This project has now graduated from Bee Labs and the current stable version can be seen here. You can still try out the latest features here as they will be released in labs for a time before being considered stable.

Current Features:

• A modern UI look and feel.
• 100% JavaScript based.
• Gallery featuring (chosen by Bee editors).
• Unobtrusive controls which stay hidden or largely transparent until use.
• Slideshow mode.
• Pre-fetching of media so that viewing delays are kept to a minimum.
• Hash tracking so that you can share/bookmark the direct link to any one gallery/photo.
• "Full-screen" mode that zooms to the full available window size as well as automatic detection of when the browser goes full-screen (F11 on many operating systems/browsers).
• A mini-browser allowing you to browse to other galleries without leaving the page (or even leaving fullscreen mode for that matter).
• Mouse wheel support for next/previous (not supported in IE8 or older).
• A modern HTML5 based version specifically tailored to touch-screen devices (never seen in labs).

Improvements Over the Previous Version:

• A touch-based mobile version has been built (redirection is not automatic in the labs version).
• Several minor bugs have been fixed in the desktop version.
• The image selection, scaling, and cropping logic has been significantly enhanced and imporved.
• Tooltips have been added to the desktop version.

Possible Upcoming Features:

• Quick sharing functionality (facebook/twitter/email/etc).
• A new video player supporting HTML5 and falling back to a Flash version when necessary.
• Hardware accelerated animations/compositing when supported by the browser (IE9+ and any modern gecko or webkit based browser) for the desktop version (the mobile version is GPU accelerated when possible).
• Commenting integration (disqus).
• Photographer bios.
• Ability to be fully embeddable in third-party sites.
• Integration with galleries posted in all sections (currently it does not support sections like Sports).
• Key bindings (such as left/right) when in fullscreen mode.
• Integration of other categories/sections (Sports, Our Region, State Politics, etc).
• An intra-gallery photo browsing mechinism to replace/extend the simple photo count.
• Gallery details (rather than just the name of the gallery and individual photo caption).
• Surfacing of related galleries/video/stories. Examples of this include:
  • "Read the full story" link when applicable
  • If you are viewing a sports gallery, showing more sports galleries at the end of the gallery
• The ability to search for media (such as searching for "49ers" or "obama")

Browsers Supported:

Desktop:

• Firefox 3.6+ — 100%
• Chrome 10+ — 100%
• Safari 5.0+ — 100%
• IE7 — 80% (some missing graphical elements and functionality)
• IE8 — 85% (some missing graphical elements such as semi-transparent backgrounds and rounded corners)
• IE9 — 100%

Mobile:

• iOS Mobile Safari (tested in a variety of iOS devices including the very original iPhone) — 100%
• Android Browser (tested on a variety of Android 2.x and 3.x devices including Kindle Fire) — 100%
• A variety of Webkit based mobile/touch browsers (such as Dolphin and Netfront)— 100%

Known Issues in the Latest Version:

Desktop:

• There is a bug in the current Chrome beta that is exposing the TouchEvent API on desktop computers. This is causing people with this browser to inappropriately be redirected to the mobile version (a work-around is being researched).
• Occassionally a photo may become "stuck" requiring you to reload the page.
• No rounded corners in IE7 & IE8.
• Mouse wheel support does not appear to be working in IE7 & IE8.
• Transparency does not work appropriately in IE7 & IE8 (several very bizarre bugs get triggered such as fully transparent text/borders and other distortions). Transparency has been disabled for these browsers.
• Because mouse wheel events are not captured properly, the custom scrollbars cannot work in IE7 & IE8 (the stock browser ones are used instead).

Mobile:

• Windows based devices have not been tested and are likely to be broken.
• The gallery browser is incorrectly aligning to the wrong gallery sometimes when opened.