MSDN/Architecture Journal Readers and the Reader SDK

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MSDN Reader BannerSome very cool news if you're a fan of the WPF-based New York Times reader or Seattle P-I reader.  We've just released the Reader SDK which you can use to quickly create similar rich applications for your own purposes.

In addition, the MSDN Magazine Reader sample application (featuring full source code) is now available, as is the Architecture Journal Reader.

Architecture JournalHead over to WindowsClient.net for information on the Reader SDK and links to the MSDN Reader sample.  The MSDN Reader lives under the name "Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit" or SCE.  Head to the Architecture Journal site for more on that application [download here].

Here's a quick tour, focusing on the MSDN Reader (most of the features are shared with the Architecture Journal Reader.)  As you can see, it's basically like have a magazine or newspaper right on your machine:

MSDN Reader Arch Journal

See an article and presto - read away!

MSDN Reader Article

But this goes well beyond the capabilities of mere paper.  You can zoom in or out without loss of fidelity and you can add your own annotations, but I think the most important feature is search:

 MSDN Reader Search

If you're anything like me, you come across lots of articles that you'd like to note for later reading... when you have that elusive "free time"...   That's easy to do with the Readers' "Reading List" feature.  First send stories to the Reading List (right-click to get the menu):

MSDN Reader Send to Reading List

Then, open the Reading List, (by default, docked on the right-hand side) and click through to read each article (they're automatically grayed out as you view them):

MSDN Reader Reading List

And of course, the Readers both support automatic synchronization of content to support offline reading.  The MSDN Reader uses the new Subscription Center beta to manage it's subscription:

Subscription Center

The MSDN Reader and Architecture Journal Reader applications are definitely worth a look.  If you have your own data/content source that you'd like to make available for display, I encourage you to take a look at the MSDN Reader code and the SCE/Reader SDK as well.

-Chris