I like the new format.
It's nice how you can see all the mini pictures all logically organized in one place, so you can easily see the differences between the ship sizes.
The slide show doesn't work very well for me, maybe because I have slow dialup internet connection. The portrait picture, mini picture, and name are often out of sync. For example, it will show the frigate mini while it still shows the escort portrait, and by the time the portrait updates, we're on to destroyer mini and name, and so on. But after it goes throught the complete cycle once, it seems to be OK, which I guess is because now all the pictures are in the Cache and load faster.