Great news!
No need to purchase the Magic Zoom Plus mod (or fight with the install)
I cannot believe I did not know this, but Cloud Zoom is integrated in X-cart 4.4 and above!
In the settings for the Detailed Images module, you set the "Display detailed product images" option to: "in a popup window"
Next to:
"Widget to be used for displaying detailed images in a popup window. Warning! For ColorBox to operate correctly, detailed images must be stored in the file system" :
Select:
Cloud Zoom
To configure it just the way you want it, you will need to tinker with two files:
1) skin/common_files/lib/cloud_zoom/cloud-zoom.css -
This will allow you to tinker with the border, border color, font and color of the title if you want that active, etc. Look and Feel stuff.
2) skin/common_files/modules/Detailed_Product_Images/cloudzoom_image.tpl to configure the size and position of the zoom window and lens:
In that file, look for:
<a href="{$product.image_url}" class="cloud-zoom" class="cloud-zoom" id="cloud_zoom_image" rel="tint:: '#fff', position:: 'right', smoothMove::3, adjustX:: 50, adjustY:: 0, zoomWidth:: 500, zoomHeight:: 600">
You can visit professorcloud.com to see what the various settings actually do, but basically:
zoomWidth and zoomHeight control the zoom window size and also seem to scale the zoom lens.
"Position" has default values such as left and right, etc. for the zoom window position. You can also fine tune the window position with the adjustX and adjustY properties.
The only other thing you have to factor in is that you must have a detailed image in the product, even if you are just using one product image and a thumb as I am, you will still need to 'put the larger image you're using in the detailed images.
Also, you need to decide if you want to detailed image thumbs displayed below the product on the product page, which is controlled by the "Display detailed product image thumbnails below the product image" option in the settings for the Detailed Images module.
After all the time I've spent trying to get Magic Zoom Plus to work unsuccessfully (and it costs about 60 bucks or so depending on exchange rate) I'm really happy to find out a feature like Cloud Zoom, with almost identical capability is integrated in X-cart 4.4.
I'm also excited that this might help some people out there playing with 4.4 that could use this feature.
Cheers,