FYM Service 2.0

I have been busy over the past few months working on a new version of FYM Service. I was inspired recently by some of the new Microsoft .NET technologies being released and thought I could bring a new richer experience to the program. Also I wanted to act on a request Jim Hill made to me last year to produce a new client for Big E.

Technologies
I have used .NET 3.5 for this application. I wanted to make use of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF for short) to enhance the user experience. I also needed to get to know it for work so this project as a good way to do this. SQL Compact 3.5 has also been used to proved the persisted data store for data used by the application. This then allowed me to used LINQ. Anybody programming in IT will understand how this framework can make development so much easier.

Learn more about WPF at http://windowsclient.net/ and LINQ at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb308959.aspx

Functionality (What's New)

• Big E Client - Big E now has a client that works more like a normal email program. It has spell checking, subject lines, bulk addressing by railroad and can now send attachments also. Attachments will be handy for those sending there wags to others.
• Train Viewer - Your trains, runthrus and yard jobs can now be viewed in a list format with greater details about the train. Selecting a train will also show a view similar to the train information form in FYM, but will now show an image representing the engine and cars in the train.
• Train Gifs - The train gifs shown in the train viewer are fully configurable. You can set your own gif to represent a particular rail roads engine or car, or just set new defaults.

Screen shots
Here are some screen shots of the application so far.

This is the train viewer
The new big E client

Notification window (Train animates across the window)
Beta Testing
I am nearly finished the main development of the application so I will soon be releasing a beta version for testing. If anybody is interested in participating in the beta test please contact me. I am looking for a variety of PC specifications and operating system to get this tested on . So if you can help then please let me know.

Train Gifs
The train gifs I have used were collected from a number of websites and I am in the process of contacting all the authors. I have about 455 gifs embedded in the application but at the moment I have only configured a few defaults. So if any body who beta test is interested in building the configuration that uses more of the gifs available then please let me know.

Thats is for now. I have neglected my yard in FYM so I should probably get back into them now that less work is required on FYM service.