A few weeks back there was some buzz on the Yahoo Groups Stained Glass Forum about an interactive website called "A Bastion of Light", showing high resolution images of the stained glass of Christ Church Cathedral, New Zealand. It is impressive indeed.
Something rang a bell with this and I did a little research and found out the technology is due to a thing called Zoomify. There are links to examples of how Zoomify is being used on the Zoomify Customers webpage. Some are very nice, like the Morgan Library Medieval Illuminated Manuscript site, and the The Complete Works of Caravaggio, and the Getty Museum Online Exhibition of Flemish manuscript painting called Illuminating the Renaissance. I love this stuff, though I do have to be careful as this could be a serious timesucker.
As for making your own interactive pages using Zoomify, I downloaded the free version and tried it on one of my panels. It's surprisingly easy to use, at least if you've done some basic website creation yourself. You do need to know a little HTML, but not much.
It works especially well for my quarry/text panels, since I've never been able to show the full panel and still make the quotes readable without having a series of awkward links to other detail pages. So, here is the original ZoomifyExpress version of my 'Asheville Authors' Panel.
I'm impressed enough that I may get a paid version (seems like a good deal at $30) called Zoomify Design, as it would be nice to at least make it a black background, and add some text, like the 'Bastions of Light' site did.
All in all, I can see enormous potential for this type of stained glass display on the web.
[update February 28, 2009 - I did buy the ZoomifyDesign and turned the white background to a black background version of my 'Asheville Authors' Panel, which is more in line with the rest of my website. I also added some links to help navigation within my site. Unfortunately the process was not as easy as I thought it would be. So, the 'Express' version is easy to use, but you are left with a simple (and stark white) interface. The 'Design' version requires a bit more HTML knowledge to do even a simple design change like add a black background. You may also notice that the 'white' version runs a bit faster than the 'black' version. That's because the design is best done not in HTML but in Flash, which requires a more expensive version of Zoomify and you have to know Flash. I've been resistant to Flash for years, a consequence of my being an old-school animator.]
[update March 3, 2009 - I did two more pages using the same template I made for the Asheville Authors page. Here is the interactive version of my early Psychedelic Gothic panel and, for my friend Alice Johnson because I love her work and especially this panel, the Interactive Tibetan Wheel of Life panel.]
Posted by Tom at February 27, 2009 07:09 AM