Background Motion - now live!

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BackgroundMotion Logo

Over the last few months the guys at Mindscape have been dotting i's and crossing t's in order to get BackgroundMotion up and running.  This has meant getting a solid hosting solution up (thanks to ZeroOne for pitching in!) as well as ensuring things like the terms of use and such things are in place.

The great news is that this is all now done and https://BackgroundMotion.com is now up (Mauricio got the scoop on this yesterday).

What is it?

Backgroundmotion.com is two things. 

Firstly it is a community website to allow you to share backgrounds and background video for the DreamScene features of Windows Vista Ultimate.

Secondly it is a great example of a modern web application built on .Net 2.0.  When I say example, I also mean sample - the source code for the site is available on codeplex for you to download and pull it apart. 

There is also a "Code" tab on the site to help you get up and running with the source code.  The developer section of the site includes sample code, short introduction videos and resources to lower the bar to use these technologies.

Technologies used

One of the things that the guys did was to build in all the latest technologies and making the code available means that you can go and see how they did it.  Specifically, the technologies and tools they used include:

  • .Net Framework 2.0
  • .Net Framework 3.0
  • ASP.Net 2.0
  • ASP.Net AJAX 1.0
  • Silverlight
  • NUnit
  • LINQ (May CTP)
  • Web Client Software Factory (Composite Web Block)
  • Lucene.Net
  • RSS Toolkit (which was extended for the solution)
  • Virtual Earth
  • Sidebar Gadgets

The guys also made sure that it is XHTML 1.0 compliant.

If you went along to the Technical Briefings we did back in March you'll remember that JB and JD presented at those sessions on BackgroundMotion.  The code tab on BackgroundMotion also has links to the videos of their sessions from the events, all nicely polished with demos and decks integrated into the video (dont forget you can get the decks here).

Nigel tells me he's planning to do a screen cast on getting started with BackgroundMotion, so watch his blog for that too.

Go check out the site, click the code tab and take a hunt around.  We are keen to know what you think - so click the feedback link on the site or post a comment on one of the blog posts that you'll see today.