Share Your Christmas Wishlist / Hatelist with Silverlight

Here's a cool little Silverlight 1.0 application that our team (specifically Adam) assisted with over the last week. In the run-up to Christmas, I'm sure a lot of us are told that we're "hard to buy for". Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way to give our friends and family a few gentle pointers without having to spoil all the surprise by being prescriptive down to the stock keeping unit level?

Enter the Christmas CoolWall. Adopting an idea from the wonderful auto-related Top Gear television program from BBC TV, the CoolWall allows you to find images of different items and sort them into categories of "Seriously Uncool", "Uncool", "Cool" and "Sub-Zero". You can also annotate the images with comments ("the Halo soundtrack is cool, but not on cassette tape please"). Having built a cool wall, you can save it, copy it as an image, or send it via email to a friend.

All this is, of course, built in Silverlight 1.0. The application demonstrates a range of capabilities: integration with Live Search and Live ID, HTML / Silverlight integration, reuse of simple controls written in JavaScript, ASP.NET server integration. It's not the most complex application ever written, but it's a bit of fun in this holiday season. The application was originally prototyped with the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha by Dot Net Solutions, a UK-based solutions integrator firm, and as a bit of fun, Adam agreed to try back-porting it to Silverlight 1.0 to see whether everything they'd implemented in C# could be as easily accomplished in JavaScript. I've noticed a certain preconception that Silverlight 2.0 is the "one to wait for" because it's the platform that allows you to use a "proper" language like C# or Visual Basic. Of course, having .NET languages, the base class libraries and technologies like LINQ will make RIA development a ton easier, but it's impressive what you can get out of JavaScript, particularly when coupled with the client-centric Microsoft AJAX Library. We're considering recording a Channel 9 video or something like that where Adam can share some of the more interesting experiences he gained from this application - we'll keep you updated.

See the Christmas CoolWall here. You can also see my own (rather fanciful) wishlist, if you're interested. And give it a try!