As anyone who follows me on Twitter can tell, I am shopping for a new road bike. I was on Trek’s site this morning reviewing their Madone 5.1 and was impressed by an innovative feature to view the bike photo in detail.

The default view on the page is a photo on the left and a brief list of specifications on the right.

If you hover your mouse over the photo however, the box for specifications is replaced by a region zoom of the photo.

This interface worked amazing well. For starters, it was intuitive. My mouse naturally and accidentally crossed over the image and I saw the detailed zoom. There was no need to educate me on how to interact with the photo. The interface also made it seamless to switch back and forth between a zoom and the specs.

The interface even allows a different photo to be loaded and interacted with in the same way.

There’s a lot to like about the Trek site including non-disruptive interface elements (JavaScript toys) and user contributed product reviews. Does anyone know who designed the latest version of the site? Was is an in-house team or an agency?