CoolIris

Those of you who are using Firefox 3 will know what a great browser it is and will probably have already explored some its features.

One of those that you may not have come across yet are the add-ons. Go to Tools in the menu bar and you will find them there.

To add more you just need to select Get Add-ons which will bring you up a list of a few that are available. There are plenty more to choose from. Click on Browse All Add-ons and you will be taken to the Mozilla site of Firefox Add-ons. Have a look around at what is available -there are loads.

The one you are looking for at the moment though is CoolIris. So, in the search box type CoolIris and you should find it listed. Unfortunately it is for Windows only - sorry Mac and Linux people.

Once you have downloaded and installed it you will need to restart Firefox to make it work. Bear with me it's going to be worth it.

Now to try it out!! Go to my Spanish Album by clicking on this link. What you will see is my picture album in the form that everybody else does. You need to make the add-on work by clicking on the CoolIris button which you should find at the top right of your browser window. This will open up CoolIris in a new window.

At last we come to the cool bit. Move the blue scroll bar at the bottom of the screen and watch all my photographs move as if they are on a 3D wall. I'm told this works even on a slow connection so you dial up users shouldn't be disappointed. Use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out and click on any photograph to see it large. Now tell me that wasn't worth it - of course I mean the program not my photograph.

Of course CoolIris doesn't just work with my photographs - try it on other pages with images. If you have a Picasso or a Flickr album it will work with those. Call me a geek but I just love this stuff.