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September 18, 2006
New York Times - 'Times Reader'
The New York Times 'Times Reader' was launched over the weekend and as Frank states in the title of his post 'A WPF Real World Application'.
"Times Reader is a new, downloadable software application that lets Windows XP and Vista users read The New York Times electronically, online or offline, in a paginated format as opposed to scrolling down a Web page. Times Reader lets users retrieve all the latest news and photos (a process that takes about a minute) and read the content offline. It also let’s you check to see how much of the paper you have read and easily navigate to articles of interest that you may have missed."
WPF is the Windows Presententation Foundation a subset of the .NET Framework 3.0. Most Windows XP users will already be using the .NET 2.0 Framework in the backend of your system as it passed through your Windows Update around January this year. This application from the NY Times utilises the .NET 3.0 RC1 Framework (Yes another 'beta' tag meaning 'Release Candidate') that will be downloaded as part of the setup of the application or if you are using Vista RC1 it is only a 1MB as the .NET 3.0 RC1 is included already though for XP it will be around ~50mb.
There are some screenshots on Read/Write/Web, Franks post gives you some great tips on what you can do with it (I love the integrated search with the Vista Search Bar) or you can download the 40Mb QuickTime Screencast Demo Long Zheng made or have a read of the NYT FAQ.
If you haven't decided all this WPF stuff is impressive or not you can look at some more demos of WPF Applications Tablet PC Ink, RezN8 Nascar Demo, iBloks or the BBC demo with Bill Gates at Mix06.
Posted by Stephen at September 18, 2006 12:44 PM
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Comments
Really nifty, Stephen!
Posted by: extulit at September 18, 2006 05:19 PM
My favorite demo out of the others I listed would have to be the Nascar RezN8 demo... Very innovative and the BBC isn't half bad either.
Once you have the .NET 3.0 RC1 Framework installed you can also check out the latest Microsoft Max which lets you create Slideshows with your images and also as a RSS Newsreader (aka. Roll-Your-Own Newspaper)
I also need to stop reading the NYTimes so much now as I may get tainted with a single news source :-P. The readability and complete experience of the 'Times Reader' is quite a 'Wow' factor IMHO.
It is still unclear if what we have at the moment will remain free or just a two week trial. If it is only a two week trial then I am quite sure I will be dishing out the US$49.95 yearly subscription for the 'Times Select'.
Posted by: Stephen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://bleedingedge.com.au/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 18, 2006 05:28 PM