It’s a new year and I am finally settled back in England. The trip to Google in Mountain View, California, was absolutely amazing and definitely a dream fulfilled. The summit I attended was purely AdWords focused and I didn’t meet anyone from the Google+ team unfortunately so I’m sad to say I have nothing G+ related to share from the trip. I can say that those offices are a hive of activity though and that there is certainly no slowing down from Google; I’m sure we are going to be seeing product and feature releases for a long time moving ahead in the future.
Shortly after returning from America I headed to Africa for a couple of weeks but actually managed to create a post about the new G+ communities before making the journey. To my horror that post pushed the entire blog over the edge and I thought I had lost the entire blog but thankfully my hosting provider managed to roll back the blog before that published post which resurrected the whole thing. So now everything is back to normal, I’m back in freezing England and I would like to bring a small G+ feature update to your attention.
Google employee, Dave Cohen, created a public post last on Google+ last night stating that desktop users now have the opportunity to pan and zoom photos for a better viewing experience. It may seem strange that there has been so much focus on the photo side of G+ but when browsing through my stream (and most likely yours too) it’s amazing to see how many G+ members use the social network as an image blog similar to the likes of Tumblr. Google have obviously noted this and are making an effort to keep this section of their market entertained by offering great features and the best user experiences possible.
Zoom in using the mouse wheel and then click and drag the image to pan around.
To try this new feature simply open a lightbox by clicking on a photo of your choice and then use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out and click and drag the image to pan around the zoomed area. High resolution pictures are going to work best with this feature as nobody enjoys zooming into a low quality pixelated picture so I recommend you experiment with Dave Cohen’s post picture as an example. The new feature personally reminded me of Ebay’s zoom and pan system which allows potential purchasers to review the product they want to buy (for possible scratches and defects) in greater detail. Feedback in the post’s comments section have been very positive which is great to see for a fairly small and simple feature.