Cool Iris
Want to have a little fun with your image interface?
Check out Cool Iris - a " plugin that transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos form the Web or your desktop."
In a way, Mac started it all... with its "fisheye" display of icons in the task tray at the bottom of the screen. When rolled over, the icons would enlarge individually in a smooth, interesting motion. This display style and behavior were evidently appealing, because we saw the same interface cropping up again and again on websites and in applications when a series of images or icons could be selected for viewing or clicking.
For quite a while now, photo display sites have worked hard at creating an interesting - and ideally, easy to use - interface for selecting and viewing images. Using both the aforementioned smooth "enlarge on rollover" style of the mac fisheye, and a riff on a gallery (viewing images as a series of thumbnails artistically arranged on a three-dimensional "wall" in the "space" of a webpage (rather than as a flat panel), Cool Iris leads you on a delightful chase through the images on sites like Google Images, Flickr, YouTube, and others.
A downloadable web app (for FireFox 3.0/3.5 and Windows XP or Vista), there's little or no setup - just download and install. Now, any time you see this icon:
, you'll be able to click it to view the images associated with the site (or your desktop, etc.)on an "endless wall" of imagery - any single image of which can be clicked for a closeup view.
Now, when you want to see "dogs" on Google images, you can use Cool Iris to see them displayed, gallery style, and simply zoom through them, rather than clicking "next, next, next" to get the full panorama. It's fun, it's fast, and it's informative.
What's not to love?
Oh, there is Facebook support, and an app for the iPhone, too (of course).
Check it out.
Check out Cool Iris - a " plugin that transforms your browser into a lightning fast, cinematic way to enjoy photos and videos form the Web or your desktop."
In a way, Mac started it all... with its "fisheye" display of icons in the task tray at the bottom of the screen. When rolled over, the icons would enlarge individually in a smooth, interesting motion. This display style and behavior were evidently appealing, because we saw the same interface cropping up again and again on websites and in applications when a series of images or icons could be selected for viewing or clicking.
For quite a while now, photo display sites have worked hard at creating an interesting - and ideally, easy to use - interface for selecting and viewing images. Using both the aforementioned smooth "enlarge on rollover" style of the mac fisheye, and a riff on a gallery (viewing images as a series of thumbnails artistically arranged on a three-dimensional "wall" in the "space" of a webpage (rather than as a flat panel), Cool Iris leads you on a delightful chase through the images on sites like Google Images, Flickr, YouTube, and others.
A downloadable web app (for FireFox 3.0/3.5 and Windows XP or Vista), there's little or no setup - just download and install. Now, any time you see this icon:
, you'll be able to click it to view the images associated with the site (or your desktop, etc.)on an "endless wall" of imagery - any single image of which can be clicked for a closeup view.Now, when you want to see "dogs" on Google images, you can use Cool Iris to see them displayed, gallery style, and simply zoom through them, rather than clicking "next, next, next" to get the full panorama. It's fun, it's fast, and it's informative.
What's not to love?
Oh, there is Facebook support, and an app for the iPhone, too (of course).
Check it out.
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