Hi all, as you guys aren't exactly our target market, this can't be considered a cheap marketing email to promote our new website, but more a demonstration of how silverlight can be utilized to create a global retail branding site. On Monday, we released our new website which is written completely in silverlight. If you get a chance to look at the site (www.michaelhill.com) it has a number of interesting technical features that I would like to point out to you all.
1. Heavy integration of smooth streaming video. 2. Deep zoom for the product carousel. Significant bandwidth savings are made by the in-built lazy loading of deep zoom product images, plus the natural friction effect. 3. Integrated video inside a deep zoom image (company history section). 4. Search engine optimisation. 5. Deep linking : a. From search engine optimisation links b. Send to friend links c. Browser integration with forward/back buttons d. Sets the browser/tab title e. Appropriate link / title for adding to browser favourites. 6. Client side state. This reduces load on server such that when a user visits a page once, then navigates away / back, the application doesn't have to fetch data from the server. This is difficult to do in a traditional web application. 7. Custom install experience. 8. Analytics integration (via google analytics / javascript). 9. Isolated storage allows us to persist a 'super cookie' using serialized C# objects. 10. MVVM pattern. Dependency injection. 11. Application lifetime objects / client side services. 12. Animations / effects / scaling create smoother experience for user without unsightly page refreshes. 13. ADO.NET data services integration. Rest based / loosely coupled / dynamic data access. a. Easy to secure via policies rather than code. 14. Data driven application, where all menus / and content on particular screens can be changed via CMS. For example, the product carousels are all data driven. Dynamic loading of Xaml at runtime allows us to substitute in content / animations without rebuilding the application. You might have seen Ross Jempson post to the silverlight list occasionally. He is the owner and primary developer of the development company that implemented our site. We believe we have achieved a fantastic result and the capability of silverlight has helped us get there. Enjoy, Ross (on day 1.....)
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