New Windows Media Center XBAP application now available: Big Screen Business

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Niall Ginsbourg from Mobilewares (the same person who created the Flickr photo browser XBAP application for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista) recently released a public beta version of a new XBAP application for Windows Vista. This application is named Big Screen Business.  It is a 3-dimensional graphical application that you can use to monitor business and financial information such as the following:

  • Monitor global markets and indices
  • Create custom stock watch lists
  • Monitor profits and losses on holdings and options
  • View world currency exchange rates

You can find a more detailed list of features on this page, and you can download a version of the application from this page and try it out.

Some interesting behind-the-scenes aspects of this application are the following:

  • It has been tested and verified to work on Windows Vista RC1 (both x86 and x64)
  • It uses this algorithm to ensure that only a single instance of the application will run at any given time
  • It uses this algorithm to manage backwards navigations within the application so that pressing back on the Windows Media Center remote control does not take the user all of the way out of the application
  • It ships as a standalone XBAP that can be run from a web browser and as an MSI package that will install and register the XBAP for use within Windows Media Center for Windows Vista
  • The MSI for the Windows Media Center package is built using WiX and is based on the example I described in this blog post

I encourage you to try out this application even if you are not interested in the financial scenarios that it is designed to track, if for no other reason than to check out the 3D UI and visual effects.

<update date="9/26/2006"> Added a new bullet to the behind-the-scenes facets of this application with a link to a post describing how to manage back navigations in XBAP applications </update>