The winners of The WPF Challenge have been determined. It was difficult to pick three winners, because many of the submitted applications were very impressive. Here’s the glory story:
First Place – Quixotry by Johnny Turpin
Application: Quixotry is a beautifully designed game, similar to Scrabble. The UI is elegantly simple and intuitive. It provides smooth drag-drop effects for the letter tiles, which is a nice touch. I feel that this application makes use of WPF in an elegant and simple way. The game also has an artificial opponent to play against.
Winner: Johnny Turpin is a multi-dimensional software engineer who has developed an interest and expertise in software design for the 10′ experience. He is currently working for Industry Next, a technology and design firm, where he is a Senior Engineer exploring the latest application frameworks and design patterns and how to apply them to create compelling interactive entertainment applications. He has held previous positions at Apple Computer where he worked in the Video Architecture Group and Minerva Networks where he championed the development of IP Television applications. He can be found around the New York area playing in the band Seems So Bright and enjoys the occasional competitive game of foosball and tennis.
Second Place – WPF Physics (desktop version) by Chris Cavanagh
Application: Cavanagh’s WPF Physics desktop application is a very fun and dynamic UI, which uses a physics engine he wrote. The animations are very slick and realistic. This application demonstrates that WPF can really shine in unexpected ways.
Winner: I’m a .NET web application developer based in south eastern Minnesota. I moved here (with my wife Nicola and three awesome kids) from England in 2004 with a background in C, C++, Delphi and .NET. It’s been one heck of a ride since then! I spend most of the week knee-deep in ASP.NET and (recently) Flex development. I started following Avalon pretty early and was pumped when WPF was finally released (no more breaking updates – yay!). I’m your typical geek who codes through the day, then codes the rest of the time too (probably in my sleep also; I’ve always got some crazy hobby project on the go). My interest in integrating physics engines with WPF probably comes from my past obsession with 3D graphics coding and games that let me blow stuff up. FYI I’ve got an all-C# physics engine almost ready to roll (based on the Bullet engine) and some funky stuff with BSP trees; hopefully you’ll see that on my blog sometime soon!
Third Place – RSS Reader by Gavrilovici Corneliu
Application: RSS Reader really stands out visually. It is a simple tool which has a great look and feel. It has nice visual effects when changing the category of blogs to view. This application seems to be something that one wouldn’t see in anything HWND based, so it definitely is a “WPF app” worth checking out.
Winner: My name is Corneliu Gavrilovici and I was born in Romania, Cluj Napoca, on the 2nd of July 1984. I’ve graduated a technical high school and afterwards I applied to the Computer Science University and I got accepted. I am now in my third year of study and I also work as a programmer in a well respected company.(this is their site www.softvisioninc.com ) I had an interest regarding computers and programs since I was a teenager and therefore I started programming with the will of fulfilling my needs and dreams. I thank you for contacting me and I hope this brief bio gives you an idea on how I am and do.
Notable Mentions
Three judges were involved with choosing the winners of The WPF Challenge. We did not all agree on which apps were the best (I had to ultimately make that very difficult choice). Here are the apps that were picked as potential winners, but did not make it into the final list.
Chart and Lens Panel by John Stewien
Sticky Spaces by Forrest Miller
You can view all of the submitted applications on this page.
The Judges
Here are the fellows who helped decide which apps won the competition.
Jordan Nolan, Jordan.Nolan@podconsulting.com
I’m a former Infragistics Windows Developer and software consultant in the Boston area. I’ve been extolling the wonders and virtues of WPF for a couple of years now to anyone who will lend an ear. When I’m not blissfully working with .Net I can usually be found indulging my passion for great wine, scotch and cognac.
Nick Thuesen
I’m currently a WPF developer for the New York Times. I’ve spent the last year and a half building the Times Reader application. Lately, I’ve been eating, sleeping and thinking WPF. In my spare time I’m your typical sarcastic geek who writes code in his spare time. (This is when I’m not in a heated philosophical discussion on why Batman could possibly take Superman in a battle royale.) I have a blog where I write posts about subjects I pretend to know a lot about. You can find it at http://www.nickthuesen.com
Josh Smith
I love four things: my girlfriend Denise, the music of J.S. Bach, fine liquors (particularly scotch), and WPF. I’ve been playing classical piano since I was five years old, and programming since around nine or ten. I’ve known Jordan for years now, and worked with him at two different companies. I’ve gotten to know Nick for about one month so far while working with him at The New York Times on Times Reader. Oh yea…I recently just discovered how ridiculously funny South Park is. 🙂