Saturday, June 14, 2008

Understanding Deep Zoom - Part 4

I had been blogging on Deep Zoom, but there's no entry on how to use Deep Zoom Composer. So in this blog entry, I am going to take you through the usage of Deep Zoom Composer.

Note: I have still not used the most recent version of Deep Zoom Composer (0.9.000.3)....the one that was released along with Silverlight 2 Beta 2. This blog entry corresponds to the previous version of Deep Zoom Composer. I don't think it is available online. You can get it from here. I will blog on this update to the Deep Zoom Composer in my next post.

On successful install and on starting up the screen looks like this

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For generating a Composition or a Collection, you need to go through 3 steps:

  • Import
  • Compose
  • Export

Import stage involves adding as many images as you want.

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Compose stage is where you work on the art board. The images can be placed anywhere depending on the requirement.

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The last step involves exporting as a Collection or as a Composition.

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Notice that Deep Zoom Composer allows you to choose between a Composition or a Collection. Also, it allows selection of Output type. Selecting "Export Images and Silverlight Project" generates a Visual Studio Project accompanying the Collection or Composition. We will deal with this in next blog entry. Selecting "Export Images" will generate the Output folder containing images along with the Composition or Collection.

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There! Deep Zoom Image is now ready for use in a Silverlight project. If you had selected "Export Images", then you will have to code explicitly for MouseWheel movement. Check out Scott Hanselman's blog for code.

You can get the Deep Zoom Composer User guide from here.

Not got the idea yet? Check out http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ for a live example and then come back.

Back?  Now this is technology right! Wow!

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