Deep Zoom Composer - June 2009 Preview!

We know you’ve been waiting, and we know you just can’t wait any longer, so here it is:


dzcicon Download Deep Zoom Composer

As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version.

A few months ago, we asked you what you all wanted to see in Deep Zoom Composer, and a lot of you gave some really great ideas. The following sections highlight just a small list of the new features we’ve added and improved based on your ideas, and our subsequent blog posts will delve into these features in greater detail.

Navigation Support
A common request has been around doing more with your Deep Zoom images than just being able to zoom in and out on them. In this release, we have introduced some cool navigation features which allow you to navigate between images or areas of images in a web/hyperlink-like fashion. You can also link images to external URLs as well.

Better Memory Usage
Deep Zoom Composer now uses significantly less memory than it did before, so you should now be able to work with more images in your composition.

First Draft of Updated Collection Exporting We have now added the ability for you to import images, tag them directly from your image list in the Compose view, pick from a set of pre-defined templates, and export. All of this was done without you having to first place your image on the design surface.

This is an area we are going to significantly improve in our upcoming releases, so stay tuned for some further updates on what we have planned.

Reporting If you are an advertiser, knowing which images get the most attention is pretty valuable. We have put in place some early functionality that allows you to do this.

...and More!
There are numerous little improvements we have made, and we’ll try to mention them as we go along in future Deep Zoom Composer related posting.

Where Next?
A lot of the features we have introduced are a bit rough on the edges, and we are going to be investing heavily the UI/styling/usability of them for our upcoming releases. Please feel free to comment below on things you like or don’t like, and that will help us prioritize things for future releases.

Deep Zoom Composer is a collaborative effort of various groups at Microsoft, and for this release, we would like to give a HUGE thanks to the team at Microsoft Innovation Labs in Israel who contributed to making all of the above features possible for this release.

Enjoy!
Janete & Kirupa