Instagram's new web viewer
There’s slow but steady progress in Instagram-land. As we anxiously await the release of the long-promised Android version of the app bringing with it hordes of new Instagrammers to follow and share with (more importantly, hordes of new Android users to show off our iPhone photo apps to), it’s easy to overlook some of the cool stuff that Instagram have released in the past few months.
The app itself got some cool new features in the last couple of updates, like the TiltShift feature and the new, very usable Brannan filter. The new Instagram Public APIs make it easier for third parties to connect and interact with Instagram.
Instagram has also improved their own web experience recently. It’s not the completely interactive Instagram web experience we were all hoping for, but it’s movement in the right direction.
Instagram web interface 1.0
The original Instagram web viewer was little more than an ad for the app. The new Instragram web viewer let’s you see who’s liked an image and all the comments users have posted. There’s a new Google map that gives shows a pretty broad area of where the image was taken. The map is shown where location data is available. The map centers on the photo, but it’s broad enough to minimize any potential stalking issues. The map above shows about a 30 mile section of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex — Jack Skellington was shot in the middle of that.
You can still right-click to download the 612×612 pixel images to your computer.
There’s still no other interaction besides “Liking” and tweeting from the page. No way to comment. No way to message the photographer. No way to view Instagrammer’s profiles from the web — you’ll still have to go back to the iPhone app for that. URLs still don’t make any sense. There’s no username information in them. The screen above is found at https://instagram.com/p/Copxx/ . Neither my name nor my username even has a “p” in it.
It’s not much and it’s still not what users have been requesting since the app’s release, but it’s an improvement. And at least it works — it isn’t broken. At Instagram, change seems to come at its own pace.
=M=
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