14 DAY TRIAL // Via Seadragon Ajax, Microsoft is streamlining the usage and adoption of its Deep Zoom technology. When it comes down to digital images, Microsoft's Deep Zoom is designed to permit a focus on details like no other feature. Users are able to easily explore, zoom, and pan digital photographs, even gigapixel images, without any negative impact on performance. Via Seadragon Ajax the capabilities associated by default with Deep Zoom are now available for integration with virtually any website.
“Seadragon Ajax brings Deep Zoom technology right to your own web page or blog, even if you're not a software developer. You may already be familiar with Deep Zoom technology--it's used in Photosynth and in Silverlight. It enables you to smoothly zoom into extreme close-ups of your images, regardless of the size of the screen or bandwidth of the network you're on,” revealed a member of the Microsoft Live Labs.
As the name implies, Seadragon Ajax does not require that end-users have Silverlight installed on their machine. Even with its Flash killer already deployed on over one in four computers worldwide, Microsoft is committed to deliver an additional choice to users and web developers, and this is where Seadragon Ajax comes in.
Web content owners can now enjoy the Deep Zoom feature of Silverlight, minus Silverlight, and minus the hassles associated with writing code. According to Microsoft, Seadragon Ajax has been built from the ground up entirely in Ajax, and the solution allows the ebedding of Deep Zoom images into any webpage.
One way for Deep Zoom images to be offered via websites is to “tweak” them via the Deep Zoom Composer, but in this context all the content has to be stored on the same server as the website. In addition, Microsoft is providing an online service, designed to embed the Seadragon Ajax Viewer.
“Want to show Deep Zoom Images on your page? Try our Embed Builder. No download, no hassle. It's easy to embed the Seadragon Ajax Viewer. Use PhotoZoom. Just create a new album and upload your photo to it. Wait until it's done processing, then view an individual photo and copy the URL that appears at the bottom. Create the code for the viewer. Copy the code into your web page or blog,” the company explained.
Deep Zoom Composer is available for download here.
Microsoft Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 SP1 (RC1) can be downloaded via this link.
Silverlight 2 RTW (2.0.31005.0) is available for download here.