SMH Mardi Gras Photo coverage in Silverlight Deep Zoom
Often referred to as “the bear that cares”, today I can proclaim that axiom true.
I can proudly lift the cone of silence on the “secret project” that I’ve been working on. The SMH Silverlight Deep Zoom for Mardi Gras 2009.
It’s live now, as we speak. Check it out here – http://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2009/mardigras/silverlight.html
So, why is this an awesome thing? Well there are many reasons but the number one reason on my list is Silverlight adoption.
The question I get asked most around Silverlight is about adoption and thus one of my jobs in life is to work with the biggest sites where Silverlight makes sense and help them use it. And it doesn’t get much bigger than front page SMH/The Age etc my friends.
How does it all hang together:
- Used Expression Blend and Visual Studio 2008 to build the app.
- Much code was stolen/borrowed from Kirupa Chinnathambi and his very useful Deep Zoom Tag Sample.
- The Deep Zoom collection itself is currently 533 MB!
- It’s being stored on Windows Azure Storage Services. Much props to Greg Willis for making this happen (with love from Davie Lemphers)
- We (aka Greg) used the the very cool SpaceBlock (Codeplex project) to get stuff to and from Azure Storage.
- Deep Zoom Composer is an awesome tool for medium size Deep Zooms but it failed me on this project. I ended up having to write my own little composer (based on DeepZoomTools.DLL) that generates the sparse image collection and writes out the metadata file (for tagging). I used Brian Likes’s work as a starting point on this one.
- DeepZoomTools.DLL (and DZC) can’t handle images that have differing horizontal and vertical DPI. So I used PhotoELF to batch process and correct the images so that they can be run through DeepZoomTools.DLL.
- I will share the source (on codeplex) when it’s ready.
- Greg and I put this thing together in record time. Literally, 6 days from idea to full deployment. A total testament to how flippin’ rapid and awesome Silverlight dev (and MultiScaleImage) is.
- Many thanks to the fan club for their support and testing efforts: Andrew “minimum height” Coates, Shane “have you thought about this” Morris, Nick “I’ve got cycles” Hodge, Deeps “i know everyone” De Silva and Chris “bashing out a prototype” Auld.
- There’s also a very cool little easter egg in it There’s a prize in it for the first person to find it (and how to get to it).
-mk
RT @anguslogan Sydney Mardi Gras photo gallery in Silverlight is hot!! ABOUT: http://snipr.com/d7fh4 | See It: http://bit.ly/XOytI
SMH Mardi Gras Photo coverage in Silverlight Deep Zoom http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
RT – @frankarr Sydney Mardi Gras Photo coverage in Silverlight Deep Zoom: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
How Mardi Gras / DeepZoom project was created: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
@delic8genius was one of the minds behind the SMH MardiGras stuff – blog post here: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
so FREAKIN awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
makes an old man proud
proud as you deserve to be frankie.
Sydney GLBTI Mardi Gras photo coverages in Silverlight and Deepzoom at http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809, well done Mr @delic8genius
smh trials silvershite. sorry, silverlight -> http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
Sydney Morning Herald using Silverlight for Mardi Gras Photos http://tinyurl.com/b8ychy From the declassified files of @delic8genius
Great work! I just passed this onto Rob to seed Silverlight with the NZ gay community as well :)
V2 Not supported in OSX 10.3… Think I’m overdue for an upgrade!
Got it at work now, looks freakin’ sweet!
It’s a nice technology sample…
… a few comments re improvements:
- there should be a keyboard shortcut for zooming in and out
- there should be a slideshow style feature that let’s me go from one photo to the next. I find it somewhat frustrating trying to look at more than a couple of photos constantly having to zoom back in and out
Not sure if it’s the Azure server but despite being on a 24 Mbit/sec connection the resolution increase in the images load painfully slow.
thanks for your feedback “tom”.
Tom, I agree with the shortcut keys. My first reaction was to arrow up and down.
@Tom and @Vincenze – added keys, just for you guys. You can now use WASD and E,Q for zooming. It’s not perfect but kinda usable.
@Tom, the email address that you used for your comment isn’t legit – please refrain from being a jackass.
@delicategenius,
yeah, I think the keys make navigation a lot quicker/ easier.
@delicategenius,
Thanks for calling me a Jackass. The reason I am using a bogus email address is because I have grown tired of having my email account being hammered with Spam mail. Someone should coin a term for it… Meantime between sign-up and being spammed… MBSS or something.
I have now tried this a number of times with different online commenting systems. I created a specific email account on one of my own mail servers and see how long it takes between the email address being used in a comment and a sudden spike in spam. I think the shortest MBSS I have seen what 24 hours. The funny thing is that it doesn’t seem to matter wether the comment was left on a reputable site or a dodgy site.
I don’t know which is cooler, being able to scroll or elling someone you want to be able to scroll and then being able to scroll. :)
Good job.
Love the historical pics too, didn’t notice them at first. Awesome to see the transition from the first photo to now.
@tom, well you can be confident that I have no interest in sharing your email address.
@vincence, the bear that cares :-)
@delicategenius,
I am not suggesting that for a minute. However, I sometime wonder how many Windows systems are infected with trojans syphoning off email address without the user ever knowing it happened.
After years of using different virus/ spyware scanners I ended up with EDS NOD32. It’s pricey but seems to work miles better than anything else out there. When I first ran it it instantly found several trojans which had found their way into my system via Internet Explorer all this despite having had a number of different project systems installed previously.
So in the end I am just being careful…
wow! great stuff!! even more impressed that you and Greg rolled up your sleeves and using Azure storage too!
Cool Silverlight implementation on the SMH. Read @delic8genius post here: http://delicategeniusblog.com/?p=809
why didn’t you build this for ninemsn, instead of their competitor?
NEW: Delicate Genius Blog » SMH Mardi Gras Photo coverage in Silverlight Deep Zoom – http://is.gd/KkBz, #Silverlight #SMH
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