Flickr today announced that several features have been added to Flickr Groups including a new view with a sidebar and better API methods. The announcement came on the Flickr Blog, where the company has been announcing quite a few recent changes to its website.

The new view for Flickr Groups galleries is “Justified,” which, as seen above, moves all of the photos in a group into an easy-to-view grid where photos retain their relative sizes. Photo credits are overlaid, and mousing-over a photo pops up the title and a link to comment on the pic. The Justified gallery view has already been available for Favorites pages and Photos from your Contacts pages, and is now finally a part of Flickr Groups.

The Justified view also adds a sidebar that will help users keep track of the group’s happenings. From the blog post:

As you scroll through the photos in a Group Pool, the new sidebar persistently gives you context on what the group is about. It also surfaces the most recent discussions happening in the group and highlights the top tags as well as the top contributors for members who want to dig a little deeper.

Flickr announced that adding photos to a group is now easier as well. The Flickr Uploader now has an “Add to Group” option in the editing panel that allows users to upload photos to multiple groups.

Flickr hasn’t neglected developers with this update, either. The company has implemented new API methods including reading, replying, and posting a new topic to group discussions. The API now allows calls to join groups, leave groups, and see what rules a group might have for membership.