Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/10/02
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 5:37 AM, Mark Rabiner <mark at rabinergroup.com> wrote: > I wonder though when looking at these nice shots why I'm looking at "jbm0 > No > real name given"s pix in " flickr from Yahoo" is the a reason for the > anonymity in this jarring interface? Jarring, as in you think Flickr's interface in general is jarring? I started using Flickr years ago because the "WFMUish" group[1] on Flickr has for quite a few years been the de facto worldwide collective scrapbook for pictures in some way related to the people and activities of WFMU, the world's finest freeform radio station[2][3]. But even though poor ol' Flickr has suffered from a lack of love during its occupation by Yahoo, I still like aspects of its interface and feature set, and indeed that interface has improved (albeit slowly) even during these Yahoo years. I certainly don't wish to put down the LUG Gallery, which is a valuable service Brian has been providing free-as-in-air, but I actually do prefer Flickr (and SmugMug) to the LUG Gallery for most purposes, and only because you've brought it up, I'll mention some of the reasons. Flickr can do that nice thing where it shows you pictures one at a time, as large as possible given the size of your browser window, surrounded by a nice field of black[4]. You can page forward and back among them using the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard, or use the mouse if you insist. This basic functionality (pictures big, able to navigate with the keyboard) is something I now consider essential for a photo-viewing site to be pleasant to use. When I select one of your photos in the LUG Gallery and hit the right arrow key, nothing happens. Spacebar? Still nothing. apparently, you have to take the tiny mouse pointer and click on the tiny single right arrowhead picture to see the next photo. Now, there was a time when I considered all that browser-resident active smarts stuff Just Plain Wrong and Not The Way The Web Works, but I'm long since over that. Oh, and to see a picture big on the LUG Gallery, there's a separate popup window which you have to look at then close and find your way back to navigating to the next picture. Feels fiddly to me. Maybe it's just-right porridge to you. I like how transparent and straightforward Flickr's handling of tags is - easy to apply, easy to see what's been applied, easy to see what other people have tagged similarly. I like that there's still a fairly large community of photographers using Flickr, and a fairly high likelihood that people looking for something you've photographed will be able to find it on Flickr. This is a well-known double-edged sword, because there's also a high amount of photo swiping from Flickr, but especially for things you'd actually like a lot of people to be able to see if they want to, it's pretty swell. I like Flickr's photo-viewing statistics tracking. Maybe it's the height of self-absorption, but I like knowing which pictures people have been interested in looking at, and when, and often why (because wherever possible, Flickr provides trackbacks to the sites people came from, often with the search terms they used to find your stuff). I like how complete Flickr's display of camera metadata is. > A reason to not back your pix up with your name? Normal people (anyone who has a Flickr login, since I figure pretty much everybody who does photography probably at least has a Flickr account, even if it's not their main place to put things) could always see my name. I actually didn't realize/remember that my default for Flickrless folk was not to show my name - I always see it, because the browser I look at stuff in generally has my Flickr credentials present. Not very good pre-post regression testing on my part. Thanks for pointing this out (even if in a Mister Snarkypants sort of way); I've found and changed that preference, so that even the unwashed masses see my name. > A reason to not be on the Lug gallery? I'm on the LUG Gallery. If I'm posting something I only intend to show to LUG folk, I might put it there. There are probably still photos of mine there illustrating things we were discussing in the Nineteen Nineties or Early Two Thousands or whenever the LUG Gallery was set up (and they're all left in place so as not to break links in archived posts). I'm grateful that our Saloonkeeper set up the LUG Gallery as a place for people who were befuddled when photo attachments got stripped from their email to the list to put those photos so we can all see them. As explained above, I don't actually find Gallery v2.2 as useful an interface for either viewing or posting as Flickr's (and I have trouble understanding how you could - are you looking at photos on a phone or something?), but I guess that's why there are usually salt shakers on dining tables. -Jeff Footnotes: [1] http://www.flickr.com/groups/wfmuish/ [2] http://wfmu.org/ [3] You should give them money, because they're a precious cultural resource, and listener-supported[5]. See URL above. [4] Like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbm0/8045670345/in/set-72157631671706166/lightbox/ [5] Full disclosure: "us" now, not "them", because after about ten years of volunteering, I now suddenly find myself on staff.