Joystiq (now with new & improved galleries!)

There are some improvements underfoot here at Joystiq, and we thought we'd take a moment to share them with you. It's no secret that we've never been happy with our gallery system; it left a lot to be desired in just about every area. So we're hoping, after you join us for a look at the brand new gallery system our talented, handsome (and did we mention talented?) crack design crew turned out for us, that you'll wade once more into the delicious fields of images.

You can take a self-guided tour through one of our most popular galleries ever right here (note the attractive, new in-post preview) or follow us on a guided tour after the break.

1. High-resolution button and low-resolution preview: so that you can quickly jump back and forth through a gallery of pics and be able to see the entire thing without having to scroll down, the default gallery layout is for low-res pics. If you click the "Hi Res" button in the upper right, you'll be switched to the high-resolution layout, which will have the same basic navigation elements, but you often won't be able to see the whole image on your screen at once.
2. Navigation: pretty self-explanatory, really. The left arrow takes you to the previous picture while the right arrow advances you onto the next ... did we have to tell you that? Probably not, so we will share something new with you. The arrow placements are fixed, unlike in our previous gallery system, so you can rest your cursor over the next button and casually click your way through an entire gallery of Lost Planet mock-ups.
   
3. Gallery preview: looking for one specific pic? Don't bother clicking through the entire gallery to find it, quickly scan the thumbnail previews to see if you can't pick it out. Yeah, we know they're pretty small; we're hoping for a solution to that in the coming months.
4. Comment field: now you can leave comments on your favorite pics! Love that Lost Planet cover with the little puppy? So do we! Let's share our love with the world!
5. Speed: even though you can't see it in that screencap above, it's there. The new gallery system loads images quicker, so you can spend more time ogling pixels and less time loading them.

And there you have it, a brief rundown of the new and improved functionality. We're going to be tweaking and adding to these, so please let us know what you think about them and if they can be improved at all. Again, thanks to our design crew of Matt, Mark, and Erik!

If you want to spend even more time in our galleries, take a peek at some of these fan favorites or look through every gallery we've ever made: