January 10th, 2008

Rich Internet application predictions for 2008

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:31 pm

Categories: AIR, Adobe, Ajax, Apple, BuzzWord, Curl, Devigner Workflow, Expression Studio, Flash, Flex, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Online Video, OpenLaszlo, Rich Enterprise Applications, Rich Internet Applications, Rich Media, Silverlight, WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation

Tags: Adobe Systems Inc., Google Inc., AJAX, Microsoft Silverlight, Rich Internet Application, Apple Inc., AIR, Ryan Stewart

2007 was a great year for rich Internet applications. The combination of Microsoft and Adobe in the space took it to the next level. More bloggers started talking about it and the definition of what an RIA even started to expand with things like AIR and Prism bringing RIAs to the desktop. We also saw a lot of traction in the enterprise space with companies like Oracle and SAP looking to augment their user experience with rich Internet applications. 2008 is going to be even better and here’s why (hopefully I’ll do better than my 2007 predictions):

1. Silverlight will get to 200 million installs by the end of June, but it won’t be for 2.0. The stated penetration goal of Silverlight is to get 200 million installs by June. I think they’ll hit that number. Partnerships like Netflix, the Olympics and Jackass are great moves and will push them over the edge. On the downside I think you’ll see a 60-40 split on those installs with 60% of them being the better Silverlight 2.0 runtime and the other 40% being stuck in 1.0 land.

2. AIR changes how people think of the web. Big claim, and obviously as an Adobe evangelist I’m biased, but I love AIR. The 1.0 release of AIR will be cool, people are already starting to check it out and I think people are thinking differently about how to create applications. But I’m most excited about two things on the AIR platform; Linux and version 2.0. If 2008 will finally be the year of Linux on the desktop then AIR is going to help. With a 2.0 release of AIR (I doubt this will be before the end of the year) we should start having things like being able to leverage native code and access devices. Those are going to take the platform to the next level.

3. The browser rides tall with the help of plugins. I talk a lot about the desktop but the browser world continues to innovate. Silverlight and Flash Player in a heated competition is only going to move that forward. We’ll release Flex 3 this year and Silverlight 2.0 should ship this year which means browsers everywhere have the runtimes and programming models people need to create great rich Internet applications. I think this is the year we see browser vendors (even Mozilla) work closely with the creator of runtimes to take advantage of the new features so they can focus on making browsers faster and more stable instead of full of new features.

4. Collaboration becomes a big battle in the RIA space. The battle for creating the best collaboration experience is going to be fought by a number of big companies including Google, Microsoft, Adobe and a number of smaller but important players like Zoho. Web workers are going to be more important this year and they want solutions that help them work. We’re seeing some of that with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, we’ve got Adobe Connect as well as Share and Buzzword and Microsoft’s Office Live. That’s a great first step but this year companies are going to focus more on audio, video, real time data, exchanging smart documents and data visualization. That will help drive both adoption of RIA technologies and the features of RIA platforms.

5. Ajax gets closer to the rich Internet application platforms. I think a lot of people in the Ajax community didn’t see the value of incorporating things like Flash or Silverlight into their applications other than for a small video or for charts. Towards the end of this year I think that attitude changed. RIA companies are going to make it easier for Ajax developers to take bits and pieces of their platforms and Ajax developers are going to respond. We’ll see a lot more “hybrid-RIAs” where developers use a combination of technologies. That will be another reason for the browser vendors to play nicely with plugins.

6. The designer/developer workflow gets a quality overhaul. Helping designers and developers work together on the same project is a hard problem. But this year we’ll make big strides. The interactive designer community will get involved and help hash out some of the biggest problems. Thermo will be a huge step forward and will push Microsoft to do more with Blend. We won’t be perfect by the end but we’ll be engaging new communities and we’ll have a lot of material to draw from to help really solve the problem in 2009.

7. The days of smaller RIA technologies are numbered. I hate to say it but I think technologies like OpenLaszlo and Curl will continue to gain traction in some niches but won’t see widespread adoption. Those companies will still bring revenue but Microsoft and Adobe are pushing too hard and putting too many features into their runtimes for the smaller companies to keep up.

8. Apple makes a land grab for rich Internet applications but no one realizes it. This may have already happened but by the end of the year people will be talking about Apple’s RIA strategy. They’ve got Safari/WebKit, they’ve got the iPhone and they’ve set the bar when it comes to experience. They don’t have as many developers but that’s starting to change so the only thing they need is an RIA tool that competes with Flash. I think that tool has to be coming this year and when it does people will start to talk about Apple and RIAs. They already have a great platform they just need to let people create on top of it.

9. Real time data becomes an important selling point for RIAs. I really hope this is the year of real time. I mentioned the collaboration angle above but I also think that the entire web is going to move in a more real time direction. Instead of sites that use the polling method to get data we’ll see them start to use messaging to send data to the clients. This will have an impact on social networking, gaming, collaboration, finance, and every Web 2.0 startup. It’s going to be a competitive advantage by the end of the year and if you don’t have it you’ll be out of luck. We’ve got BlazeDS an open source project that enables some of that functionality, LiveCycle DS, our big suite and Microsoft has Windows Communication Foundation which is one of the top selling O’Reilly books of last year. We’re close.

10. There will be a fight for HD video on the web. Online video exploded last year and with the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD fight looking like there will be a winner people will turn towards the next generation of distributing media - the web. The web won’t overtake those mediums overnight but the groundwork will be laid this year. I think penetration and runtime quality will be big factors as people want flexibility in how they consume media. Both Adobe and Microsoft will make an HD push with their runtimes as consumer demand goes up. You’ll also see these technologies more easily incorporated downloaded files so they won’t be used only online. Both have been able to do that for a while but recently with AMP we’ve seen more focus in that direction.

11. (Bonus!) Google. I have no clue what Google will do. They’re going to be under more pressure to incorporate some aspects of RIAs such as richer collaboration, real time data and multimedia experiences. Do they push HTML 5 harder? Do they partner with Adobe or Microsoft? Apple? Google Gears will continue to get traction but I don’t think we’ll see widespread adoption even when they finally incorporate it into GMail. They’ve also got the Google Desktop which could play in their strategy at some point. Google is a big question mark for me.

December 17th, 2007

My rich Internet application predictions for 2007. How did I do?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 6:04 am

Categories: AIR, Adobe, Ajax, Apollo, Apple, Curl, Devigner Workflow, Flex, Microsoft, OpenLaszlo, Prism, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight, WFP/E, WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere, XUL, XULRunner

Tags: Microsoft Silverlight, Verdict, Adobe AIR, Microsoft Windows Vista, Rich Internet Application, Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Ryan Stewart

2007 was a pretty good year and it saw me end up with a lot of changes including starting work for Adobe in June. I’ve got some thoughts on what’s in store for 2008 and also a summary of 2007 planned but I think it’s best to first go back and look at my rich Internet application predictions for 2007 to see how I did. I made 10 predictions and I’ll score either a yes or no for each one.

1. Vista is going to raise the bar for experiences across the board.
Well I thought Vista changed a lot of things but unfortunately Vista itself just didn’t do well at all. In order for it to raise the bar I think it has to have sold a lot of copies and gotten people talking about new kinds of user interfaces.

Verdict: No (0 - 1)

2. Adobe’s Apollo is going to be much better than expected.
It’s hard to quantify “much” better but I do think that Apollo (now AIR) has had a successful year. A lot of developers have created applications and over 3 betas we’ve got a strong developer base. I thought it would go without saying that we’d have a 1.0 release by now, but I didn’t make that prediction.

Verdict: Yes (1-1)

3. Microsoft is going to make inroads into the design market.
Tough call. Expression Studio has done well as part of the designer/developer workflow in the .NET stack. Does that count as the design market? Then again is Expression Studio even targeted directly at the design market? Maybe to rephrase the question a year later I’d ask “are designers using Expression Studio” and they are.

Verdict: Yes (ish) (2-1)

4. The Designer/Developer workflow will get some mainstream press.
We saw a TON of attention to the designer/developer workflow with Blend getting a new version and Thermo coming out but the mainstream designers still aren’t talking about it. Maybe this is one to revisit for next year.

Verdict: No (2-2)

5. Apple is going to make a play in Rich Internet Applications
Oh Apple, when are you going to step up and show us your RIA strategy? This year Apple did a lot and there is still a lot of energy and excitement around WebKit. The new CSS features and the video tag have moved WebKit closer to an RIA platform but Apple still hasn’t made the play I thought they would.

Verdict: No (2-3)

6. Competition for technology in the online video space will heat up.
This is probably the one I got the most right. Silverlight was released, Flash and even Move networks all started competing for online video. The price of Flash Media Server dropped, Flash got H.264 support, and the content delivery networks started focusing on HD quality. It was a great year for online video.

Verdict: Yes (3-3)

7. Flex becomes the primary technology for building Rich Internet Applications.
Flex had a great year but is it the primary technology for building RIAs? I think at this stage of the game it’s the most mature but primary is a strong word. One thing that’s happened over this year is that the field of RIAs has really blown up. We’ve got Curl, Ajax getting more advanced and Silverlight/WPF applications in the wild. It’s too tough to call Flex the primary technology.

Verdict: No (3-4)

8. “WPF/E” will have a higher penetration than Apollo.
I’d forgotten I predicted this and it actually gave me pause for thought. Would I make this prediction again now that I work for Adobe? Yup, I would. I have no idea what the actual numbers are but AIR isn’t out yet while Silverlight shipped a 1.0 version. Combine that with the fact that Silverlight has gotten some attention on the Microsoft homepage and lined up some good partners and I think it probably wins the penetration game.

Verdict: Yes (4-4)

9. The Mozilla platform and Apollo will fight for the cutting edge Ajax developers.
Another tough one. AIR has done really well with Ajax developers for the most part and Mozilla has been very true to its browser mission. , the desktop runtime they released this year, speaks to that browser mentality and encourages Ajax developers to keep building for the browser. But in the prediction I used XUL as engine by which Mozilla would try to get the cutting edge developers. It didn’t really materialize that way and I’m not sure the cutting edge Ajax developers have gone to AIR either.

Verdict: No (4-5)

10. OpenLaszlo is going to be a beacon for open source developers looking to build Rich Internet Applications.
Interestingly enough it wasn’t OpenLaszlo that made the big open source splash but Flex. OpenLaszlo had a decent year but it was tough to rally the open source troops when 1) they didn’t seem that interested in RIAs in general and 2) your biggest competitor also goes open source. OpenLaszlo did a lot to move closer to Ajax though, so they’ve broadened their appeal this year.

Verdict: No (4-6)

Ouch! only 4 out of 10 last year. Despite my abysmal record, it really was a good year for RIAs. Stay tuned this week for my yearly roundup. Expect the 2008 predictions next year after everyone gets back from vacation. How do you think I did in 2007?

August 29th, 2007

Why a good designer-developer workflow is important

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 12:07 pm

Categories: Design, Devigner Workflow, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Software, Developer, Brain, Apple Inc., Workflow, Ryan Stewart

The “designer-developer workflow” has become almost a buzzword among the people following rich internet applications but it’s something that I continue to think about and I want to make sure it doesn’t lose meaning. Designers have always been able to create beautiful experiences. Whether that’s a painting, a sculpture, a web page or some form of artwork, they know how to evoke emotion and reach out to the people viewing the piece. They appeal to our right brain. Developers on the other hand are task oriented and are obsessed with making things work and adding function. I think every developer also wants whatever they’re creating to look good, but ultimately the left brain can’t appeal to our eyes as well as something a designer would cook up.

Just like human beings, it’s when the left brain and the right brain come together that we really excel. Anyone who has been in the industrial design world knows how powerful the combination of form and function can be. Apple has created a $115 billion company based almost on that premise alone. In the software world we’ve never had anything like that. It’s easier to manipulate physical objects than it is to manipulate bits. The processes for creating beautiful things has been perfected and refined over hundreds of years. But not in the software world.

If we’re going to start seeing beautiful software we need to make it easy for the right brain and the left brain to work together. It’s a sophisticated problem. How do you combine a designer’s vision with the requirements of productive software? How do you help designers take their ideas and turn those into interfaces that developers can code around? That’s why the designer-developer workflow is so important. Once you make it easy for them you give both designers and developers the freedom to push what’s possible with software. You’ll end up with experiments in usability, design, and interfaces that will help make software better. There will be growing pains, but ultimately end users will win.

The key now is to figure out what that workflow should be. I’m looking forward to a lot of spirited debate around that. Once we convince more people of the value we can start to have conversations about best practices. That will be a lot of fun.

March 6th, 2007

What Creative Suite 3 means for Rich Internet Applications

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 8:59 am

Categories: Adobe, Creative Suite, Devigner Workflow, Flash, Rich Internet Applications

Tags:

There was a whole lot of buzz yesterday about the announcement date for CS3 being March 27th. As JD noted, an announcement date doesn't equal a ship date, but I'm not entirely sure what it means to "announce" a product that everyone knows is coming. In any case, there's a lot of fanfare with this release and a couple of them are a pretty big deal for RIAs.

First, Adobe makes great tools, and for the first time, those tools are going to be released all at once and talk to each other like never before. Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, all of these design tools have been put through the rigors of the "integration process" and for the most part, come out ahead. There are some very cool designer-developer workflow things planned for CS3, some have been talked about, others are being kept a secret. From what I can tell, there will be some pleasant surprises for "devigners" everywhere.

Second, with CS3 comes a universal binary version for the new Intel Macs. The math on this is a bit fuzzy, but the chatter seems to indicate that people have been waiting for CS3 to upgrade to the new Macs, Larry Dignan has some good quotes on this. The fact that the biggest sites talking about the March 27th date are Mac-oriented seems to bear this out. So in theory, with a "complete experience" now available on the Mac, more people will be upgrading. If those people move from Mac to Windows, the cross platform story for all RIA solutions becomes more important. We won't know for a while if all these people waiting for CS3 are Mac folks who want to upgrade or Windows users who want to switch, but it's worth watching.

CS3 is without a doubt a huge deal for Adobe. These products are their bread and butter and this is the first time you can by Photoshop in the same bundle as Flash. Those tools continue to help shape the web and allow people to create great experiences. If the integration between products goes well, Adobe has a much easier job keeping their designers happy and can use that to shore up the developer side.

March 5th, 2007

Tool for creating "WPF/E" apps on the horizon?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 4:45 pm

Categories: Devigner Workflow, Expression Studio, Microsoft, Rich Internet Applications, WFP/E, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Tags:

I always feel a odd bringing up shortcomings for products that are still very much in development like Apollo or "WPF/E", but one of the complaints I've heard about WPF/E is the lack of a specific tool targeted at the XAML that WPF/E uses. Blend is a great tool for designing full WPF applications, but trying to port those applications gives mixed results. The export to WPF/E XAML hasn't worked well enough for the developers I talk to.

But the guys over at the excellent revolUXions show dropped a bit of a hint about what might be coming for Blend and WPF/E:

We are postponing our WPF/E episode, as we're waiting for certain tools for WPF/E to be released by Microsoft. However, don't be disappointed. We have some major stuff to cover regarding WPF/E that you will not find anywhere else. Trust me. :)

I'm almost afraid to hope, but ideally it would be great for FULL support for WPF/E in Blend. When Eric Zocher showed the "map" of tooling for Ajax, WPF/E, and WPF, there was a big hole for WPF/E between Expression Web and Expression Blend. Blend is the natural tool, so if they're adding special WPF/E extensions or allowing you to create WPF/E specific projects, that would be a big step forward and should help WPF/E adoption when it's released.

February 27th, 2007

Adobe Engage: Designer Developer Workflow

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:15 pm

Categories: Adobe, Design, Devigner Workflow, Flash, Flex, Rich Internet Applications

Tags:

Sho is beginning by introducing Flex 2, talking about how the framework is free, the just-in-time compiler and that it's based on the Flash Player. All pretty basic stuff. He's now talking about the typical workflow and dividing people up into three categories. Information Architect/Interaction Designer, Visual Designer, Motion Designer, Developer. He goes on to describe what they've found, that designers need freedom to design and the developers need to easily transform that by adding structure and functionality.

Now we are looking at Illustrator and Sho is going to demo the work they've done getting Flex and Illustrator to talk to each other. He has the skeleton of a Flex application, and a matching skin in Illustrator. By breaking the Illustrator files into symbols and labeling them then exporting that as a SWF, you can bring it into Flex. To get the skin to display, you point CSS assets at the exported SWF file and the application skins automatically.

It was a good demo, but I still think Microsoft has them beat with Blend. The fact that Blend is a tool made specifically for Interaction Design is a huge jump in getting designers and developers to work together. It may take a bit to get that workflow down, but I think Blend has a big headstart in getting that part of the market.

The big bombshell for me was that Adobe is making it possible to design animations and transitions in Flash, then export those as SWFs and allow Flex developers to use those transitions right within Flex. We've been having a big problem with that in our app, so I think that's going to be huge in bringing Flash and Flex together from a workflow standpoint.

February 22nd, 2007

It's the experience stupid!

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:48 am

Categories: Design, Devigner Workflow, Experience, Rich Internet Applications, User Interface

Tags:

Talking about specific technologies is fun and covering the news is good, but in the end, why the hell do we care about Rich Internet Applications? What's the point? Why does having a better designer-developer workflow matter? Because if we focus on experience, we're going to make software better and in the process usher in the next generation of applications. Rich Internet Applications are a huge step forward in that progression because they set new rules for what both web applications and browser applications can be.

Sanjay Parthasarathy, the vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism group at Microsoft had a great keynote for the Developer Launch Event and talked about talking software to the point where users are emotionally connected to it. It sounds kind of silly to think about software in that light, but that's exactly what we need to do. Think about the evolution of the car. When it was new, people were consumed with just getting it to work. They tinkered, tried new things, and some of those stuck. As it progressed, we commoditized it. Henry Ford told the world they could have any color Model-T in the world as long as it was black. People weren't supposed to care what their car looked like, just that it worked. I think that's where we were with software as recently as a year ago. Software did it's job and that's all there was to it. Efficient user interfaces were good user interfaces and software was basically a commodity. But with the car, people realized that it was as much art as it was machine. They thought about ways to make the car technologically better but also more comfortable and user friendly. Technological evolution is important in software, but while we're evolving technically, we also need to be evolving on the design front. With a good "devigner" workflow, you can make your software a Mercedes. Make the experience one that invokes a lot of emotion and makes the end user passionate. Build the kind of interfaces that people want to set as their desktop backgrounds. Just as Mercedes can charge a fortune for a car, sophisticated, pixel perfect applications can command a premium.

So how do we justify that to the people who make the decisions? Well the most important thing to figure out is who makes the decision. Matt Voerman has a great post that talks about getting buy in for great user interface technologies. You still have to sell good design to people, but it's becoming easier. Start talking about putting the user interface first. The technology crowd is inclined to focus on the back end or the developer side of things, but the user is ultimate what makes an application succeed and fail. Help raise expectations in your organization by talking about user experience and how it provides value. If your application is easier to use, the people who actually work with it will be more productive and can spend their time valuably. It starts with the user experience and we finally have the tools and processes at our disposal to make UX a big part of the process.

February 9th, 2007

User Experience, Rich Internet Applications and the future of software

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 3:45 am

Categories: Design, Devigner Workflow, Experience, Rich Internet Applications, Rich Media

Tags:

I had a great conversation tonight with a group of people including Mark Piller of Midnight Coders that helped me bring together my thoughts on how software should look down the road. One of the things I constantly wrestle with is where desktop apps fit into the RIA world and how Rich Internet Applications can enhance software. Let's first look at the things that are mostly good from both a user and developer standpoint:

• A rich user experience
• A central destination that applications automatically update from and developers can push out new versions
• A workflow that allows designers and developers to easily create a compelling application
• Access to data whether the client is connected to the web or not
• Seamlessly integrated multimedia

Now things that are bad:

• Being locked into one platform
• Applications restricted by the browser model
• Messy, intrusive installations
• An installation required for every application we use

The underlying problem is that we associate the web with the browser. The browser is a terrible implementation for web applications, but there are specific traits that are so closely tied with the browser that it becomes hard to isolate them. For instance people love the fact that you can browse to a destination and have access to your application. We associate that with typing a URL into the browser and having a web application show up. But why does that have to be in a browser? Why couldn't we use the central destination model with an application on the desktop? Does that app even need to be installed? What if it's just an icon on the desktop that loads something from a central server? What if it's just a couple of files in the application directory?

At the same time when we're working with applications in the browser, they haven't been able to compete with the experience of desktop applications. The browser model is restrictive and it shows. Pushing Ajax to the limits just ends up showcasing how far we still need to go. The key is a rich, desktop like experience but with the flexibility of a browser-based application.

The current crop of RIA technologies are really evolutionary steps, and Erick Doleki has a nice post along these lines. Flex, Apollo, "WPF/E" and WPF are all moving in the direction of the perfect app - one that pulls centrally from the web but actually resides on the client. We're starting to see the convergence, which is one reason why these technologies are so exciting. At the same time, we are seeing a huge focus on the actual experience of the applications and how a great designer-developer workflow can make a big difference. That's a key point in reaching software nirvana. We can't just port web apps to the desktop or vice versa. We have to build a great experience around the next generation. That requires talent and tools, which is why innovation in that space is so important.

In the future, we really will have no distinction between "browser based apps" and "desktop apps" but that doesn't mean that one or the other will win. The mixture of both is what really makes the next generation of software compelling. The sooner we ditch the browser, the sooner we can make the leap. That's one of the things Rich Internet Applications enables.

January 31st, 2007

Cynergy: Showing why experience matters in Rich Internet Applications

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 11:07 am

Categories: Cynergy, Design, Devigner Workflow, Flex, Rich Internet Applications

Tags:

Dave Wolf of Cynergy announced today a new initiative by the firm to showcase some of its applications. Cynergy is one of my favorite Rich Internet Application development firms and I have always thought they do a great job of pushing the envelope and really showing the ROI for a better experience and richer applications. Unfortunately, they haven't had a chance to show off those applications to the world, but it looks like CynergyTV will change that:

Episode One: The Flex Showcase is now available. We are launching the showcase with 4-5 apps Cynergy has built for our clients with many more to come very soon. As we continue to work with our clients to be able to openly and publicly demonstrate their solutions, the showcase will continue to grow and we hope it can be a real go-to place to visit to see how Cynergy and our customers from around the world and across industries are designing and developing RIAs.

They've built a Flex application to show off some of the RIAs they've built but haven't been able to make public in any form until now. The showcase application itself looks great, but the applications that they go into detail on really show off how good Flex can be. These aren't the cookie cutter Flex applications that you so often see, these applications are fully customized and branded and it's clear that a lot of design and UI planning went into them. It demonstrates how good the applications can be with this medium, especially when you have a great team in place.

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

Tags:

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.