Topaz
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Introduction

Click to popup a large (1180x810) screen shot of Mica's main window with an old style MDI/tabbed interface.

Click to popup a (960x670) screen shot of the Topaz main window with an explorer style interface.

During the Xmas break of 2007 I started creating an application suite called Mica which was going to be a general purpose application with a Windows app and ASP.NET (and perhaps Silverlight) app to interrogate and update the Nancy Street Library Database. The Windows app eventually worked reasonably well and I've been using since then for searching, updating and printing the contents of the database. However, the fact that it used a SQL Server Express database made it very difficult to distribute to friends who may like to use it, and the hybrid MDI/tabbed interface made it difficult for novices to use.

Around April 2010 I decided to start a fresh hobby project and rewrite Mica in a way that was easy to distribute and easy to use. To solve the distribution problem I decided to use a SQL Server Compact 3.5 database. To solve the ease-of-use problem I decided to use a familar explorer style interface (and I plan to use WPF to create lovely animated ways of manipulating images and other screen elements).

The new application project is called Topaz. The first vital task is to create a Windows desktop application to replace the functionality of Mica where it is easy to manipulate titles, names, media, genres, pictures and the other supporting tables.

When Topaz reaches a quality level suitable for public use I will publish an installer file so anyone can try it and evaluate it.

To be continued...