Map Control: Picking the Right Zoom Level

When instantiating the Map Control, you have the option to specify a starting coordinate set and zoom level for road or aerial view. But, you might be scratching your head on exactly what zoom level to start at if you want to get a particular level of detail.  I find the quickest way to find a good zoom level is to fire up Windows Live Local and get the view to exactly where you would like to start your map.  Then, you can generate a permalink and quickly pick the zoom level out of there--just look the section of the URL that looks like "lvl=14", which is the query string parameter we use to hold the zoom level.  Just take that number and put it in your "params.zoomlevel=" parameter.

The same thing works for latitude and longitude as well, as the permalink contains the center lat/long of the current map view.

We also document the full list of URL parameters so you can build links back into Windows Live Local in your application: https://local.live.com/Help/URLAPI.html.