I mentioned Microsoft’s short presentation yesterday here at the Future of Web Apps conference. The highlight was a single page showing the complete works of Charles Dickens, with every page on view. We then zoomed in to read a page; the performance was great and the type perfectly clear. However I am taking it on trust that it really was all of Dickens works…
The technology behind this is Seadragon, acquired by Microsoft in February this year. I’m told that it will be integrated into Silverlight 1.1, so I guess we will be able to use this cross-platform next year. It is also used in Photosynth.
Is it any different from what you can already do with say Google Maps and related, or Virtual Earth? The answer I guess is that amazing zoom capability is nothing new, but Seadragon looks like an advance in smoothness and probably ease of programming. The goal:
visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network.
Related posts:
Seadragon is a variant of wavelets (L.O.D.) at the heart of JPEG2000 (JPEG2000 is a multi-patented technology). I don’t know how Seadragon can have any success in the market place given this.