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Virtual Places: An amazing Atlas application

If you want to check out what a real-world complex Atlas application would look like, Nikhil put together an amazing Atlas app around Virtual Earth and a few other web services such as Flickr and Amazon.

Not only is this application technically impressive (check out the source code: the page is purely declarative, using only XHTML and XML-script markup), it's also nicely designed and has the classical "Nikhil touch" that you know if you read his blog. Of course it still has a few rough edges like Firefox compatibility and performance but still it's impressive to see what can be done with pre-alpha technology like Atlas.

It's amusing to note that like anything great, it attracts some pretty stupid comment, like this one: "If it's not web standards, it does not belong on the web. Please take that down."

The Virtual Places blog post: http://www.nikhilk.net/VirtualPlaces.aspx

The Virtual Places page: http://apps.nikhilk.net/VirtualPlaces/

Comments

gb said:

cool one!!! it does not work on Firefox.
# November 8, 2005 5:45 PM

Bertrand Le Roy said:

Which, if you read my post more carefully (and Nikhil's) is in plain sight. The reason why it doesn't currently run on Firefox is not Atlas (which runs fine on IE, Firefox and Safari) but funny things like SVG, transparency and stuff. Nikhil didn't have time to fix all those before his November 7th deadline, that's all.
# November 8, 2005 6:20 PM

Steve said:

Utterly fantastic. And boo-hoo to the naysayers, this is great work. I think what is most impressive is that it is all done declaratively like you mention, which is fantastic.

I hope to see a rich set of Atlas based controls (preferrably with drag and drop capability like the ASP.NET controls). Even better would be a good UI for interconnecting these controls.

Again, great work, it deserves some attention!
# November 9, 2005 10:10 PM