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New Content + New Platform + New Tool = New Application

SEATTLE, June 1, 2007

Microsoft Office 2007 offers many new programs, tools, and services to consumers, but it also offers a wider-than-ever sea of components, namespaces, class libraries, and tools to developers of custom Office solutions. Several months ago, the Office team asked LuxWorldwide.com to design a printed poster of the the technical Office developer content to be hung on the walls of developers’ offices. (The poster was wildly popular and is currently in its third printing.)

But they soon returned and asked Lux for something more: an interactive tool to help developers to navigate that sea of technical content, to access the information they need quickly, and to see the depth and extent of the content available to them at a glance. The result is the Microsoft Office Interactive Developer Map, an application that represents a synthesis of much that is new at Microsoft, but not just in its content: Lux built the application using the Windows Presentation Foundation platform and the Expression Blend development tool.

WPF is a new UI and graphics programming framework released by Microsoft as part of the underpinnings of Windows Vista, but which is also available for earlier versions of Windows as part of the .NET 3.0 Framework. It provides clean separation of markup, content, and code in a way that allows designers, UI coders, and programmers to work smoothly in parallel. And with the use of Expression Blend, a tool for developing rich, interactive WPF applications based on XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language), Lux was able to focus on delivering the complex and large array of Office developer content in an intuitive, compelling, and visually appealing way.

The map can be accessed through MSDN and may be considered a “living” document which updates itself via XML feeds each time it is opened. This rich WPF application takes the content on the original poster several steps further to allow developers to drill deeper into the content that interests them. And the Microsoft developer community has embraced this application even more than the printed poster. Read more about it at Microsoft: MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/bb497969.aspx The MSDN Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/erikaehrli/archive/2007/05/30/MicrosoftOfficeInteractiveDeveloperMapBuiltWithWpf.aspx

For more information about Lux, please contact:
Jayson Jarmon
206.328.9898
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