Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

James — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:46:59 GMT

All these apps are cool, but they leave me a bit confused. I've been following WPF and XAML, but the majority of the applications I create don't need bespoke UIs. I'm really confused as to whether WPF is only for doing this fancy stuff (and I can carry on living in the lands of Win32 and Windows Forms), or whether it's supposed to be good for more dialogue layout and such. Microsoft have either done a really bad job of explaining how to choose between the various technologies, or they've done a really bad job of demonstrating how to use WPF as a better version of Windows Forms.

The Windows SDK has lots of WPF examples. None of them are very high quality. About the only one that resembles a Windows application is WPF Notepad, but it has a lot of idiosyncrasies that stop it looking polished. I'm in the market for something a bit more like XUL: a concise XML language for semi-data-driven UIs that's a bit more structured than a pile of editor-generated C# code. XAML and WPF seem to provide that, except that it's really not concise and doesn't help me do simple native-looking things (and it's a bit sluggish, although impressive for what it achieves particularly with regards to the over-the-top text features).

Everyone is producing examples of how to create reflections of rotating buttons that have gradients, which is nice, but I'm over that now. I don't want any reflections, rotations or gradients that aren't added by the OS by default, and I don't want my software to look amateur either.

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Mb. — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:29:11 GMT

Credit where credit's due: I'm one of the designers of the OTTO Store, but certainly not the designer of the OTTO Store. :-) Credit for the look goes without a doubt to Monika Oeschger, Creative Director in our company. I was sort of the liasion between the extreme developer world and the extreme designer world.

And you're definitely right to mention Jaime. He's responsible for making our start in WPF a running start. Other than being an extremely likeable guy, Jaime impressed me by not only quite the technical genius, but also curious, open and completely non-judgemental when it came to design. There's often a pretty big chasm between developers and designers (does it really have to be exactly that shade of blue? What difference does a couple of pixels make anyway?), but Jaime has clearly realised that if Vista's going to really make some waves, it needs to not only function, but also offer the user a beautiful, thought-through and engaging experience.

And as they say in Germany, danke für die Blumen! (Thanks for the flowers, i.e. compliment)

Windows Vista & WPF. Impressive new browser applications - Tactical Gamer

Windows Vista & WPF. Impressive new browser applications - Tactical Gamer — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:44:46 GMT

PingBack from http://www.tacticalgamer.com/hardware-software-discussion/85810-windows-vista-wpf-impressive-new-browser-applications.html#post640631

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

tims — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 02:56:53 GMT

Oh, I also wanted to add that this is one of the first big Windows CardSpace implementations to go live. If you've not seen CardSpace, it provides a standards-based secure mechanism for the exchange of identity over the web, along with a managed implementation of that standard for Windows as part of .NET Framework 3.0. If you're interested in finding out more about CardSpace, a good place to start is Vittorio's blog here: http://blogs.msdn.com/vbertocci - he worked with Otto on this implementation.

WPF Bits

Mike Taulty's Blog — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 14:42:20 GMT

A couple of WPF bits that I missed. ITN (UK News) has a new Video Player for their News stories available...

Great WPF Applications #6: fnac.com

Tim Sneath — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:12:25 GMT

If you want to see a contrasting online shopping experience to Otto , you could do worse than look at

Otto Store: walking through the CardSpace experience

Vibro.NET — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 01:25:44 GMT

If you are watching the Card-space, I'm sure you didn't miss it: the Otto Store smart client application,

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Ian Ringrose — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:23:36 GMT

Nice demo of what WPF can do, however given the choose between shopping at a web site that uses simple standard HTML and a “rich” experience like this, I will always choose the simple web site. I already know how to use a standard website, I would have to think to use this as it is different from what I am used to.

In other words – If you want my money don’t make me think!

However I may not be the sort of people they are aim at, as I consider the “shopping experience” to be a good reason not to go into most physical shops if I can avoid them.

New and Notable 139

Sam Gentile — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:45:24 GMT

Winter has finally set in with single digit temps and minus degrees wind chills but still no snow. WPF/Avalon

The OTTO Store - The Future of Shopping?

Impersonation Failure — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 12:13:14 GMT

A showcase of what's possible today using .NET 3.0 is the new OTTO Store that went live earlier this

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Brad — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 03:38:48 GMT

Am I the only one that found this demo tediously slow? I know I couldn't read the German, but I was dragging clothes around and it crashed on me with some kind of message. It looks great, but maybe I just don't have the right kind of Cray to run this stuff.

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Marlon Smith — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:19:58 GMT

I'm with James on this one, where does the WinForms guy go from here!

Future revisited

Robert Folkesson — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:10:59 GMT

Känsliga personer varnas härmed för en låååång postning - men vill du veta mer om framtidens användargränssnitt

Future revisited

Robert Folkesson — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 00:33:22 GMT

Under den här veckan har jag haft förmånen att få delta i TechReady, Microsofts interna motsvarighet

Spotlight: Otto Online Shopping WPF Application

Michael Kordahi's Microsoft Blog — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:35:54 GMT

Frank has been blogging about Tim Sneath's series on Great WPF Applications. Check em all out here .

'World-wild' Windows Presentation Foundation Applications

OpsanBlog — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:36:15 GMT

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Forthangol — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 20:14:16 GMT

the app look cool. It will work for dumb teenagers and women who have nothing else to do. It took forever to download and run the thing. Looks like it is running an .exe ! How do I even close it. I can not understand german. I agree with James, this is an overkill example as far as most business applicatiosn are concerned.

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Glugg — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:55:34 GMT

Tried to install it, but seems it won´t work for me... :(

Looks like it think I´m not running Vista ("Lieber OTTO-Kunde,

um den OTTO-Store installieren zu können, benötigen Sie Windows Vista.")

Running Vista, IE7 and got the 3.0 framework installed - what more do I need? (And no, I don´t speak German unfortunately)

I know this isn´t a supportforum for Otto, but I just saw a demo and would like to show it for a couple of my collegues.

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Glugg — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 10:39:16 GMT

Hmmm... ignore my privious post please... :)

Downloaded Fiddler to see exactly what requests I was sending to the site - and as it turns out, certain sites in our intranet are unable to handle IE7 and as such IT installs IE7 with User Agent to masqureade it as IE6...

Problem solved. ;)

re: Great WPF Applications #4: Otto

Alan Cobb — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:07:15 GMT

This is a nice demo, but it no longer installs and runs for me.

Several weeks ago it installed and ran fine on XP, but now it gives the same German error message as the previous post. It apparently is saying: "You need Vista to run this".

So I tried Vista. It installed OK on Vista but when it's starting

it dies with an InvalidOperationException. Exception Message: "Cannot set Visibility or call Show or ShowDialog after window has closed."

Anyone know how to get it working? It was quite impressive.

Thanks, Alan

FNAC.COM

WPF Showcase — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:38:44 GMT

If you want to see a contrasting online shopping experience to Otto , you could do worse than look at