I have to hand it to Microsoft’s Live Image Search for finally get Image Search right. I can’t even remember the last time Microsoft did anything better than Google in terms of web technologies, but check this out:

Google for some reason only allows you to view 18 images per page. I find it very annoying when you’re looking for a specific image and you have to constantly rap on that next button. Even a browse through Google’s advanced search, and preferences don’t give you an option to adjust the amount of images shown per image search. And until last month, poor me was suffering, hitting that next button, wasting bandwidth, and wasting valuable Facebook time. But now all that’s changed forever, thanks to Microsoft.

Live Search Images does a pretty cool ninja-like behind the scenes scripting, here’s what it does.

When you search for an image, it brings up the same great gallery style and results as Google image search does. But it does one minor thing that turns it from good to great.

When it detects the scrollbar near the bottom of the page, it fetches more images from the server and appends them to the bottom. In other words you don’t click again until you’ve found the image you want. Very cool.

They’ve also got some other classic photo album software features built right in. Like the slider shown below that allows you to dynamically scale all the thumbnails to fit more or less on screen.

They also have a scrapbook like functionality that uses a drag and drop interface. It allows you to grab a bunch of images and store them for later in a neat and tidy side-panel.

Some simple, yet useful stuff from Microsoft. Definitely check it out, I’ve switched.