Great WPF Applications #5: TF1

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I'm slightly accelerating the pace of these articles from the planned daily push, simply because there are just so many to cover. From the moment I pushed out the first entry in this series, I started to receive emails from people around the company and even outside Microsoft, telling me about the applications they've been building, which means that my incoming rate is currently exceeding my outgoing rate!

So let's talk quickly about TF1, the most popular television channel in France. They've just released a WPF-based media player for viewing clips and live programmes. Available for download from their LC1 news channel site (registration required), the player has some nice touches:

  • The player uses a windowless model that looks attractive and is more reminiscent of a web page than a standard Windows application;
  • If you click Voir les programmes ("see programmes"), you get a great timeline visualization of what's now and next on the channel;
  • The two information boxes on either side of the media player have a nice 3D animation for spinning from one page to another: subtle but effective.

(The screen capture I took happens to be of an interview with the infamous and uniquely French José Bové, sheep farmer, anarchist and revolutionary, anti-GMO campaigner and now presidential candidate.)

If you just want to see the application without the hassle of registering yourself on a French language website, you can check out their own news report about the application and its use of Windows Vista. Oh - that's in French too, of course, but you can see all the features pretty well.