Better Image Browsing

Most people probably haven't noticed, but everyone couple of days we post a few updates to FriendsForPeace.org. Mostly they are small changes like bug fixes, and minor tweaks, sometimes they have been big (like when we added slideshows) and I make a point to bring them up here. Today's update was about 1/2 way between the two. While most of the changes were small design improvements, there are two changes I wanted to point out.

First, you can once again get the recent images from the home page with 1 click. If you click "Browse more photos" you will be taken to the new browsing page, which starts with a slideshow of the recent images. Right now that page doesn't have any new features on it, but it creates a space for us to provide more ways for to explore the pictures. We are kicking around ideas like: showing the most popular tags, slideshows by city and state, popular searches. We're not sure which we'll do in what order, but stay tuned to see what we come up with. If you have ideas please let us know and we'll add them to the mix.

The second improvement today is a small improvement to the search engine. If you enter a US state, you will get only images from that state. So to see all the images from Colorado search for CO. Hopefully this will make it easier to find images that are interesting to you.

Your input is always welcome.
Aaron
Coding for Peace

People like me

One of the things I enjoy about Friends For Peace is watching images appear of people with similar interests.

For example, I put up my dog Patrick, then Leigh and Peter included Maggie in their picture:






Last Thursday I noticed Eric, and it was nice to not be the only programmer around.






Although my poor Sammy is still the only rabbit to appear so far.



What interesting pairings of pictures have you found? Put their flickr links in the comments and I'll highlight them in a later post.

Aaron
Coding for peace

Peace events: Need a sign? Have a photo?

This weekend, hundreds of communities are holding commemorations of the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war. If you have pictures from peace events -- especially photos that include Friends for Peace signs -- feel free to post them to our site.

To find peace events near you, go to the United for Peace and Justice coalition's web site.

If you can't make a peace event, I encourage you to make your own sign and post it up at work, at home, and we've even heard of a few people posting signs on their cars. (However, I hope signs in cars are not blocking the view through the windows...)

Peace,
Mark
Red head for peace

New Design

One of the first comments we got about the Friends For Peace website is that people wanted the images to be larger; well, we've delivered. Thanks to Carl's efforts to redesign the home page we now have bigger images and the slideshow is integrated into the home page. One of the nice things about this new layout is the site should perform better on low speed connections, since the images now load in a more sensible order. Over the next few days we're planning to design more of the site, to improve your experience overall. Please keep sending us feedback, we like to know how people are using the site and ways we can make it better for you.

Aaron
Coding for Peace