It would be so nice to be able to go through the thumbnails on this site with Cool Iris. Can someone in the higher ups check it out? Cool Iris is a Firefox add-on. Actually, I think it is the same as PicLens. So, to those of you who can make this happen, PLEASE consider adding this capability to Caedes!

I spoke with some of the mods about this, and the opinions seem to be running against it. One reason is that it would enable people to view and download the images without seeing the ads which support the site. Another reason is that it would sort of destroy the whole "community" aspect of Caedes in which we all see and comment on each others' images. Likewise it would allow rip-bots to automate the ripping of our images en-masse. Technically enabling CoolIris is easy, but for these and other reasons I would be against it.

As Reg said, there are problems associated with supporting this external service. However, I would be in favor of building some of the features into the site. Can you give me a short description of the end-user experience that you are interested in getting?

Cool Iris is a very fun way to look through photo galleries (I use it with my facebook and picassa albums) and I've often thought it would be neat to be able to look through the Caedes galleries in the same way. I do agree with Reg, though, that I wouldn't want to do anything that would impact the community feel of Caedes in a negative way. Personally, that's my favorite part of the site - even more than the photos! It's the people I've met that make it all special. I also understand the concerns with ripping.

Perhaps an easier way of flicking through the galleries, more like the iTunes album covers as distinct from paging, but only use thumbnails up to say 256x256 or something enough to see the picture but not enough to rip. Clicking on the picture takes you to the picture entry as now.