Yesterday, flicker gave us two new shiny toys to play with. The big one, collections, has been in demand for a long time, and as a overactive set user, I’m very pleased to see that this is now available. The smaller one allows flickrites to change the layout of their entry page. The choice is fairly limited but I am certainly not complaining.

To change the layout of my “You” page, I went thru the menus: You->Your Account. There is now a new option added to allow me to pick out which layout I wanted. The choices are small images only, small images plus sets (the original default), small images plus collections, medium images only, medium images plus sets, or medium images plus collections. Since I promptly sorted all my sets into collections, I chose the small images plus collections option which worked a treat.

To create collections, use the Organizr. The “Sets” tab is now “Sets and Collections.” It’s all pretty intuitive to use: when I choose to create a new collection, all my sets are displayed to one side, and I can drag and drop (and reorder, etc) sets into the collection.

Sets use a particular picture within the set to create its visual identification; collections use a mosaic of nine pictures to create its visual identification. I believe there are still some bugs with creating the mosaic representations. In several cases, the mosaic insisted on using pictures from one particular set within the collection, instead of a nicely distributed random set. In one case, the pictures chosen are from a set not even in the collection!

Collections are not available to free flickr accounts. This makes sense as free accounts are also limited in the number of sets they can create, as well. However, choosing different layouts is available, with the small/medium pictures + collections options omitted.

The announcement of the new features are up at Flickr’s Blog.