14 DAY TRIAL // Flickr is one of the best and biggest photo hosting and sharing sites out there but, while its die-hard users love it, there are some areas where it could do better, most notably its search, which leaves much to be desired. Thankfully the developers have heard the complaints and Flickr now sports a brand-new and much-improved search results page with a new layout and, more importantly, better functionality.
“Today we’re pleased to announce a redesign of our search results page. The changes we’ve introduced make it easier to browse through the billions of photos and videos on Flickr, and to connect to the communities that help make sense of all those photos,” Shanan Delp wrote in the Flickr blog post announcing the changes.
Image search is getting more and more important, with all major search engines focusing efforts in this area and constantly releasing new features. One of the best sources for great photos is still Flickr but users were faced with a problem – the search on the site was lacking. Though owned by Yahoo, the site didn't share the much more powerful Yahoo Image Search instead relying on the aging internal engine. Search results would be displayed in a list, with fairly large images, and you'd have to scroll down or move to the next results page to find what you were looking for. There were also some sorting/filtering options but those left to be desired also.
The new search though offers a much better experience, borrowing some features from Yahoo Image Search. The old view is still available, labeled “Details,” but the default view now fills the page with thumbnails of the results. The thumbnails come in the “small” and “medium” varieties and there's also an interesting “slideshow” view that does exactly what you'd expect, it goes to a full screen view with one image, changing every few seconds, filling the browser window.
The thumbnail views also come with improved functionality as now you can get information about the photo without leaving the results page. Additional resources are displayed in a panel in the right-hand side with groups and tags that match your search. The filtering and sorting options are now also improved, bringing some of the features that were previously only available in the advanced search to the main page. The advanced search, on the other hand, is unchanged. Still, the new features and layout are a big improvement and should please all but the hardest to satisfy users.
