Hello Yahoo!,
I am one of the regular user and lover of Flickr and Del.icio.us services. Whenever I am working of these web applications, I used to feel the need of some simple changes in them.
The features or changes, I am going to list out here are nothing new and we have already seen them in most of the web applications. These changes to Flickr and Del.icio.us will definitely enhance the usability of these web services.
Lets look into Flickr First
When finding a Photo, I would like to have the “TagSuggest” Feature, which lists down the tags related to the search term currently I am typing.
In the main Flickr page there are two-search options are provided in the top of the page, one in the top right [1] and one in the top center after the main menu [2].
[click to see the full size image]
When I scroll down to the page end, I don’t have any search option. Each time I have to scroll to top of the page for searching.
I think the Search option has to be provided also in the page down too, as shown below so that I don’t have to scroll up each time for doing new search.
When I select a picture and clicked on the option “All Sizes” for getting different sizes of the particular picture.
I am taken to the different available photo size page; I am missing some of the most important features in the page.
[click to see the full size image]
The top Main menu [1] is missing, due to that I can’t come to home directly from this page.
The Search option [2] is missing, so I can’t perform new search from this page.
I find no option to Sign out [3] Flickr from this page; to sign out I have to return back to the previous page.
The only way to do get all this functions explained above is, we have to return back to the previous page, clicking on the “Back to the Flickr Photo Page” option.
Finally the Flickr logo [4] too is missing in this page.
I could understand the Flickr logo image is not used in this page, for the faster download of the different size of the pictures, but other options like the “Top Main menu”, “Search” and “Sign out” must be included in all pages.
When I want to delete more than one photo at a time, I don’t have an option for this. I can select only one photo at a time to delete them; suppose I want to delete more than 30 photos, will I have to select each photo individually to delete?. I think it is very long process, instead I need option for multi selection checkbox to select and delete multiple images in a single click.
Flickr works GREAT in its core functionalities like to store, search, sort, and share photos wonderfully. Flickr has came out of beta, now it’s in gamma ;) so I expect more advance Image editing features like:
Resizing photos, not the default fixed sizes provided by Flickr. I want to resize the image to the size I want.
Option to blur, sharpen, straighten the image
Color effects like Grayscale, Sepia, Invert, Red, Green, and Blue
Some other special effects like
I could find all the features are available in http://pixer.us, Flickr please give us such great features or better acquire them simple :).
I want Flickr not just as a Photo storing, tagging and sharing application, but as a powerful Full-fledged Image Management Web Application.
Next, I just move on direct to Del.icio.us for few things
In the Del.icio.us home page, just next and right to the “hotlist” header the link option “see also: popular recent” is not notable in a single instance. I think the font size of this links has to be increased or needs to have some light gray background to make this links notable even in single look. It need some change as shown below.
The normal link background
Needs to be changed to light gray to increase its notability.
Next, the Login process seems to be taking quite some time, I think the login form can be placed in the home page itself. When I click on the login [1] link on the top of the page, I want the login form to be loaded in the “Tags” block [2] area as show below.
When clicking the “login” link [1]
The login form can be loaded in the “Tags” [2] block area as shown below
I could understand, currently when we login we are taken to the “htts:// ” secure page, What I ask is why not the secure login is loaded in the same page without reloading and you know very well what technology you have to use for this process :).
Currently, each time when I am logging in I have to move to 2 pages before I actually logged in as shown below:
Login page [page 1]
Login successful, redirects to the logged in user [page 2]
- !End -
All the features or changes, I have discussed above seems to be very simple, but they are valid and It will definitely enhance the usability of these applications more.
Although I have more and more such suggestions in mind, I am ending this post for now.
Do drop in your comments when you have time.
Thanks Yahoo!! :).
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Balakumar Muthu
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My Similar Posts:
http://i5bala.blogspot.com/2006/07/highly-confusing-invalid-error-message.html
http://i5bala.blogspot.com/2006/06/design-and-usability-issueserrors-in.html
thats grt8 use-ability research. hopefully yahoo grabs all ur ideas :)
u might be knowings just check out..
http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
http://www.zooomr.com
del.icio.us?
http://www.blinklist.com
;-)
@prashanth, blur is one of the feature I use frequently, as I do with sharpen for some images. Blur is used to convey a sense of motion in the picture.