hi,
i am trying to find out how they constructed Zillow.com UI. (for the map) (the zooming and panning) Did they use Virtual Earth?

emile

No, it looks like they are using their own mapping component.. not sure what technology. They are most likely licensing the data directly, not practical for most sites.. but I gather they are expecting to be very popular and have an enormous # of hits.

Eric

hmmm... i am not so sure anymore about that Eric.
I stumbled upon some sites that give me the feeling that its google technology. For the interface at least. I believe the rest comes from another data provider. For me that will not be usefull because i am planning to do it for an island...which means i have to order the satellite pictures from a satellite operator.

however, if you look here, its sure looks like you can use the google map interface with other data.

here is an example where someone put in another map of his own:

http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/google...tommapnice.htm

and here is an example where someone has been modifying the controls of the google map. (see how its blue)

http://www.toeat.com/

Anyways, if you are still convinced that its not map.google technology, let me know. I am also still looking around. Thanks for your advise though Eric.

I couldn't find anything in the source or javascript that would indicate it's google... it looks like they are using SWF/Flash which I am pretty sure Google would not be using.

I posted in their blog --
Tasty Info Behind That Swirly Text - Zillow Blog - Real Estate News and Analysis

Hopefully they will supply an answer.

Eric



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Just to follow up, they did reply... this is old now, perhaps we should get them to provide an update

"Hi Eric: Diane from Zillow here. For our mapping technology, we use third parties to provide us with data and rendering tools, but pretty much everything in our Flash mapping tool was custom written by Zillow. Thanks for visiting our blog and your interest in Zillow."

If you look at the lower right hand corner below the map you will see the provider. They buy street maps directly from NavTeq, and are using Globe Explorer for their areal. I also see a credit for a company called Proxix and they are likely the ones who built the map/image server.

To your question though, you can completely customize the interface of VE to use your own navigation. A good example is

Search Property .

In the VE API we provide all the function calls for pan/zoom etc, and you just tie those into the mouse click events on the div you use to hold your navigation graphics. We also allow you to turn off our standard control so the map doesn't get cluttered.

Check out:

http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk

it has all the details.
Mark - MSFT

By the way, Zillow has been using some VE stuff for several months --

site:mp2kmag.com Zillow "Virtual Earth" - Google Search

Eric

I noticed this thread starting showing up in the #3rd spot in Google when you search for "zillow.com". Not "zillow"... it has to be "zillow.com" and it has to be searched from the Google web site, if people put "zillow.com" in the toolbar then it goes directly to the zillow site.

zillow.com - Google Search

In case people are wanting more information about the zillow.com web site and company, here is the Wikipedia entry.

Zillow.com - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lol thats really weird. Google have had alot of bugs recently, maybe this caused it. I know this because over some of this month and most of last month my adsense was counting page impressions from unidentifyed channels. Who knows maybe its not even officially registered in the google database.

Looking on this thread for anwsers,

Jting

Oh, that's pretty neat!