More WPF applications, all based on the new Reader SDK
A couple of weeks ago I posted a list of cool WPF applications. This list of applications published on the Channel9 WPF Wiki is updated daily. And the list is growing. Check it out!
Three of the applications added this week were all amazing news reading applications that can be compared to the New York Times reader.
You can download these applications from these links:
Tim Sneath has all the details on how these applications were created. Yes, that's right! All of these news readers share a set of libraries that was customized to build these applications. The toolkit is currently in a private beta, but in a few months time the reader SDK will be released more broadly so that anyone can build a similar customized application.
Once the support for RSS feeds with custom extensions (to support the reader functionality) is implemented, it's a relatively short step to getting an initial application up and running.
I've been talking to a number of large media groups in Belgium about these type of applications and most of them had a real "Wow" experience. But immediately after they asked for an SDK to get them up and running quickly with this new set of technologies. With the upcoming release of this (news) reader SDK we can expect to see many more similar news readers appearing over the next weeks and months.
I'm really looking forward to have such a reader for the newspapers I read on a daily basis. As an example, De Standaard Online has all the data available online to push this next generation user experience. I'm really wondering how long it will take to build such a news reader using the newly announced reader SDK.
Technorati tags: WPF, news readers, reader SDK, reader toolkit
Comments
Anonymous
February 24, 2007
If there really is a "Reader SDK" (which sounds pretty cool, BTW), then there should be one "Reader" app, with the ability to read content from multiple providers, not separate apps with the same codebase that do the same thing for different providers. You guys should really try to clean that part up.Anonymous
February 24, 2007
@interscape: I'd rather have seperate readers. Remember, we aren't the target audience for these apps, they're for my dad who'll refuse to read anything other than "The Hindu"...Anonymous
February 24, 2007
@Robert and Yuvi: thanks for the feedback. I haven't had my hands on the SDK so far but I would assume that there will be support for multiple providers. The different apps just reuse a set of libraries which are customized to deliver a specific experience. These different reader apps don't share the same codebase, only a number of libraries. So basically you can create a number of different readers (as Yuvi points out) - with each there own UX - that are based on the same set of libraries. As soon as I've had a deeper look at the SDK I'll post an update.Anonymous
February 24, 2007
David Boschmans Weblog has a good description on WPF applications, all based on the new Reader SDK .Anonymous
February 25, 2007
Last week I blogged about " How Adobe Products (Not) Support Windows Vista ". I posted this because IAnonymous
February 25, 2007
It took us (www.dol.gr) 2 days to build a Reader application for www.tanea.gr that provided the basic functionality. So I supose it won't be long before every newspaper addopts it.