Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images) • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#11

Post by city41 » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:18 PM UTC

Not Silverlight based, appears to be all Javascript. That's interesting coming from MS themselves.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#12

Post by avar » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:18 PM UTC

Look Microsoft, you can create useful dynamic web services without requiring Flash, I mean Silverlight.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#13

Post by city41 » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:23 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #12

Look Microsoft, you can create useful dynamic web services without requiring Flash, I mean Silverlight.

Actually... "Zoom.it runs on Windows Azure and enhances the experience with Microsoft Silverlight when available."

From the "About" page.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#14

Post by CamperBob » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:23 PM UTC

The artificial inertia is pretty annoying. Have these guys ever used an iPhone in their lives?

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#15

Post by city41 » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:25 PM UTC

CamperBob wrote: post #14

The artificial inertia is pretty annoying. Have these guys ever used an iPhone in their lives?

The iPhone uses two fingers which enables much more accurate/rapid scaling. The mouse is a compromise in comparison, hence the added inertia.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#16

Post by CamperBob » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:34 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #15

CamperBob wrote: post #14

The artificial inertia is pretty annoying. Have these guys ever used an iPhone in their lives?

The iPhone uses two fingers which enables much more accurate/rapid scaling. The mouse is a compromise in comparison, hence the added inertia.

Funny, online maps work fine without inertia.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#17

Post by alanh » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 10:55 PM UTC

city41 wrote: post #13

avar wrote: post #12

Look Microsoft, you can create useful dynamic web services without requiring Flash, I mean Silverlight.

Actually... "Zoom.it runs on Windows Azure and enhances the experience with Microsoft Silverlight when available." From the "About" page.

I don’t have Silverlight and it runs just fine here. (Yup, it’s all in my DOM!) Using Silverlight when installed is fine by me — theoretically, it’s going to run faster than having a browser scale tens of images tens of times a second.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#18

Post by alanh » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 11:04 PM UTC

rokhayakebe wrote: post #4

I don't see any embed link. That would be great.

I love how the embed API is a tag whose src= attribute is the URL of the zoom.it image page, with ".js" appended (and a height dimension). Love it. Very simple.

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#19

Post by callmeed » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 11:14 PM UTC

I've had an idea for an image/bit.ly service for a while ... it goes something like this:

- You upload a high/low res image

- You have to specify one of the creative commons or other standard licenses

- There's a short URL, API, geo-tagging, and sharing/embedding options

- Attribution is stamped on the image and included in the embed code

The idea is that journalists/citizen-journalists (and possibly artists/creatives) can share work and include much more explicit usage/attribution rules. News wires have access to a constant feed of good images.

Thoughts?

Re: Microsoft Zoom.it (Bitly for Hi-res images)

#20

Post by alanh » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 11:24 PM UTC

geuis wrote: post #9

This is very interesting from a technical perspective. Its all being done with js and xhr requests. Its powered by Seadragon( http://seadragon.com/developer/ ) and apparently Zoom.it is just a new rename.

Careful. It’s not just a rename. It’s quite possibly the first evidence that Microsoft can actually release a useful, minimalistic, non-Passport-requiring, tiny, beautiful, non-.aspx-exposing, cross-browser web service. :)