14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Microsoft announced a collaboration with TheFind, the result of which is the release of Glimpse Catalogs, which proposes a new HTML5 online shopping experience.
For those out of the loop, we should note that TheFind is a leading vertical search engine for shopping, with millions of users already accessing its services and with a 2012 Appy Award for the Best Retail Shopping App added to its portfolio.
The company is one of the fastest growing companies on the web today, and goes by the slogan: “Every Store. Every Product. All At Once.”
Microsoft provided the company with help in its goal to combine its award-winning app experience, “Catalogue,” with a social shopping app on Facebook.
“The goal was to create something that would leverage the immense reach of the web without compromising the beauty, richness and performance of an app. We were excited to help,” Microsoft’s Ryan Gavin, general manager, Internet Explorer, notes in a blog post.
As mentioned above, the result of this collaboration was Glimpse Catalogs, which offers an HTML5 experience for users to flip through the web the same as they would through a catalog they received in the mail.
With access to TheFind’s extensive product index, Glimpse provides users with the possibility to view more products than what other search engines or shopping sites would be able to offer.
Moreover, Glimpse comes with integrated Facebook’s “Like,” so that items are curated based on what users and their friends like. However, one can also choose to browse products by brand.
“You can flip a page using your finger or a mouse, with stickiness in the corners so pages turn just like the real thing, and content appears on both sides,” said blog post explains.
“The whole experience feels real, with pages even more life-like on touch devices, and discovering products is made easy through the clever use of hot spotting technology.”
While users will enjoy all these features, there is also something in the deal for developers to take advantage of: the HTML5 book framework that was used to bring Catalogues online.
It was built on turn.js, comes with a feature-rich jQuery plugin that enables page flipping, and includes schema and code for the hot spotting technology, code for 3 presentation views for the book, and enhanced IE 9 support in turn.js. Developers can find the framework on github today.
“Due to its rich support for hardware acceleration, Glimpse runs exceptionally well in IE9 and shines in IE10, particularly with touch. Enthusiasts with a touch capable Windows 8 device will especially see how rich the magazine experience really is as they flip from page to page - and it’s all just a web site,” Gavin concludes.
