MSN has come out with a great and AJAX full image search interface.
Here is my image search for Shanghai.
Notice the scratchpad for dragging and saving images for later use. There is a slider to quickly zoom images in and out. There is no pagination in the results. The page simply loads new images as you scroll down
Ajaxian goes the features in much more detail:
Features include:
- “Smart Scroll”. This is the Virtual Workspace pattern applied to a long list/table, or what Bill Scott calls “Death To Paging”.
There’s no “Next/Previous 20 results” – you simply browse all the
results by scrolling, and the page loads new images as you scroll, as
well as updating the result count. There have been some nice demos
along these lines, but this is the first major site to drop pagination
in this way (any other examples?) - Bookmarkable URLs. The technique involves setting the # property in the URL (the “fragment identifer”), so you get a bookmarkable URL like http://search.msn.com/images/results.aspx#imagesize=all&q=pac-man.
But we all know Ajax breaks REST/bookmarks/history
. - Scratchpad. An optional scratchpad lets you build a collection of images together for later use. You can drag images into the scratchpad, drag to rearrange them, and drag them between different collections.
- Embedded web page. Using an embedded IFrame, the original web page containing the image is shown inside the results area.
- Adjustable image size. Pull a Slider back and forth to quickly zoom the images in and out.
Jonathan
