This example shows how to implement zoom in and zoom out buttons on a map using D3 and SVG transforms. Once the target scale and translation are computed, they are applied immediately, and then every 40ms while the button is held down. This implementation seem susceptible to sudden, unpleasant jumps, especially with rapid clicking, even though the callbacks are carefully managed.
This is a fork Mike Bostock’s Map Pan & Zoom I; you can diff the two to see my changes. The scaling math (which is quite tricky!) is derived from Wil Linssen.
If zooming by a hard-coded factor would push the scale beyond the scale extent, it is clipped. Importantly, this clipping also affects the translation. If you scale by 1.047 but translate as if you had scaled by 1.2, bad things happen.
See also Zoom Buttons I.