Yesterday, Microsoft announced Silverlight Beta 2 at MIX08 which features a technology called Deep Zoom. Deep Zoom seems to stem from Microsoft research project called SeaDragon which I mentioned in the footnote of my post on Zoomable User Interfaces.

Deep Zoom is simply another way of bringing the zooming metaphor to the web, although, I admit, a quite impressive one. However, when I tried it out with my laptop running on battery it felt a little sluggish. I am sure performance will be better when Silverlight 2.0 is released.

Go and check out Deep Zoom for yourself in this impressive demonstration on the Hard Rock Memorabilia site.

Besides that, Microsoft released a preview of Deep Zoom Composer, a tool for developers to publish galleries with Deep Zoom support.

After all, I think it's time we bring this kind of zooming to the Flash Platform. I am working on it. Stay tuned.

Further Reading

• Wired Science: SeaDragon & Photosynth Demo
• Microsoft SeaDragon & Photosynth Demo @ TED