PicLens is the most spectacular add-on for Firefox I happened to try in a while. It adds a cool and usable “3D wall interface” for navigating pictures from Flickr, Google Images, MySpace, deviantART, Facebook, Yahoo and other sites. You have to try it for understanding how much it can change your browsing experience, but I recorded a video demo that might give you an idea.
PicLens is a small and free plug-in for Firefox, available for Windows XP, Vista and Mac OSX (currently no Linux version). It runs full-screen taking advantage of hardware acceleration from the graphic card: I stress tested it at 1920×1200 pixel and its performances were impressive (I lowered my screen resolution only for the screen recording).
If you are a passionate flickr user, you might feel some emotions while facing to your whole photostream like if it was an infinite exhibition. You will also appreciate the bidirectional links: you can jump from any page to PicLens and vice versa. The following video shows PicLens view for flickr, pointing out the connections between the enhanced navigation and the feeds of photo-stream, comments, stats, search and map. Enjoy it:
Watch the video in HD (1280×720) on Vimeo or on YouTube.
PicLens uses a smart preloading in background, so you have to wait less time for previous and following photos. I really like the fast responsiveness, made possible also by downloading pictures at low res at first and at high resolution only if you zoom. I love the support of mouse wheel to zoom and keyboard shortcuts for browsing. The “drag to navigate” is quite intuitive, the minimal bars don’t distract from the pictures and the recently added search feature is surely welcome.
I definitely recommend to download PicLens for Firefox. There are versions for Safari and Internet Explorer as well, but they currently haven’t the 3D interface. There is also a PicLens WordPress Plugin, which creates feeds compatible with PicLens for the pictures on your blog. Last but not least, there is PicLens Lite, a Flash application that can be embedded in html pages (it takes feeds, but no 3d yet). You can follow the future developments for all the versions on Danny Thorpe’s blog.
About the video
Software: PicLens 1.6.1.936 for Firefox on Windows Vista
Photos: from www.flickr.com/alt123 (its’ my old account, I moved to www.flickr.com/gantico)
Music: “The Flux”, from Adobe Soundbooth CS3 library.
February 6th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Splendido video! Illustrazione perfetta delle funzionalità!
March 6th, 2008 at 6:22 am
Hey from the Cooliris Team!
We just wanted to thank you so much for taking the time to write about us!
We also wanted to let you all know PicLens has been selected a FINALIST in the 2008 Webware 100 Awards, out of over 4,600 2.0 Web service nominees! This is a HUGE accomplishment; So thanks a TON for your tremendous support in getting us recognition! You can vote for PicLens at
http://www.webware.com/html/ww/100/2008/vote_browsing.html until 9am on March 31st. If you know anyone else that loves PicLens, make sure to tell them to vote too. Hope you will help us! ☺
Cheers,
Meg & The Cooliris Team
March 11th, 2008 at 5:33 am
Hey there, again, from the PicLens Team:
With your beautiful photos, you might be interested in knowing that we have PicLens plugin for WordPress, which enables your site for full-screen slideshows. The plugin can be found at WordPress.org or on our website at http://piclens.com/lite/wordpress.php.
For your readers who don’t have WordPress, we just teamed up with free website provider Freewebs (www.freewebs.com) to make the PicLens experience available to all Freewebs users and visitors. PicLens is also compatible with Adobe Lightroom.
Thanks, again, for blogging about us and for your awesome video. We love it.
We’ve got much more to come, so stay tuned.
Kindest regards,
Alec & The PicLens Team
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:24 am
[...] Giovanni Antico discovered the power of PicLens when navigating his Flickr albums. Giovanni writes, “I was so excited to see my photos as if they were in a boundless gallery that I recorded a video of such experience. PicLens gave me a whole new way to browse images, combining spectacular navigation with ease of use.” The album video he created is a staff favorite. Check it out! [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
When is there going to be an update for Safari 3.1? How about a timeline?