Deep Zoom Composer: Collection support & Extensible templates

Kirupa Chinnathambi, a program manager in the Expression Blend team, has written excellent posts about collection support and extensible templates in Deep Zoom Composer. I have tested all these new features.

Collection Support

You no longer have to compose your images. You can just import your images and go straight to exporting using options: Silverlight Deep Zoom –> Export as a collection –> Tag Browser. To filter what images you see based on the tag, you should add tags in Compose view:

Extensible templates

Now you can export Silverlight Deep Zoom collection using predefined templates:

• Blend 3 Behaviors + Source
• Deep Zoom Classic + Source
• Deep Zoom Navigation (Default)
• Empty Project + Source
• Tag Browser

The process of selecting a template from within DZC is extensible. You can easily add your own templates with or without Source Files/Project. You should copy your files to Export Templates folder (in DZC installation directory) and restart DZC.

I have set blue background in my test templates.

The latest release of Deep Zoom Composer has other interesting new features. Analytics tracking allows you to specify tracking URLs that will silently get called when you zoom in on an image or region. You can know which images of advertisement get the most attention. Another feature is support for Smooth Streaming.  Now you can export your images into a form that is optimized for servers with the technology enabled.

Deep Zoom Composer: Slideshow, Menu & Links

The Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight can be used to do a lot more than just allowing you to zoom in on high resolution images. Using Deep Zoom Composer you can now create slideshows, link images to other images or external links, and create a menu for navigating to images. For more details please read this post.

Janete Perez, a program manager in the Expression Blend product team, has written excellent posts about these cool features:

• http://blog.sunnypixels.com/?p=197
• http://blog.sunnypixels.com/?p=211
• http://blog.sunnypixels.com/?p=226

I’ve tested all these features, too. Look at my image compositions below.

Slideshow

Menu

Links

My photo gallery with new Deep Zoom Composer!

Microsoft released new version of Deep Zoom Composer for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 on 1st August. Because of the issues with new functionality, an updated preview have been released on 3rd August (2 days later!)

The major new features include Panoramic Stitching and PhotoZoom Upload.

New Deep Zoom Composer integrates with the Live Labs PhotoZoom service: http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com. You can simply publish your image galleries with Deep Zoom on the Internet. I uploaded my photo album to PhotoZoom -;) My puzzle: how many photos can you find in main photo? (look at the beer can!)

The application now allows you to stitch similar images using technology from Microsoft Research's Interactive Visual Group.

More details about new Deep Zoom Composer: http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/default.aspx