Office Zealot Site - Silverlight Viewer
The new Office Zealot site will have a Silverlight Viewer application which will render the site content into Silverlight content, allowing the user to experience the site in a better way.
As you might know, Silverlight is still in beta version and still has lots of improvements to go through but it has been a great experience to build this application and being a beta, I would bet, this technology has arrived to stay for a long time.
How is it going to work?
Basically, the application is going to read the info through the Atom/RSS Feed provided by the new Office Zealot site.
First we will have a configuration file based on an xml structure. This xml file will have the entire configuration for the site pages; it will let the application know which template to use in each page, which control to render in which zone and where to get the RSS feeds from.
We will have 5 different template pages (for now) with different zone contents definitions. So basically, the site administrator will have the chance to define the layout for each different page.
Also, as you know, Silverlight uses XAML to define the complete look and feel of a page, so the application will allow us, at some point, to change the basic design of the page and the layout (colors, font, etc).
Here is a screenshot of how it currently looks:
This is the home page, which is composed by 6 zones. The configuration xml file for the home page looks like this:
<node id="Home">
<screen xamlId="HomeView">
<zoneDefinitions>
<zone xamlId="Zone1" regionId="14" title="Zealot's Corner" dataSource="http://moss/annnouncements/rss.apx" rss="false" dataType="" />
<zone xamlId="Zone2" regionId="14" title="Office BlogZ" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/otro.xml" rss="true" dataType="blog" />
<zone xamlId="Zone3" regionId="14" title="Feature Partners" dataSource="http://moss/annnouncements/rss.apx" rss="false" dataType="staticContent" >
<content title="Mapping XML Data in Excel" text="We explain the steps (with code) needed to import XML into Excel. We explain the steps (with code) needed to import XML into Excel." url="http://www.officeletter.com/current.html" />
</zone>
<zone xamlId="Zone4" regionId="14" title="Tags" dataSource="http://moss/annnouncements/rss.apx" rss="false" dataType="" />
<zone xamlId="Zone5" regionId="14" title="Office News" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/news.xml" rss="true" dataType="news"/>
<zone xamlId="Zone6" regionId="14" title="Office Articles" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/art.xml" rss="true" dataType="article" />
</zoneDefinitions>
</screen>
</node>
The screen is the element that defines which template is going to be used for the particular page and, as the name says, the zone definition defines each zone of the template.
The xmalId attribute defines the zone number in the page and the dataType defines the control that will be located on the zone.
The controls that we have for now are: blog, article, news, and static content.
A second page template that we have built is the following:
Composed by 4 zones, so the xml configuration file would look like this:
<node
id="Office 2007"
name="Microsoft Office 2007 Zone"
description=""
linkToSite="http://www.officezealot.com/Office2007/" >
<screen xamlId="PageTemplate1">
<zoneDefinitions>
<zone xamlId="Zone1" regionId="14" title="Office 2007 BlogZ" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/otro.xml" rss="true" dataType="blog"/>
<zone xamlId="Zone2" regionId="14" title="BlogZ on Office 2007 Products and Features" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/news&art.xml" rss="false" dataType=""/>
<zone xamlId="Zone3" regionId="14" title="NewZ & ArticleZ" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/news&art.xml" rss="true" dataType="news" />
<zone xamlId="Zone4" regionId="14" title="ResourceZ" dataSource="http://lilian/OfficeZealot/resources.xml" rss="true" dataType="resources"/>
</zoneDefinitions>
</screen>
</node>
As you can see, configuring the Silverlight viewer will be a simple process. The Sharepoint site will be the one feeding the application with all the RSS and the application will render everything just as the administrator decides.
Soon, I will be explaining how the controls are built and what the logic behind them is, so hopefully you will try Silverlight and see that it is not complicated at all and a lot of fun to play with.
See ya!
Lilian