Flickr upgrades slide shows, commence eye candy
Flickr quietly launched a new version of its slide show feature today. The new design forgoes the once small black box and takes over your entire browser window with full-sized photos that fade into one another. Also tweaked is the speed control, which has gone from a slow to fast slider to one-click options for slow, medium, and fast. Flickr decided to retool the slide show feature based on user feedback, as the previous version would restrict photos down to small size, even on large monitors or browsers set to full screen. The new version will simply resize itself to however big your browser window is.
Slide shows still retain some of the good qualities that made the original Flickr slide show visually appealing. Picture titles and commentary, as well as links back to the photographer, photo page, and an option to mark it as a favorite still remain. One change I personally don't like is the new viewer, which only shows seven thumbnails at a time. The old player displayed rows of 19, which was often enough to encompass an entire set. Interestingly enough, embedded versions of the slide shows are still presented this way, although that might change down the line. You can still scroll through to the next set of seven, but there was something magical about seeing a giant grid of thumbnails in one place.
One thing that's still missing is an easy way to embed Flickr slide shows in blogs or social networking profiles. It's possible if you know some coding, but for the casual user, there's not a simple "grab the embed code" link available. If you're interested in making some slick embeddable slide shows that are similar to this new look, give Slidez a spin.
The new slide show does full screen now and forgoes the once tiny photo display.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh. 
