Evolved Bing Maps Hits RTW

The latest iteration of Microsoft’s mapping, search and location platform needed less than two months in the baking oven as a Beta test release. Introduced at the start of December 2009, the Silverlight-based flavor of Bing Maps has now graduated from Beta stage and was released to web. Chris Pendleton, the Bing Maps technical evangelist for Microsoft, announced on January 19, that the cooking time for Bing Maps Beta was done, and that the company was shedding the Beta tag entirely.

“We’re ripping the Beta tag off the Bing Maps Silverlight site and going full board with continuing innovation on Bing,” Pendleton revealed. Softpedia readers have already been able to get details on Bing Maps Silverlight, but for those that missed it, here is a short summary. The evolution of Bing Maps brings to the table an intimate relationship with Silverlight, the Redmond company’s alternative to Adobe Flash. In addition, The Silverlight-based Bing Maps also features Streetside, allowing users to navigate through street level photographs. With the Beta, the company also delivered Enhanced Bird’s Eye imagery, Application Gallery and Photosynth integration.

“Removing the beta tag has so many implications as a Microsoft asset in terms of what you can expect moving forward…reliability, supportability, and continued innovation and investment to name a few. The removal of the beta tag was done in parallel with a couple of new features and Bing Maps Application Gallery mash-ins,” Pendleton said.

Starting this week, Microsoft will also work to transition users from the old version of Bing Maps to the new Silverlight variant. In this sense, those users that navigate to the Bing Maps AJAX site from a computer with Silverlight already installed will be redirected automatically to the Bing Maps Silverlight site. According to Pendleton, this move should only impact customers in the US; however, when I attempted to navigate to the old Bing Maps AJAX site I was redirected not to the Silverlight version but to Bing.com.

“We're rolling this out with a small percentage of users increasing up to 100% of all users in a few weeks. If you don’t have Silverlight installed you can hit the AJAX site and will be prompted to install Silverlight (which you can opt out of, but WHY would you??). Well, to make the AJAX site a bit smoother we’ve introduced some new transitions in the tile loading process for panning and zooming. So you can have your Silverlight and AJAX too. If you don’t want to stay on the Silverlight site, you can opt out and return to the AJAX site (aka Bing Maps Classic) via the link on the Silverlight site,” Pendleton said.