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Humans are visual beings. Images attract our attention, can communicate ideas faster than the written word and can trigger meaningful discussions. At Invision Community we recognised this very early in the company history and have included a Gallery application for many years. During this time online communities have evolved substantially so we thought it was time to re-assess what it means to offer a community gallery and have some exciting developments to share.
Visual Refresh
The first thing we wanted to do was to give the look & feel a modern overhaul. @Ehren has done a fantastic job with modern design ideas. We took inspiration from the recent overhaul of the Events app and included a brand new Gallery overview page. This view better highlights featured and new images but also brings recent image comments in to focus to promote discussion.

Better Video Support
Video support has been included in Invision Community for a while but browser support has varied wildly. This often led to a poor experience where viewers were prompted to download plugins or forced to download the video in its entirety. Browser support for MP4 playback has moved on however and we have been able to update Gallery with some new functionality.
Frames from the video can be extracted for the preview thumbnail automatically. We have retained the option to upload a separate preview image however for people that want manual control over the image shown. Skipping ahead in videos is now also supported without the need to download the entire file or use plugins.
For communities that are able to leverage our cloud platform non MP4 videos will be automatically converted to support these features.
Searchable Image Contents
Another benefit for Cloud Communities is images can now be optionally analysed to make their contents searchable. For example, if an image of a tree or woodland scene is uploaded, this would previously only be searchable if the title or description of the image contained specific words or phrases. Now images can be identified solely by their visual contents.
NSFW (Not Safe For Work)
Invision Community contains tools to automatically moderate sensitive images to prevent them being posted. Some communities with more mature audiences may wish to allow these to be posted however but with some protection. We have therefore added the ability for images to be optionally set as NSFW when uploading. This will cause images to be blurred until the viewer opts in to viewing them.

Performance & Usability
Images by their nature can be slow to load (particularly on mobile connections) so we took some time and removed lots of redundant javascript and CSS. Where appropriate we have also added support for prefetching the next and previous images in an album or category and lazy loading is handled by the browser natively. We combined this with an improved image navigation experience using an image carousel when viewing individual images and removed the confusing Lightbox overlay. The Lightbox is now used solely for full screen image previews without the visual clutter of comment counts and other meta data.

These changes are the start of further Gallery improvements to come and as always we will continue to develop based on your feedback.
Let us know what you think in the comments.

For most of us, at some point in our lives we've been told we look like someone famous. Maybe it's an actor from a favourite movie, or a member of a popular band.
This has certainly come up a few times among the team in chat. We often joke about our more famous doppelgängers. We've often wondered who'd play us in the movie version of Invision Community. I'm holding out for Ryan Reynolds [Keep dreaming - Editor].
More recently, friend to Invision Community @Joel R mentioned that it'd make a really fun blog entry. So please direct all constructive criticism to Joel if this is not as promised, a fun blog entry.
Ok, lets get started.
Andy is DJ Qualls
You may recognise DJ Qualls from comedies such as Road Trip and Road Trip: Beer Pong [Great list there - Editor]. This comparison was straight from Andy. He gets compared to him by his friends quite often apparently [He needs new friends- Editor].
Personally, I think it's just the fact that he also wears the exact same glasses.

Andy is DJ Qualls
Brandon is Adam Levine
Brandon was incredibly quick to mention that his dentist routinely says that he looks like Adam Levine, which seems like an odd thing to mention at most appointments. You may have heard of Adam from the band Maroon 5 and a few movies that I've not bothered watching [Awesome research for this piece - Editor].

 
Brandon is Adam Levine
Daniel is Daniel Brühl
Not only do they have the same first name, they also share a nose [Who has it today? - Editor]. You might have seen Daniel playing Nikki Lauder in the movie Rush, as well as that shady guy in Captain America: Civil War.

Nose twins
Jennifer is Charlize Theron
Jennifer had several looks for this blog entry, and chose the one featured below, which is very reminiscent of Charlize's role in Mad Max. You may know Charlize from her many movies. Including Max Max [Again, great research - Editor].

The eyes have it.
Lindy is Tony Soprano
This is a comparison I've been making for years. Lindy has a certain "aura" that reminds me a little of the the mafia boss with a conscience. There was a hotdog incident at his house which I don't want to go into right now [No, please do - Editor].
Tony Soprano was played by the late James Gandolfini.

Both know how to hide bodies
Marc is Casey Affleck
Honestly, this took a while to figure out because Marc looks like no other human being alive. We even tried those "Who is your celeb twin" apps and they threw errors and deleted themselves in a panic. This is the best we could do. Casey Affleck is of course Batman's younger brother [Have you ever read a comic? - Editor].

Yeah, it's not great is it.
Mark is Ansel Elgort
So one night I sat down to watch Baby Driver, featuring Ansel. It was uncanny how much he reminded me of our resident developer Mark. Even down to the facial expressions. It's uncanny.

I honestly have no idea which is which
Mark H is Ben Folds
Full disclosure, the photo Mark submitted could politely be described as "vintage" [Not sure that's polite - Editor]. However, as soon as I saw it, I was amazed at how much he looked like my favourite singer/songwriter Ben Folds. I'm not saying this photo of Mark his old, but lets say it cost us $10,000 to have an expert colour it from the black and white original.

Classic Mark
Matt is David Boreanez
Over the course of my 20s and 30s [Clearly not now you're old - Editor], I was often compared to "Angel from Buffy" played by David Boreanez. I thought it was because of my cool but brooding demeanour [lol - Editor] but maybe it's just one of those chance genetic occurrences.

Well, similar hair at least
Rhett is Bruce Willis
Rhett never lets our servers Die Hard [Jeez, you went there - Editor] but he does resemble Bruce Willis. It's not just that they visit the same hair dresser either.

Twins!
Ryan is Ethan Hawke
We've saved the best to last, because this comparison caused actual goosebumps. Someone even said "wow" when they saw it. These two could be related. Ethan Hawke is a huge movie star, so Ryan was quite happy with this comparison.

Uncle Ethan?
So, there you have it.

If there was a movie to be made featuring our lives, then this is the cast that would be our first choice.

Who do you look like? We've love to see your pictures too. Let us know below!
 

We have a very important announcement to make!
There are times where you need to get the attention of your visitors. You might be closed on certain days of the year, performing server maintenance (if you are consider our Cloud Plans, they're excellent) or running a competition.
Invision Community has always had an announcements feature baked in, but we felt it could be improved.
Okay, maybe this feature isn't as flashy as some of the others we're introducing in 4.3, but these useful features should make managing your community easier.
The new look announcement feature replaces the old widgets enabling you to display customisable announcements in any of the following locations;
Top of the page Above the page content In the sidebar
The three new announcement locations
Each location has some slightly different features; the page top banner is dismissible by the member if they no longer want to see it, whereas the banner above the content and the sidebar announcements cannot be dismissed.
Most of the original customisable features are still available, including the ability to select which applications and pages show certain announcements and which member groups can see them. Combining this with the three new locations gives you much more flexibility for different types of announcements and we've also included the option to customise the color of the announcement.

New customisable options
 
The announcements have also been improved to contain more information. Rather than showing an unformatted snippet along side the title, announcements can now be tapped to open a modal showing any further details.

Modal showing announcement content
We hope you'll enjoy these useful improvements in Invision Community 4.3. Stay tuned for further announcements (pun intended)!