For a hobby that revolves around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular: it's
the fastest growing scene in North America. And a perfect study for Vertigo's latest
exercise: an exploration of Microsoft’s latest UI technology, Windows Presentation
Foundation (WPF). Technology + Genealogy = Two –ologies!
Version 2.0 Now Available (July 17, 2007)
·
New “Family Data View”
with filtering, sorting, and in-place editing
·
Family Analytics including
last name tag cloud, age distribution historgram and birthday list. Clicking on
the items in each control filters the main family list.
·
Enhanced story editing
with support for font name, size, alignment, bullets, and numerical lists
·
Filtering and sorting
the Family List view, in the main window
·
More cowbell!
·
Skinnable user interface
with two skins: black and silver
·
Improved Windsor family
sample data file with stories and images.
·
Source code migrated
to CodePlex
Are You an Amateur Genealogist?
Your friends told us Family.Show is a compelling, enjoyable experience and is unlike
any other genealogy application out there, and that makes us extremely happy! But
please keep in mind that Family.Show is not a “real product”. It’s more like a concept
car that we built for geeky programmers and designers so they can poke around under
the hood and test-drive some new and exciting Microsoft technology.
Since it’s not a product, we don’t support it. But don’t let that stop you from
kicking the tires (and from sending us your comments)! Remember that any work you
do in Family.Show can be exported in the standard GEDCOM file format for reuse in
any of the leading genealogy products. Enjoy!
Are You a Programmer or Designer?
Our designers harnessed every trick in the WPF book– styles, resources, templates,
data binding, animation, transforms– to present an innovative visualization of the
classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes
features like XPS, P/Invoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and ClickOnce
for WPF. It’s a good example of what a small team of talented people can do with
WPF.
If you’re a programmer and want to learn more, or you’re not a programmer and want
something to help you sleep at night, pull down the source code at CodePlex. You’ll
also find a really nifty document explaining how we glue all the wires together.
Don’t Cha Wish Your Program Was Hot Like Me?
At Vertigo we tackle impossible projects for our clients by combining the latest
WPF, Silverlight, and .NET Framework 3.0 technologies with our expert designers
and developers. If you like what you’ve seen with this app, wait till you see what
we can do with yours. Scroll to the bottom and call us.
Wondering how this all works?
Watch a five
minute video of Family.Show in action, recorded right here at Vertigo by
Scott Stanfield.
Quotes
The way you simplified the interface for this concept (genealogy, spelled right?)
was very good. The team also seems very capable and unique.
–- Fabio Pedrosa.
This is just a gorgeous program. The graphics are extremely scalable, the visuals
and animations are smooth an appealing, and the overall program design is just so
well done. Good job, Vertigo. Folks, if this doesn't demonstrate to you how Windows
Vista is simply an awesome platform for next generation applications, I don't know
what will.
–- Kurt Shintaku
It's the best user interface that I never saw. Congratulations and thanks for the
source code 8-).
–- Jose Manual Ortiz.
As impressed as I am by what you’ve done with the software, I was equally impressed
with the video.
–- Bill Seddon
What a fantastic app. I Love It.
–-Doug Bornyk
I think it's an outstanding piece of work and shows not only the power of WPF but
also some serious development/design skills.
–- David Robertshaw
This is incredible application. So nice and powerful. That is exactly what I am
searching for in applications: Simplicity, Power and Beauty. I like WPF and your
application shows its abilities to write powerful applications with so nice and
useful UI interface. Thank you very much for sharing the idea and source. You cannot
imagine how many people was impressed by it, including myself.
–- Armen Ayvazyan
First of all I’ve gotta say “good job.” What a beautiful app. Based on every other
WPF app I’ve seen I was getting worried about WPF performance on Windows XP. I have
a decent system and so far I hadn’t seen any WPF apps with decent functionality
that didn’t run painfully slow while maxing out my processor. Yours is the first.
It runs great and looks good while doing it.
–- Steve Hiner