Flickr has debuted a new photo page which is currently in rollout, but if you have a Flickr account, you can login and opt in to the new view right now. So what are you waiting for? Log in and look for the pink banner at the top of the page which reads, “We’re introducing a new photo page, and you can check it out early. Take me to the future!” Click on “Take me to the future!” and you’ll get the new page. (This isn’t permanent; you can opt-out of the new photo page version if you don’t like it.)

The biggest difference is that the photo is a lot, lot bigger. (This is one of my Fair pictures. Trust me to get arty with the fried butter shot.) To appreciate the photos better there’s also a new light box feature; hit f on your keyboard and suddenly you have a really really big picture on a dark background. (This probably looks more impressive when it’s not a giant fried butter image.)

Flickr has grouped a lot of functionality together. A small nav strip lets you move back and forth through the photostream as well as zoom into the light box view (once you’re there you have the option to view the photo in other sizes as well.) Another small menu nearby gives you a dropdown menu of many, many possible actions (from tagging the photo to ordering prints to even deleting the photo if it happens to be yours.) You can also share the photo via e-mail, or get HTML to show it, or theoretically share it across different blogs (I write “theoretically” because there’s a place for it, but the blog list Flickr gave me was empty.)

Way down toward the bottom of the screen, in light type, there’s a set of keyboard shortcuts you can use to navigate available photos:

← previous photo → next photo f view in light box scroll film strip right

I have not used Flickr as much as I have in the past — it’s easier to just put photos up on Facebook. But this new display and the way the actions are grouped means that Flickr is, once again, a really great place to showcase photos.