[antibland]

Carousels are the type of UI pattern that is only okay if you ask for it. Amazon is a good example of a carousel done right. If I want to see the full-sized images which are part of a customer's product review, I click on the thumbnail representing these images, with the expectation that some larger, more obvious version of the images will be made available. Once a carousel appears in an overlay, it's not disturbing or annoying at all. It's there because I asked for it.

[ctidd]

If you're not familiar with the term, this image viewer pattern is generally called a lightbox rather than a carousel. I generally don't see the two used interchangeably, but there's similarity to the prev/next controls, of course.

[petepete]

Doesn't a lightbox make the rest of the page dark? Amazon doesn't do this, the carousel doesn't take up any more space than the original image.

[wonderlg]

The core difference is that a “carousel” as intended here generally contains text, and that’s specifically why it’s a bad pattern.

“Scroll-through” photo albums are a fair way to display photos, however I still personally prefer a gallery for photos instead, exactly like it works on your phone for example (gallery + “lightbox”)

[njsubedi]

The author seems to be talking about the carousals on the top of the homepage. Those thumbnails and photo preview is everywhere, from FB to any photo viewer app you find in the market.

[black_puppydog]

As others have pointed out, that's called a light box, not a carousel. And while light boxes are not in principle bad UI, they are often poorly implemented.

On many pages, clicking a thumbnail opens a light box that adds so much margin "for design considerations" that the image ends up actually shrinking. Drives me nuts every time. I think twitter recently fixed this. Only took them a few years to notice, yay!