By Jean-Luc Rognon

Fnac.com, an e-commerce site with over a million product lines and 500,000 unique visitors each day, also wants to take advantage of Vista's new features.

It is using features including WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation, the basis of Vista's graphical interface) to develop new applications. WPF uses the XAML interface description language, a competitor of the Mozilla Foundation's XUL.

"In parallel with the redesign of the Fnac.com Web site, we developed an interface based on Vista's WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) to give surfers an innovative tool to help them choose technical products, which are still the hardest to sell online," said Franck Leprou, director-general of the Fnac.com site.

The tool, which will only be accessible under Vista and XP (after installation of two modules) will allow comparisons based on multiple criteria, with the option of sorting results according to each criterion, a refinement that's not possible on the site today. The application will also work offline, with the surfer able to download to the desktop a selection of products automatically updated next time the computer is connected.