Question

Has anyone got to some good code to zoom into an image using javascript?

I know I could just resize it etc but was being lazy and looking for something clever to zoom to different levels, move around when zoomed etc

Answer 1

This really depends on what quality you are after. If you need a hires hiquality image with detailed zoom levels and proper interpolation you will need to write a backend service to serve up zoomed portions of your images. If you have no care for quality or speed, you could download the entire image and fit it to display inside a div absolutely positioned, offset for the area you want to view and sized as determined by your zoom level.

I would say you are probably after the first option. There are some tools already made for this, I persoanlly havnt used any of the tools; I am sure othes will post links to others you can try; I have written my own service and client. I cant go into the exact details as its proprietary, but I can give you an overview of what I do.

I have an asp.net generic handler that takes a query string denoting which image (by an id) and the coordinates to zoom on and the target image size. I have the service load the image and crop and resize it (its more complicated than that as I have many optimizations and preparsing when the file is originally uploaded, such as multiple cross sections of the file for faster serving when zooming, but what I describing here is the basics).

That service simply returns type image/jpeg and sends the image.

On the client side I have written a marquee box control that allows the user to marquee an area on the image they want to zoom in on. they marquee the area and click zoom. This then calculates the offsets into the image of the selected coordinates based on the original image size and the viewable image size. I send hese coords to the handler previously mentioned.I load the the url with query string of the srvice into an Image object, and handle onload. If all went well i then swap that to the viewed image and updates all my client side variables for determining where on the image I am zoomed into and then it can be zoomed again or zoomed out or panned further from there.

Now i understand your lazy requirement, but i need to say that writing this is actually quite easy to do to get the basics going. the hardest part you will find is doing a select box. But then even that can be as simple as tracking two click. Top left of the zoom select marque and bottom right. Or not having a select box at all and have a zoom in and out only at predetermined intervals. I on my projects required a zoom box as its a fairly complex image analysis solution.

I hope this at least helpful and leads you to something useful.