Nov 25, 2009

352 Media Group: Creating a Microsoft Deep Zoom Silverlight Wall: Great idea, could use some optimization for touch or IWB interaction


Ever since I explored the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia website on my HP TouchSmart PC, I've been on the look-out for other great touch-friendly applications created with Microsoft's Deep Zoom and Sliverlight.  Today, I came across an example that holds some promise, although it needs some tweaking before it is truly touch-ready.

352 Media Group is a web development firm that has been experimenting with Microsoft's Deep Zoom in Silverlight.  The results can be seen on the 352 Media Group Deep Zoom Page.  On this page, you can interact with the deep zoom wall. You might need to install a Silverlight plug-in on your browser. Scroll down and read the "How Did We Do It?" section for specifics.


Note:  I tried this in three browsers on my HP TouchSmart PC,  Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox.  At the top of the viewing box, it says, "Click inside to zoom in".  Clicking the picture or touching my touch screen did not activate the zoom.  However, it did enable me to zoom in the wall through scrolling with my mouse.  

If you touch the picture with your finger, you can move it around, and you can do this with your mouse as well.  At the upper left-hand corner of the frame, there are tiny icons that will allow you to zoom in or out. If the icons were just a little bit larger, with just a little bit more space between them, it would be easy to activate the zoom feature with my finger.


RELATED
Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines: Touch
Windows 7 Touch
Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom
Information from Microsoft Live Labs about Sliverlight Deep Zoom
Autostitch
This was the program used to help stitch together the pictures on the wall into a format that could be used with Deep Zoom.

Cross posted on The World Is My Interface blog.

2 comments:

Peter VanRysdam said...

Great post. I'm one of the creators of that project. We didn't have touch in mind when we created it, but I'm sure you can do some cool things there!

I do wonder though how much control we have over the size of things like the zoom icons. I'll have to play around with it a little and see what we can tweak there.

Any other suggestions? Thanks for the feedback!

Lynn Marentette said...

Peter,

Now that there are more touch-screen PC's and laptops on the market, offering touchable website content will be important, depending on the nature and purpose of the website.

I noticed that your website offers some free online games for kids. If you have games that are suitable for classroom use, know that there are many classrooms out there with interactive whiteboards, such as the SMARTboard, that have Internet access. Teachers are always looking for great content for their whiteboards.

Lynn