Announcing www.winfxhearts.com!
To correspond with my PDC talk about making an application "light up" on Windows Vista, I've created www.winfxhearts.com. This site has a ClickOnce link that enables you can play a version of my new & improved Internet Hearts game. Here's a "before & after" look:
This is still the good ol' Win32 application, but with a dramatically different user experience thanks to WPF and ClickOnce. In the screenshot above, the reddish part of the new UI uses WPF (Avalon), but the chat window, menus, etc. are still Win32. And of course the game logic is still the same. There's no need to rewrite it!
Again, I promise to blog more details after the PDC (and not just about Avalon & ClickOnce, but Indigo, Windows Vista, plus the experiences of upgrading to VC8 & using /CLR). In the meantime, go ahead and try the game, or look for the Channel 9 video about WinFX Hearts & WPF (scheduled to appear on Monday).
You can play this version on Windows Vista Beta 1, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003, as long as WinFX Beta 1 is installed (and a post-Beta 2 version of the .NET Framework is not installed). If you're going to PDC05, you can play the game on machines in the "Windows Vista Test Drive" Commnet area through Tuesday (9/13).
Sure, it's not as popular a game as Solitaire or Spider Solitaire, but hopefully the opportunity to play humans is an incentive. Before entering a game, you get to choose a name and a picture (either a standard one or any image on the web!):
The game doesn't begin until four players have joined, so you might have to wait awhile to play (or convince some friends to join at the same time)!
Post any questions/issues/comments here. Enjoy!
