Cooliris Piclens equivalent for Linux?

Piclens for Linux

Piclens’s official line for Linux is:

Will Cooliris support Linux anytime soon? Our ideal plan is to eventually make our Firefox version work cross-platform, but its timing is not yet clear due to our current resource constraints.

So that sounds to me like “we don’t want to p-off Linux users but we’re not really committing resources to this.”

However there may yet be hope in the form of Greased Lightbox …

Piclens replacement?

Greased Lightbox – the Piclens for Linux?

Despite what some diggers might suggest unfortunately it seems that Greased LIghtbox is not the messiah, but it’s not too naughty either and might still be a good match for some. Greased Lightbox, as the name suggests primarily uses the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. However those using Safari can use Greasekit and Opera users apparently have everything needed already to enable this lightbox to do its stuff. So once you’ve installed the necessary (follow thte links in the previous para, make sure to install Greased Lightbox last as Greasemonkey/kit is needed to correctly handle the download) and reloaded your browser then go to your favourite image site and click on an image. Any page of images should present a lightbox like effect as in the above image.

Missed the point of Piclens?

It seems that this extension completely missed the point of Piclens. Piclens is great in part because it is immersive and in part because it allows you to view many graphics very quickly. Compare the Piclens view of that bobbin search with the Greased Lightbox (“GL”) view. GL is just a user-script (ie local) version of Lightbox as used across many image rich websites across the internet. GL provides a consistent interface to view images but it’s like comparing the Windows XP Image Preview (single image) with a program like Picassa or IrfanView (image grids). Don’t get me wrong, GL is very nice for what it does …

Features of Greased Lightbox

• The “reload icon” actually starts a slideshow
• Allows keypress navigation using + – 0 X Esc Right Left
• Provides buttons top right for navigating too
• Presents a black-charcoal-gray lightbox experience

GL however does not present a panoramic mouse zoomable and scrollable view of pictures, nor does it allow “internal” navigation beyond the page you’re on. Summary In fairness to the devs they don’t appear to have set themselves up to compete with Cooliris’s Piclens (yet?!) but if you’re hoping this will ease your image navigation then you just might be in luck – it’s free to try and very easy to install and use.