Windows Vista offers a higher fidelity graphical experience over previous operating systems, including Windows XP running .Net 3.0. We're not just talking about the new Aero look and feel, but Vista itself has superior rendering capabilities due to its new WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) to leverage the power within the video graphics cards. For instance, 3D rendering under Vista includes a feature called anti-aliasing, which provides a smooth and crisp 3D experience. Without anti-aliasing, the 3D objects would appear to have jaggy-edges, taking away from the visual experience. The importance of a feature like this is huge when it comes to a product like StandOut, whose value proposition is rich, cinematic-style visuals that feel like fluid and engaging motion pictures.

There are three Windows Vista features that Electric Rain has utilized that enable us to do things we couldn’t do before.

1) Windows Vista Side Bar Gadget
While Side Bar Gadgets appear as a rather benign feature on the surface of Windows Vista, Electric Rain is exploiting this feature within the StandOut Presentation Solution to increase a presenter’s productivity in preparing for a presentation. Electric Rain realizes that much of a presenters time preparing for a presentation is in gathering the content, but the most ideal time to gather content is not when you begin to work on your presentation, but rather the days leading up to your presentations, found in the course of your daily work activities (because the presentation is always in the back of our mind). So we’ve developed a mini-Flypaper gadget that is always available on the user’s desktop via a Side Bar Gadget. During the course of a normal workday a presenter can simply drag and drop content to our mini-Flypaper gadget (including text, pictures, or web pages) that he or she comes across in an email, web page, or other applications to use within their presentation. Then when the presenter is ready to begin working on the presentation, they just open StandOut Presenter Edition application and content is there waiting for the user to begin organizing, refining, and expressing in a graphically rich way. We’re actually using the Side Bar as a natural workflow extension in how people think and preparing for business presentations. Additionally, it helps the presenter get past the ‘blank screen syndrome’ of asking themselves ‘where do I start?’ when they are presented with a blank white slide of typical slideshow software.

2) Enhanced Common Dialog Search
Electric Rain StandOut Presentation Solution makes use of the readily available index search capability found in Windows Vista’s common dialog box (e.g. File | Open). Microsoft has enabled ISV’s such as Electric Rain to tap into the deep searching of a user’s machine, and since collecting content for a business presentation is so time consuming, this feature will increase our user’s productivity by enabling them to quickly and efficiently search, organize, and visualize the content needed for their presentations.

3) Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
While WPF is not a Windows Vista only specific feature (as it is also available on Windows XP via .NET 3.0), it is this underlying power of WPF that is enabling Electric Rain to truly innovate. We no longer have to compromise our designer’s GUI vision and innovative features like Flypaper, which means that Electric Rain can now deliver unparalleled, next generation user experiences that truly drive customer value. Additionally, WPF is the cornerstone technology enabling us to solve significant problems for our customers needing to deliver high-impact, rich and engaging presentations.