14 DAY TRIAL // The latest news on the Web points towards the fact that the next version of the Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system will also integrate the company's Silverlight technology. Along with it, some more rather interesting features might also head towards mobile phone users, and one of these could be Deep Zoom.
What Silverlight Deep Zoom could basically offer to handset users is the possibility to explore in detail collections of images that feature high to ultra-high resolutions. To be more precise, users would have the possibility to explore photos taken with a 2-3-megapixel camera phone, or a digital camera, as well as gigapixel images of museum pieces, while eliminating the need to download huge files to their devices.
The Silverlight Deep Zoom comes with a simple zooming interface that enables the exploration of the images while providing specific details in extreme close-up, also delivering smooth transitions and impressive performance levels.
The latest Silverlight beta also comes around with multi-touch capabilities, which, applied to Deep Zoom, would be able to offer mobile phone users quite an enhanced mobile browsing experience. According to Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie, says The Register, the Redmond company intends to offer the feature with Silverlight on desktops, while also saying that we should also be able to enjoy it on mobile phones at a certain point.
“Deep Zoom will be in. Our goal is to keep the experience between desktop and mobile basically the same,” Scott Guthrie is reported to have said. Hopefully, Microsoft will indeed include Silverlight Deep Zoom in future mobile phone platforms. This way, users could enjoy on their handsets about the same functionality that desktop computers would be able to provide. Those who would like to learn more about the capabilities of Deep Zoom can find more info at the Silverlight Developer Center.