We've written yet another MediaCAT Digital Signage plugin - this one for Estate Agent window displays - except it's not actually a plugin. We actually spent more time arguing over whether it qualified as a plugin than we did writing it. We've now decided it's definitely not a plugin, but we're still not sure what to call it - perhaps a content pack is the best description for it at the moment!

The Estate Agent plugin content pack is designed to read in information about properties from an XML file generated by an Estate Agent's property management database and display a slide show of each property with images, price and description. In this particular case the Estate Agent is running Solex from Vebra, which is able to export details of a selection of properties as an XML file, along with images for each entry.

Each evening, the Estate Agent runs an export from their Solex database and copies the files onto the MediaCAT Digital Signage player across their network using the windows file sharing interface built into the MediaCAT. The Estate Agent content pack provides a web page which can be included into the MediaCAT playlists and scenes just as you would with a normal static web page. This allows the Estate Agent to easily interleave property listings with videos, slide shows or messages about other services they might offer.

The Estate Agent can also create different playlists for different times of day or week. For example they might show adverts for their services or local businesses during the day when there is more pedestrian traffic, but not at night time/weekends when people may spend longer looking at the property listings.

All the clever XML parsing and page display is actually done with Javascript in the browser itself, with a small PHP script used to remember which properties have already been displayed. This makes sure every property in the list gets shown, no matter how many times the playlist includes the page. Being mainly browser based, it is very easy to customise the whole look for the property page - from adding the Estate Agents name and logo, to changing the size and location of images and text on the page.

Using Javascript to parse XML and dynamically build a web page is a remarkably easy way of generating live digital signage displays - especially when you use AJAX calls to refresh the data. It's something we've now used in everything from airport flight information displays to real-time position maps on ferries.

For more information about how MediaCAT Digital Signage players can help your organisation, please visit the MediaCAT web site at www.navaho.co.uk .