We are happy to announce that our ZOIL software framework has finally made its way to http://zoil.codeplex.com as an open source project under the BSD license. It is therefore also available for commercial purposes. Anyone with whom we shared a previous version of our ZOIL framework is advised to have a look at the improved and better documented release on http://zoil.codeplex.com.

About ZOIL:

ZOIL (Zoomable Object-Oriented Information Landscape) is a software framework written in C# for the .NET 4.0/WPF platform. ZOIL’s development is part of a research project at the Human-Computer Interaction Group of the University of Konstanz (http://hci.uni-konstanz.de/permaedia) .

It makes use of different external frameworks and APIs, e.g. Versant’s db4objects (db4o) object database and the Microsoft Surface SDK, to enable application programmers to easily provide a large zoomable visual workspace in their applications. This visual workspace in form of a zoomable information landscape has following properties that make ZOIL particularly interesting for natural and post-WIMP interaction in multi-user, multi-display and multi-device work environments for tangible and ubiquitous computing:

• Semantic Zooming – For each object in the information landscape multiple size-dependent representations can be defined. While zooming in, an object can smoothly change its form, content, and nature.
• Persistent – The information landscape has a data model that can be persisted and shared across devices using a client-server architecture based on Versant’s db4o.
• Distributed and Real-Time Synchronized – The information landscape’s data model is synchronized in real-time across devices using a a client-server architecture based on Versant’s db4o. This enables multi-user and multi-device scenarios, in which multiple collocated or remote devices and users synchronously collaborate inside a single workspace.

Find more details at http://zoil.codeplex.com