Fluid Sees ''Avalon'' as Boon to Rich Media Digital Experiences; Prototype Retail Kiosk for The North Face Showcases Full Range of Avalon Technology.

LOS ANGELES -- Fluid, Inc., a pioneer in rich internet application development and online retail innovation, today threw its enthusiastic support behind Microsoft's emerging Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly codenamed Avalon), touting its significant developer productivity, rich media integration and platform flexibility benefits. Using Microsoft's next-generation technology, Fluid created a fully functional prototype in-store retail kiosk for The North Face showcasing the full range of Avalon capabilities in only six weeks, and presented it during the keynote at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 being held here this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

"We're excited to see leading design firms like Fluid leveraging the Windows Presentation Foundation to help organizations like The North Face deliver exciting, differentiated user experiences for their customers," said Forest Key, group product manager in the .NET Developer Product Marketing Group at Microsoft Corp. "The solution truly demonstrates what is possible when the barrier to seamless collaboration between creative graphical design and the powerful functionality of the underlying platform is removed."

The North Face prototype clearly reveals the promise Windows Presentation Foundation holds for creating deeply immersive customer experiences Fluid feels are much closer to interactive television than traditional computer applications. Using full-screen video of actual The North Face-sponsored expeditions, the kiosk allows Avalon's rich media capabilities to serve as the user interface, and delivers an emotional, first-person, entertainment-based avenue for consumers to discover The North Face products. The result is an entertaining and satisfying shopping experience, yet one that methodically moves consumers through the "conversion funnel" to increased sales.

"Development began on day zero using alpha release technology with no documentation, no real tooling beyond hand-coded XAML via Visual Studio with a primary developer who had never worked on a Microsoft platform, and yet because the quality was so good we were still able create a real, fully functional application in just six weeks," said Mark Belanger, founder and chief technology officer of Fluid. "Because of the rich media integration, we were able to take standard user interface components, like a list box, and easily drop in video clips, playing video within a user interface control, which normally would have required us build our own custom control."

According to Belanger, the developer productivity gains realized from Windows Presentation Foundation's new development model, which employs XAML for describing and developing user interfaces, were compelling. Instead of programming everything in C++ or some other language, Fluid developers were able to build the application quickly using less code that was better structured with a clear separation of logic and presentation.

"We were able to use MS Visual Studio, which we were already familiar with, and which we feel is the best interactive development environment on the market today in terms of speed of development and productivity," said Belanger. "This was a major advantage, and very important for us."

Fluid developers were also impressed with how Windows Presentation Foundation handles layout management. Instead of being restricted to a fixed size browser window when building a rich-media Internet application, for example, Windows Presentation Foundation allows the interface to be reconfigured dynamically based on screen resolution or the size of the browser or application window. That's extremely significant from a customer perspective, and it allows developers to give each customer the optimal shopping experience.

"We're excited by the potential of Windows Presentation Foundation to break down the wall that exists between designers and developers when creating the type of richly interactive brand experiences Fluid's online retail customers demand. As e-commerce evolves from simply performing transactions to offering compelling user experiences, Windows Presentation Foundation will be a critical component of that evolution," said Tamir Scheinok, CEO of Fluid. "There is a definite trend among our clients toward cross-channel integration, and the online customer experience development we are currently doing is finding its way to the in-store environment. We see Windows Presentation Foundation becoming an excellent solution for that kind of cross-channel development."

About Fluid

Fluid specializes in building richly interactive, branded experiences that move shoppers through the "Middle Mile" of online retail, from the time a customer arrives at an online retailer's website to the time they perform a transaction, either online or offline. Fluid has been in business since 1990 and its clients include The North Face, Timberland, Design Within Reach, Reebok and Microsoft, among others. More information about Fluid is available at http://www.fluid.com.