Online Advertising, Web Development & General Rantings

In this short post i thought id take a break from control development and talk about something thats very dear to me “themeing”

A week ago when i had finished creating my 2nd silverlight control it dawned on me that SilverLight allows a level of personalization and customization that was never there before within web development!

SilverLight gives designers and developers near limitless control of the UI. We can chop and change elements of the GUI design as easily as we change font’s in a word processor.

Below is an example of how easy it is to theme iTunes, i changed the look from the metallic standard version to a wooden grained version. It took me under 5 minutes…. check out how all the components (silverlight/html/ajax) just fit into the new theme , Amazing!!! (if i had spent another hour on the wireframe i would of gotten a more complete wooden look, none the less it’s still damn good)

Here is my standard “Metallic” wireframe of iTunes: [JF000012.ASPX]

Here is my themed “Wooden” wireframe of iTunes: [JF000014.ASPX]

Source code for this sample can me found in this zip file [JF000014.ZIP]

Imagine if the real iTunes was like this, allowing people to customize the theme of the skin! How cool!!

Skined versions of iTunes isn’t the only thing i wanted to discuss..

Imagine widgetizing the silverlight components on the page!! imagine having 20 different play buttons to choose from, or having 10 different ”album swooshers” to play with !! Customization to the nth degree!!! 

I’ll demonstrate this in the next prototype ….

Exciting times ahead!