Cooliris, the clever browser plugin that lets you view content from Google Images, Hulu, and other sources in a never-ending wall of thumbnails that fly by in 3D space, just came out in a new version, 1.11, with one major new feature: You can now browse photos, videos, and other items either in the existing full-screen mode or within a browser tab.

Here’s Cooliris in the new within-the-browser mode, which is now the default state:

And here it is in the still-available full-screen mode:

The screens above don’t look much different, but the within-a-tab mode has a major effect on how you use Cooliris, since it no longer means leaving all your other tabs (and other applications) behind. You can leave one or more Cooliris tabs open and jump between them and other activities. It’s also easier to return to a Cooliris view than before: If you move back through pages using your browser’s Back button the Cooliris views show up like any other page, and every Cooliris view has a permalink which you can bookmark or send to friends.

Cooliris also added a horizontal scroll bar which you can use to pan through a wall of images–especially useful on Windows PCs that lack Mac-style multitouch scrolling:

Cooliris has always been pretty addictive–once you launch a search and start whipping through it, it’s hard to stop. But I think the new mode and better browser integration will make it more likely that you’ll actually use it every day to get stuff done, rather than every once in a while when you remember it’s there.

Cooliris 1.11 for Internet Explorer and Firefox is available now; an update for Safari is due soon. The Cooliris folks told me that they’re also considering creating a version for Google Chrome.

 
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