Over the last couple of months I have had the opportunity to work on an exciting project at Intergen called TextGlow. TextGlow is a cutting edge browser application for viewing Word 2007 documents on the Internet. With TextGlow it is possible to instantly view a document within a web page, with no Microsoft Office applications installed, or the user even running Windows!
The value of an application like TextGlow is that it makes browsing documents on a website much faster. There is no need to download each individual document and open it with Word to preview its contents. With the rise of web based document management systems such as SharePoint Server, I believe that being able to quickly preview documents within the browser using TextGlow will be a real productivity boost.
Silverlight 2.0 + OOXML = TextGlow
TextGlow is a world first in that it combines two exciting new technologies from Microsoft: Silverlight 2.0 and OOXML.
Silverlight brings the power of the .NET framework and Windows Presentation Foundation to the browser, enabling the rapid creation of rich interactive applications. Silverlight runs within the browser and works on all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari) and operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux).
OOXML is a new XML based file format specification for Microsoft Office applications. The detailed XML specification makes building applications that read and write Microsoft Office documents easier than it ever has been before.
I think TextGlow is an excellent example of what is possible using these new technologies and I look forward to seeing what other developers, both within Intergen and around the world, can create with them.