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Version 0.73 – Creating UI Longevity For The Good Of Usability

Published: Thursday September 30, 2021


Well, time flew by insanely quickly and we are now a pandemic and a few years into the realization of our dream which is opticous.com. There's been a lot done, optimized, and implemented and we are finally rolling out a more complete UI and service as a whole.

On the codebase front, there have been some significant leaps of work done during this time, however, on the opposite side of the spectrum, very little has been done when it comes to the number of available photos, images, and visuals we have managed to upload.

With our new version of opticous.com now live, we feel like it's time to really prioritize the content side of things. This is actually why we rolled out this version of the site. Sort of to say that we need to put a symbolic end to the coding part of our endeavor and concentrate more on what we are actually providing with it. The actual service, so to speak.

With version 0.73 comes a lot of fixes, optimizations, additions, and more, and we will list a few of them below.

  • Search - Search have been overhauled and is now more accurate. We feel like there is more work to be done, however, as the number of available visuals increase the better our search function will perform.
  • Search Categories - Categories have received a complete overhaul. Categories now show up when you click the search field to search. Each category is presented with an image, the title of the category along with how many photos and images are available in it.
  • Related Tags - We have added Related Tags to the image download page. The performance of these tags are interlinked with the accuracy of tags added to the images themselves. As more tags are added, the better the suggestions will be.
  • Similar Images - We have added Similar Images to the image download page as well. This is based on a visual AI that we will keep updating and improving as time goes by. The more photos and images we have available, the better our AI will perform when it comes to present you with images that you probably want to see and download.
  • Heart - In order for us to understand you users better, we have added a "hearted" function to each image download page. This is IP- and cookie-based and will allow you to heart a photo or an image that you like without having to sign up or log in.
  • Downloads - We believe in transparency and that is why we decided to visually present the number of downloads each images has received on the imaged download page.
  • Views - Furthermore, we added views to the image download page as well which is, again, IP- and cookie-based with a secret interval set before a new view is recorded of the same visitor.
  • Download Button - We have completely overhauled the download button in order to fit the format that we want to present our content in. Clicking "Download" will now download the original version of the photo or image. Clicking the down arrow will present you with a variety of size options to download.
  • Options Bar - On the front page we decided to add an "Options" bar to help you navigate our site more easily. On it you can find "Home", "Discover", "Popular", and "Challenges" options. Currently, "Discover" and "Challenges" are note yet available.
  • Popular - If you are looking for the very best photos and images available on opticous.com, according to our users, then click on "Popular" on the options bar and you will see our most views, downloaded, and hearted photos and images. It's yet another way to find great visuals for your content creation journey.
  • Pages - All of our pages, such as About, License, etc. have been overhauled and should now perform and look a little better.
  • License - Our license page and agreement has been updated and now more clearly states what is allowed and not allowed when it comes to the download and use of our available photos and images.
  • About - We have created a more robust about page which we felt was well overdue.
  • Mobile - YES! While overhauling pretty much the entire website, we decided to finally also develop a mobile version of the site. We would appreciate it if you reported any bugs the mobile site )or the desktop site) might have through our contact page.

That should be about it! We will, of course, continue to improve the site, both visually and technically, in order to appeal to as many users as possible. To give you a hint of what we are working on, here's a short list.

  • Discover - Find visuals based on theme, category, topic, and more.
  • Challenges - Every once in a while we will throw a challenge which could win you prizes.
  • Statistics - In our effort to become more transparent, this section will present our overall statistics.
  • Tools - Customize our photos, images and visuals to fit your project right here on opticous.com.
  • And more...

However, our main focus moving forward is now to increase the amount of content that you can actually search for, download, and use here on opticous.com.

We are looking forward to an exciting time ahead and we will, of course, update you further when we have something new and exciting to share.

/Team Opticous