Tuesday, May 10, 2011

WPF and extreme user interfaces like StreetSmart edge™

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), introduced with Windows Vista, is an state-of-the-art presentation system for building Windows client and web-hosted applications with visually stunning user experiences. Curiously enough, the encyclopedic books about Vista and Windows 7, like the traditional Resource Kits, mention this technology in passing, mainly because it is part of the .Net Framework and intended mostly for developers, as its cousin Silverlight. One of these developers, Projekt202, an Austin, Texas, company, which without a doubt knows a great deal of usability and UI design, used WPF controls in the design of Charles Schwab's StreetSmart edge™, a very intuitive online trading application that has received good reviews since its release at the end of 2010. It runs in Windows 2000 and up and also in Mac 10.3 or higher.