On May 20th, we introduced our Justified layout to the Photostream page. Ever since launch, we’ve been working hard to improve the performance of this page, and this week we’ve deployed a change that dramatically reduces the time it takes to display photos. The secret? Cookies.

At a high level, our Justified algorithm works like this:

1. Take, as input, the browser viewport width and a list of photos
2. Begin to lay those photos out in a row sequentially, using the maximum allowed height and scaling the width proportionately
3. If a row becomes longer than the viewport width, reduce the height of that row and all the photos in it until the width is correct

Because we need the viewport width, we have to run this algorithm entirely in the browser. And because we won’t know which particular photo size to request until we’ve run the algorithm, we can’t start downloading the photos until very late in the process. This is why, up until Friday, when you loaded a photostream page, you saw the spinning blue and pink balls before the photos loaded.

Last week we were able to make one key change: we now pre-generate the layout on the server. This means that we know exactly which image sizes we need at the very top of the page, and can start downloading them immediately. It also means the spinning balls aren’t needed anymore. The end result is that the first photo on the page now loads seven times faster than on May 20th.

“Time to First Photo” on the Photostream page

One question remains: we need client viewport width in order to generate the layout, so how are we able to pre-generate it on the server? The first time you come to any Flickr page, we store the width of your browser window in a cookie. We can then read that cookie on the server on subsequent page loads. This means we aren’t able to pre-generate the photostream layout the very first time you come to the site. It also means that the layout will occasionally be incorrect, if you have resized the browser window since the last time you visited Flickr; we deal with this by always correcting the layout on the client, if a mismatch is detected.

This is one of many performance improvements we’re working on after our 5/20 release (we’ve also deployed some improvements to the homepage activity feed). Expect to see the performance continue to improve on the redesigned pages in the coming weeks and months.