February 2010

Microsoft Campus, Irvin CA

The Silverlight division of Microsoft has been promoting lots of free training for developers to learn the Silverlight web development platform, tools and techniques. Called "Silverlight Design Days", Adam Kinney of the Silverlight team led a one day seminar at the Microsoft Irvin (CA) campus.   I couldn't resist, so I signed up right  away.

Getting there proved to be quite a chore.  The "powers that be" helped me get lost along the way (missed an exit off the freeway) then was late to join the rest of the group.   However, the info was great and spoke to Adam at length after the class.

Deep Zoom: A Silverlight Photograph Technology

Deep Zoom allows users on a web page to "click, zoom and pan" across large images or collections of images that uses much less bandwidth than other techniques.

The Deep Zoom composer tool is a FREE tool available from Microsoft:  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=457b17b7-52bf-4bda-87a3-fa8a4673f8bf

Deep Zoom also has a little known feature that works exceptionally well: Photo "stitching" to create a panorama from individual photos.

Here's an example of 4 shots taken on the ridge behind my neighborhood.  Use the navigation buttons:  to zoom in (+) or out (-), reset (home) or view full screen. You can also just click and drag, or use your mouse wheel if you have one.