Tuesday, February 27, 2007

WPF Real World Apps for Windows Vista - Part 3

by Somasegar via Somasegar's WebLog on 2/27/2007 1:02:55 AM

Here is another WPF real world application that I wanted to share with you – this is an enterprise, albeit customer facing application.  Plus, it’s a secure, mission-critical app.  The scenario is an ATM scenario and the customer is Wells Fargo. And the platform is Windows Presentation Foundation as part of Windows.

Wells Fargo NextGen ATM Client

Wells Fargo needed a next gen ATM machine that matched the cutting-edge experiences offered by the best e-commerce Web sites.  Also, the development process had to be productive to reduce time to market, and allow fast creation and deployment of new services and marketing campaigns.

Wells Fargo used WPF’s capabilities such as animation, dynamic layouts, data binding, style and template editing, 2D/3D vector graphics, etc. to create a compelling, intuitive experiences - not simply a series of static screens where the customer finds the correct button to do cash transactions, but more dynamic visual elements that go beyond just cash transactions.  For example, not only will these envelope-free ATMs accept stacks of mixed bills and checks, they will also automatically scan the checks and display images on the screen.

Now, to create something as cool and inspiring as this, Wells Fargo team needed both solid development skills of devs but also inspiring creative skills of designers.  Their development team was able to harness this using the developer-designer collaboration of Visual Studio, Microsoft Expression Blend and XAML.

I hope I was able to share with you a variety of WPF scenarios and capabilities with the last few blogs.  There are numerous other WPF apps that customers have built.  For a few of these, check out Tim Sneath’s blog, where he talks about apps like British Library Turning the Pages, Scripps Institute Cancer Research app, and more.

Namaste!