January 3rd, 2007

Microsoft's Mix 07 registration opens

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:58 am

Categories: Ajax, Atlas, Design, Devigner Workflow, Expression Studio, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

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I saw over on Cnet that Microsoft has opened registration for Mix 07. I think Mix is going to be a very, very solid conference. As the CNet article notes, this is Microsoft branching out and having a conversation with developers about their web technologies. The fact that Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie are both giving keynotes shows that Microsoft means business and wants to bring designers and developers to the table.

The list of sessions is a pretty good indication that this is going to be a conference anyone following Rich Internet Applications should attend. "WPF/E" is going to play a big part as well as streamlining the "devigner" role with Expression Studio. They've even divided up the sessions into Designer and/or Developer audiences. There is also a TON of Ajax here, which should bring a very interesting crowd and make for engaging hallway conversations.

Some of my favorite sessions are:

• Designing Rich Web Experiences (Audience(s): Designer) - Walk through creating and enriching a customer facing Web experience for Burton Snowboards. Delve deeply into the design with Expression Web and see how to integrate that design into Visual Studio and ASP.NET 2.0. See how to leverage ASP.NET AJAX and push rich media and interactivity farther than ever before with “WPF/E”.
• Driving Your Business through User Experience (Audience(s): Business Decision Maker ) - Hear how tools, technologies and cutting edge design combine to create the user experiences that drive your business. See how a continuum of user experiences can be a powerful lever to differentiate the products and services you offer via the Web.
• Introduction to "WPF/E" (Audience(s): Business Decision Maker, Designer, Developer ) - "Windows Presentation Foundation ‘Everywhere’” (codename) is Microsoft’s solution for delivering rich, cross-platform interactive experiences for the Web and beyond. "WPF/E" will enable the creation of rich, visually stunning and interactive content/applications that run within multiple browsers, and operating systems. In this session, learn more about "WPF/E" and the business value it offers.
• Search Engine Optimization with Rich Media (Audience(s): Business Decision Maker, Designer, Developer) - Increasing search engine discoverability is a key business driver for many Web sites. Explore industry proven techniques for implementing search engine friendly Web applications using both a generic approach, and also Microsoft technologies like ASP.NET and "WPF/E". Learn to improve content indexability and create new ways for exposing data about rich media to indexing engines.

Microsoft is hitting all the right points here. They're focusing on the user experience, on building richer applications and integrating rich media. I can't wait to see this thing go.

November 7th, 2006

Universal Desktop Daily - Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:28 am

Categories: Adobe, Ajax, Apollo, Atlas, Flex, Kevin Lynch, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, Universal Desktop Daily

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• Flash Player 9 penetration statistics are out. It is at 35.9% in the "mature markets" which, according to Emmy Huang, is on pace with Flash Player 8 (which is at 89.1%). I expected this number to be higher, because MySpace began requiring FlashPlayer 9 for all of their visitors. Not everyone does the MySpace thing, but I still thought we'd see a bump.
• Microsoft's "Atlas", err… ASP.NET AJAX… went into Beta 2 yesterday. Usually I don't pay a lot of attention to Ajax technologies, but I after talking to folks at Microsoft, I think this is worth tracking because of possible synergies between it and Windows Presentation Foundation. I covered Atlas back in August.
• James Ward, one of Adobe's Flex Evangelists, gave a presentation on Flex Widgets at the WidgetsLive! Conference yesterday. I have a couple of widget-related posts coming up soon, and while I'm skeptical of anyone starting a business based on widgets, I think they are an interesting way to abstract information and there Rich Internet Technologies are a good fit in that space.
• Kevin Lynch, Adobe's Chief Software Architect, has an article over at Sys-Con which talks about Adobe's plans for the future and how Apollo and Flex fit into that. It is good insight into the course that Adobe is charting.

August 16th, 2006

The tools and technologies of the Microsoft platform

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:06 pm

Categories: .NET 3.0, Atlas, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, WinFX, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

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In a previous post on Microsoft’s Rich Internet Application strategy I talked about the five pillars of the Microsoft platform: Windows, Office, the Web, Devices, and Digital Home/Entertainment (such as Windows Media Center applications, XBOX games). But Parimal gave me a lot more information than that, so I wanted to follow up with a bit more detail. As I mentioned, within those pillars there are different technologies and tools that allow developers and designers to take advantage of the platform while running under one of the pillars.

1) WEB

Under the web, Parimal described the "differentiated browser experience for the Windows/IE platform" which used Microsoft’s WPF XBAP; "differentiated ubiquitous experiences for X-platform, X-browser, device scenarios" which used "WPF/E;" and the "standards based web experiences" which developers/designers could tap into by using Microsoft’s "Atlas" project.

The Web pillar gives developers a chance to use Visual Studio for their "Atlas" and WPF development as well as the Expression Suite (when it is released) to create very powerful interfaces.

2) WINDOWS

When you are working with Windows smart clients, there is the enterprise environment and the consumer environment. For the enterprise windows development, Microsoft will continue to support Windows Forms, but they are going to make sure that there is interoperability between WinForms and WPF, which allows enterprise/line of business scenarios to leverage the functionality of WPF such as interactive data visualization. This can be accomplished by hosting WPF controls in your WinForms applications. For developers creating differentiated/consumer facing Windows smart client applications, WPF will be the technology of choice.

3) DEVICES

For devices, it’s again WPF/E because WPF/E is Microsoft’s X-platform, X-browser, devices platform. "WPF/E" will allow developers and designers to create engaging, branded experiences in "reach scenarios".

4) Office

For office, Microsoft offers Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO).

 

5) DIGITAL HOME/ENTERTAINMENT

Finally in the entertainment/gaming pillar, Microsoft is continuing to push its DirectX standard and Windows Media Center technologies, which anyone who has played a video game should be familiar with.

This is all about the platform, it is about who can get their platform to the most developers and in the most places. Google is a fantastic company, but they need a platform to build on. Thus far, they’ve been able to use the web as a platform, and it has worked out quite well. But there is more to the internet than the web, and companies like Adobe and Microsoft are trying to get their platforms in every conceivable corner of the web. For Microsoft, this depends very heavily on their properties, which makes good business sense. For Adobe, the idea is to be as open as possible with their platform and let developers do whatever they want. I think there is room for both, but ultimately the developers and consumers will decide what is most important.

August 10th, 2006

Microsoft's Rich Internet Application strategy

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:53 pm

Categories: .NET 3.0, Atlas, Experience, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

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I had a phone call Monday with Parimal Deshpande, senior product manager for Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft User Experience to talk about Microsoft’s overall user experience (UX) strategy and also a little bit about WPF XAML Browser Application (XBAP), a technology I labeled as a competitor to Adobe’s Flex. After talking with Parimal, I feel like I have a good idea about where all of Microsoft’s products fit into their overall UX/RIA strategy. It is clear that at Microsoft, there is a wide range of UX platform technologies (including tools such as Visual Studio and Microsoft Expression) depending on whether you are looking for richness versus reach. In addition, there is a lot of interoperability between technologies. For instance, Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E), a "reach" technology, can be leveraged to offer a standalone XPAB solution, a "richness" technology. With Adobe, the idea has always been that the same technology can provide richness and reach. Flash Player behaves the same if it is on a Mac, or Windows.. That said, there are things that can be done with WPF that can’t be done with Adobe’s technologies. The hardware acceleration allows developers to take advantage of 3D data visualization and WPF integrates very well in the Windows platform. In the end, each developer needs to take a look at what the most important aspects of the project are and choose accordingly.

 

Parimal described the five pillars of the Microsoft platform: Windows, Office, the Web, Devices, and Digital Home/Entertainment (such as Windows Media Center applications, XBOX games). Within those pillars there are different tools and technologies that allow developers and/or designers to take advantage of the platform while running under one of the pillars. Within the pillars there are some more specific directions. For instance under the web, Parimal described the "differentiated web/browser experience for the Windows platform" which used Microsoft’s XBAP; "differentiated ubiquitous experiences for X-platform, X-browser-device scenarios" which used "WPF/E;" and the "standards based web experiences" which developers/designers could tap into by using Microsoft’s "Atlas" project. When you are working with Windows, there is the enterprise environment and the consumer environment. For the enterprise windows development, Microsoft will continue to support Windows Forms, but they are going to make sure that there is interoperability between WinForms and WPF , which allows Line of Business scenarios to leverage the power of WPF. This can be accomplished by hosting WPF controls in your WinForms applications, or vice-versa. For developers creating differentiated/consumer facing Windows smart client applications, WPF will be the technology of choice. For X-platform-X-browser and devices, WPF/E will allow developers to create engaging, branded experiences. Finally in the entertainment/gaming pillar, Microsoft is continuing to push its DirectX standard and Windows Media Center technologies, which anyone who has played a video game should be familiar with.

What should be unsurprising about the Microsoft vision is that it encompasses everything from your Smartphone to your Xbox. And for developers, the fact that Microsoft is fully engaged across the spectrum of access points could be a big draw. Their platform has a lot of strength to draw on, and I think when Vista comes out, people are going to be impressed with the experience. If Microsoft can gain momentum for that, then their RIA strategy will benefit.

August 3rd, 2006

Microsoft and Ajax

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 10:36 pm

Categories: Ajax, Atlas, Microsoft

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I had an interesting conversation today with Keith Smith from the Atlas project at Microsoft and I recently talked to Andre Charland and Dave Johnson of eBusiness Applications (they are doing some amazing things with Ajax) . If you’ve read my posts, you know that I’m not really big on using Ajax to build applications. I think it’s a good technology and that it adds a lot to the experience, but building applications with it limits that application to the confines and rules of the browser. In this day and age, those are simply too limiting for the kinds of experiences that we can deliver.

However Atlas is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, because there may be some Atlas and WFP integration down the road. Keith was very clear that the two teams haven’t talked and nothing is planned right now, but he did say that he was always looking for products within Microsoft that would help Atlas. WPF would undoubtedly be one of those products, especially with XBAP applications that are meant to run inside the browser. The other reason it is interesting is because it’s fully cross platform, and they plan to keep it that way for the foreseeable future. While Microsoft does have Office for the Mac and they have developed applications for other platforms, they tend to not be well supported. Ajax by its very nature is cross platform, and Microsoft seems to have embraced it with Atlas so it will be very interesting to see how they treat Ajax moving forward.

The other thing that got me thinking about Ajax today was a post by Matt Miller titled Too Much Ajax. Matt had an interesting quote about sites that use too much Ajax breaking the way the browser operated. I’ve always felt that the browser model is outdated. It was conceived in an era when usability was the last thing on people’s minds. It’s an antiquated system which is why web applications running in a browser is a recipe for disaster. But when pages use Ajax within the browser, for simple things that enhance the experience and make the flow more natural, then it’s very impressive. It rejuvenates the browser model and in many ways humanizes it.

I still don’t believe in Ajax as a web application tool. The browser was never meant to handle applications, and we shouldn’t be limiting functionality to fit within the browser’s restrictiveness. But it does make the web a better place, and for that, I’m glad.