JAIPHO beta - Javascript image gallery for iPhone

March 21, 2009 by Tole

One of the most impressive iPhone achievements is the Photos application. Taking advantage of big screen, gestures, gyroscope and most important: extra good user interface it is just miles away from ordinary cell phones.
There is one more another iPhone killer feature: Safari browser. It actually made for first time in history, mobile surfing really usable. You can browse the mobile, as well as standard websites and enjoy in it.

But what is the situation when you are browsing some web images gallery?
Mobile sites I found mainly had just plain next/forward buttons, resized images to optimal size but usually you had to scroll images to see them in whole. Anyway that are actually good solutions. In most cases not iPhonized at all, but still usable.
Galleries on standard websites are different story. You have to both scroll and resize screen to actually see the selected image. Another level of unusability is added by javascript based solutions. Opened in browser on your PC, they are great, but with iPhone, usually after you manage to go to next slide (if you manage it at all) you will give up from further watching.

After long search finally I found three iPhone optimized galleries which are based on Photos application (links should be accessed with iPhone):

• Google Picasa Web Albums - mobile variant
• Apple MobileMe Gallery
• Facebook for iPhone - needs account

Finally something usable, only problem was that those solutions are "in house" projects and you can not download them use on your own website.

Idea was born: to make javascript component which will be easy to implement on any site, and which will give iPhone users native experience when they are surfing the web galleries.

And now, few months later, here is the JAIPHO in fully functional beta release. It is iPhone optimized web gallery and, your iPhone users will finally get what they are expecting to. You can use it for free and implement it on your web, mobile or iPhone site.

Here is a short features and advantages list:

• Full iPhone optimized experience including images sliding effect and finger gestures
• Both, thumbnails and full screen modes
• Language independent. It is written in Javascript. You can use it with php, jsp, asp, ...
• Published under LGPL. You can use it for free even on commercial sites.

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