New York Times Reader Using .Net 3.0 Beta
28 Sep 2006The New York Times has a new .Net 3.0 new reader in pre-beta. That’s not a misprint, it’s .Net 3.0. It’s well worth the rather large .Net 3.0 download to check out this reader. It doesn’t have all the eye-candy of other WPF demos. Instead it focuses on being a very good news reader and succeeds.
What impresses me the most is just how nice the fonts look. It’s really hard to describe but it’s something you notice right away. The transition effect moving from page to page is pleasant without calling too much attention to itself and the navigation is logical and very newspaper like.
Being pre-beta there are some issues like very slow downloads and no proxy settings but overall, it’s a very pleasant experience.
Here’s how the New Times describes it.
Times Reader runs on Microsoft’s new Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), which is built into the new Vista operating system and is included in the .Net 3.0 Framework service pack for Windows XP. If you are using Windows XP, the installer application will first install Net 3.0 Framework, a process that takes about ten minutes, and then install Times Reader, a process that takes about two minutes.
The .Net 3.0 download was painless, didn’t require a reboot and has not introduced any stability problems in my system.