Aseem Kishore's dashboard

A comment on the question "Overlay, placement and positioning questions." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Well, for a div, the default is "block", not "inline". I just wonder if that's what's making the difference, as "inline" elements by definition have no settable width or height ("block" and "inline-block" do).

If you're able to post some code, sure. But if it's working for you now, glad to hear. =) – Aseem Kishore, on November 25, 2009 01:33

Aseem Kishore replied on November 25, 2009 01:27 to the question "Overlay, placement and positioning questions." in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hm, that sounds strange. What element type (i.e. div, img, ...) are your overlays? Are you sure you should be setting display to inline? Normally to "unhide", you set the display to an empty string, or "block". EDIT: also, are these overlays scaling or non-scaling overlays?

Aseem Kishore replied on November 24, 2009 02:55 to the question "How display the content at its natural dimensions" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Why is it higher than you expected exactly? Can you post a screenshot? Aspect ratio shouldn't matter here; the image should be drawn at its natural size (which may be bigger than the viewport of course).

A comment on the question "Best way to work with a CDN?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Another option, from an architectural and re-use point of view, is to create your own class that derives from DziTileSource. That might better encapsulate your application logic (e.g. which rects in the image are to be cached). – Aseem Kishore, on November 24, 2009 02:38

Aseem Kishore set one of Aseem Kishore's replies as an official response to "Best way to work with a CDN?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Aseem Kishore replied on November 24, 2009 02:35 to the question "Best way to work with a CDN?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hey Scott,

I had the same idea as Daniel: using a custom tile source will solve your problem. Well, it would be easier instead to just override the default behavior of DziTileSource.

For example:


// returns the CDN URL for the given tile, if the tile is on the CDN,
// otherwise returns null.
function getCdnUrl(level, x, y) {
// your code here...
}
 
// extends the given tile source to support custom CDN tiles.
function extendTileSource(source) {
var origMethod = source.getTileUrl;
source.getTileUrl = function(level, x, y) {
return getCdnUrl(level, x, y) || origMethod(level, x, y);
};
}
 
// extend the tile source on the "open" event
function onViewerOpen(viewer) {
extendTileSource(viewer.source);
}
 

Of course, there are other ways to achieve the same effect, depending on your code architecture, but that should illustrate the point.

Hope that helps! Let us know if you need anything more.

Aseem Kishore set one of Aseem Kishore's replies as an official response to "Tile "shifting" with Seadragon Ajax + IE" in Microsoft Live Labs

Aseem Kishore replied on November 23, 2009 23:24 to the problem "Tile "shifting" with Seadragon Ajax + IE" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hey rickard,

This is a known issue that's basically IE-only at this point: IE doesn't render with subpixel precision, so at imprecise zoom levels, our tiles have to "snap" to the nearest pixel. As you pan or zoom, depending on a variety of factors, this often means that some tiles will snap before other tiles, causing the visible "jitter".

We don't have this problem in other modern browsers currently, because all of them render the contents of a <canvas> with, for the most part, full subpixel precision, so we just use <canvas> in those browsers and it works out of the box.

This has been a really tough problem to tackle at the platform level. There might be workarounds at the application level -- we're still discussing ideas -- but we haven't come up with anything yet.

We're continuing to think about the problem, but thanks for your feedback!

Aseem Kishore replied on November 23, 2009 23:03 to the question "How to disable panning beyond the image boundaries?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hey Paul,

I'm sorry, we don't provide that functionality currently. That was just a design decision based on some usability guidelines we followed (true direct manipulation wherever possible).

Actually, one workaround just occurred to me! Listen to the viewer's "animation" event, and on every such event, call viewport.applyConstraints() (assuming you're on v0.8.4). That might actually work exactly how you want.

As for the flip-flop behavior, I'm sorry to hear that. I'll try to look into that bug to ship in a future version. I do appreciate your patience!

EDIT: Actually, you might discover that the above workaround breaks direct manipulation; moving the mouse off the edge by a lot will have no effect, then slightly moving the image back in the right direction will have an effect.

So if you still can't do with the default behavior, a real solution would be to turn off the default mouse handling and implement your own. We can help with this, so let us know if you go this route.

Aseem Kishore set one of Aseem Kishore's replies as an official response to "How Do I Calculate Image Scale?" in Microsoft Live Labs

Aseem Kishore replied on November 23, 2009 22:58 to the question "How Do I Calculate Image Scale?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Daniel has it right -- I'm just copying my simplified equation into a separate answer so that it shows up at the top. =)


var scale = viewport.getZoom() *
viewport.getContainerSize().x / tileSource.dimensions.x;
 

Btw, it's true that finding this number isn't straightforward with the current model (where the "zoom" is based only on the viewport width relative to the image width, regardless of the size on screen). I think that works for single images, and it's resolution-independent, but for a collection scenario, I think it would be better to think in terms of "pixel scale" as you and Daniel describe. I'll keep that in mind.

Thanks for the feedback!

Aseem Kishore set one of Daniel Gasienica's replies as an official response to "How Do I Calculate Image Scale?" in Microsoft Live Labs

A comment on the question "How Do I Calculate Image Scale?" in Microsoft Live Labs:

This seems like the right idea to me! You can just simplify the math slightly (and actually improve the perf) by using the viewport zoom instead of the bounds.x, since zoom is the inverse of the width. var scale = viewport.getZoom() * viewport.getContainerSize().x / source.dimensions.x; – Aseem Kishore, on November 23, 2009 22:54

Aseem Kishore set one of Aseem Kishore's replies as an official response to "How display the content at its natural dimensions" in Microsoft Live Labs

Aseem Kishore replied on November 23, 2009 22:44 to the question "How display the content at its natural dimensions" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Hey TG,

You were pretty close. Zoom is defined as image width divided by viewport width, so change imageSize/viewportSize to imageSize.x/viewportSize.x. Let us know if that doesn't work, and sorry for the difficulty!

A comment on the question "How display the content at its natural dimensions" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Ha, that's indeed one way. But assuming you're using 0.8.4 or later, and not 0.8.3, you also need to call viewport.applyConstraints() after your zoom -- the clamping is no longer automatic inside zoomTo(). – Aseem Kishore, on November 23, 2009 22:40

Aseem Kishore set one of Aseem Kishore's replies as an official response to "Visualizing Documents With Seadragon" in Microsoft Live Labs

Aseem Kishore replied on November 20, 2009 18:57 to the idea "Visualizing Documents With Seadragon" in Microsoft Live Labs:

I think the idea of being able to give Seadragon.com your documents is a great one. It's on our list of possible future directions.

For the time being, you do have to convert them to images first. If you put those images on the web, you can import them into Seadragon.com.

Aseem Kishore replied on November 19, 2009 05:01 to the idea "Collections on Seadragon.com" in Microsoft Live Labs:

We'd definitely love to easily enable that kind of scenario, though. Thanks for your feedback -- we're listening!

Aseem Kishore replied on November 17, 2009 07:30 to the update "Seadragon.com: Flickr, Developer & Showcase" in Microsoft Live Labs:

Big props to Daniel -- the Flickr work was all him, as part of his internship here on the Seadragon team. Great work, Daniel!

To add on a couple of points to the above:

Snapdragon was indeed mentioned in a CNET article today! And while it wasn't mentioned in the Live Labs blog, it was in our unofficial Dragonosticism blog.

As for updating the Chris Jordan showcase to be more mobile-friendly, maybe at some point in the future, but for now that's fairly low priority. It's tough because mobile solutions have to be tailored at the application level and can't be fully solved at the platform level, so we're forced to go about it on a case-by-case basis.

Glad you like the changes though! I'm happy that we're expanding Seadragon.com the way we are. Look for more in the future.