There is a large repository of images. I want users to be able to navigate them fast or see small previews about the directory fast. There are many subdirectories (many similar images in subdirectories etc) so certainly some repetition. I do not know how to handle the latter but it surely requires more advanced processing tools to mere flickr or other odd cloud services, I want to control the repo my own with some simple JS and show them to my users in some interactive way, below some ideas.
Does there exist any library to display images interactively (I currently just show images randomly but it is not good enough)?
Is the JavaScript/CSS/HTML5 the at-least-becoming de facto standard to show this kind of content?
The main reason I want to handle this with my power is that the navigation may require some tuning later. I like 3 and 5 but there may be better ways, the small design should make about 300x500px -gadget size design possible.

Perhaps related