Hello.  Last week Silverlight 2.0 shipped.  Today, we are doing a corresponding release of all of our tools.  To get these updates, please visit the ICE download page and/or the Photoshop Plugin and hdmake page.  In addition to getting the latest Silverlight 2.0 goodness, this ICE release addresses several issues reported by our users:

• we now offer http download instead of ftp
• the crash on second use bug has been fixed
• the random drop of one image from the result is fixed
• the metadata issue that prevented geotiffs from loading is fixed

A big thank you to all users who took time to try the product and give feedback on the forums.  We welcome the feedback and are working hard to address issues in a timely fashion.

Also due to popular demand we are releasing the source code for HD View SL, the Silverlight based viewer that is output by ICE and by the Photoshop Plugin.  As this name indicates we are gradually migrating HD View, a Windows only browser plugin, to HD View SL, a cross-platform Silverlight Rich Internet Application.  There are still some significant differences between HD View and HD View SL but we are confident that these differences will gradually disappear.  For a detailed comparison of the two technologies please see the HD View SL CodePlex page.

If you are interested in Silverlight programming I encourage you to download the source and start making customizations to the viewer.  Some customizations that I would love to see are different navigation UI, auto-scroll of the view, and keyboard short-cuts.  If you create a custom version and would like to share it with ICE users, then check out these instructions* for adding new choices to the ICE export options.  Even if you aren't specifically interested in the HD View application, this project is a great example of how to use the new Deep Zoom feature (also known as MultiScaleImage) in Silverlight 2.0.

-Matt

* Instructions are in the Creating Templates.rtf document located in the Program Files\Microsoft Research\Image Composite Editor\Templates ICE installation folder.