 ms  62.216.146.161
  9   262 ms   807 ms    82 ms  so-5-0-0.0.cjr04.tok002.flagtel.com [62.216.128.253]
 10   147 ms   153 ms   263 ms  so-4-2-0.0.ejr02.pao001.flagtel.com [62.216.128.62]
 11   174 ms   164 ms   152 ms  peer.flagtel.com [62.216.145.226]
 12   273 ms   228 ms   229 ms  so-1-0-0.pat2.dax.yahoo.com [216.115.101.135]
 13   232 ms   229 ms   328 ms  ge-1-1-0-p401.msr1.mud.yahoo.com [216.115.104.107]
 14   240 ms   299 ms   239 ms  v205.bas3.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.209.9]
 15   229 ms   242 ms   256 ms  www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24]

Trace complete.

posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:53 PM on May 17, 2006

Stav,

Looks like the problem may be with the FLAG cable. Below are my results from Tokyo (not going through FLAG).

Tracing route to www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    99 ms     1 ms     5 ms  (none) [192.168.11.1]
  2     3 ms     1 ms     1 ms  192.168.1.1
  3     4 ms     6 ms    12 ms  221.113.151.74
  4     6 ms     4 ms     5 ms  221.113.151.94
  5     7 ms     7 ms    12 ms  221.184.12.233
  6     6 ms     5 ms     6 ms  60.37.11.41
  7     9 ms     5 ms    14 ms  210.254.188.177
  8    12 ms    14 ms     5 ms  210.254.188.166
  9     9 ms     5 ms     8 ms  61.213.161.217
 10    15 ms    17 ms    13 ms  xe-0-0-0.r21.tokyjp01.jp.bb.gin.ntt.net [61.213.
162.225]
 11   122 ms   120 ms   121 ms  p64-2-1-0.r21.sttlwa01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net [129.25
0.4.185]
 12   123 ms   118 ms   119 ms  so5-0-0-2488.ar2.SEA1.gblx.net [208.51.134.81]
 13   125 ms   136 ms   129 ms  so6-0-0-2488M.ar2.PAO2.gblx.net [67.17.93.90]
 14   132 ms   126 ms   130 ms  208.51.74.22
 15   170 ms   179 ms   169 ms  so-1-0-0.pat1.dax.yahoo.com [216.115.101.133]
 16   173 ms   173 ms   173 ms  ge-1-1-0-p400.msr1.mud.yahoo.com [216.115.104.10
5]
 17   178 ms   179 ms   277 ms  v204.bas4.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.209.7]
 18   175 ms   173 ms   180 ms  www.flickr.vip.mud.yahoo.com [68.142.214.24]

Trace complete.

posted by Bugbread at 7:22 PM on May 18, 2006