November 8th, 2007

MIX08 open for registration

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:39 am

Categories: Microsoft, Mix07

Tags: Rich Internet Application, Conference, Ryan Stewart

One of my favorite conferences of the year, MIX, is now open for registration. Regardless of what you’re doing in the RIA world I think MIX is a must-attend conference. Between MIX and MAX (I think that’s hilarious) you’ll have an excellent view of what’s going to happen next in the ever-expanding realm of rich Internet applications.

What’s new this year? Well Steve Ballmer is giving the keynote for one, which shows the level of commitment that Microsoft has for this conference. The party (always fantastic) is at Tao this year which should be a lot of fun. They have a chunk of the sessions listed on the site. It looks like the big focus for this year will be Silverlight 1.1 and there are a couple of Sync sessions that look interesting.

Last year MIX sold out, so if you want to attend, it’s better to register sooner rather than later. It will be fun to go to this for the first time as an Adobe employee.

April 30th, 2007

My lunch with Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:30 pm

Categories: Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications

Tags: Desktop, Developer, Application, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Corp., Web Browser, Lunch, CLR, Ryan Stewart

Jeff Sandquist of Microsoft set up a lunch for a few of us with Scott Guthrie and Ray Ozzie here at Mix07. It was a great group of people including Richard MacManus (his thoughts on the lunch are up here), Walt Ritscher, Lee Brimelow, Evan Williams, Lynda Weinman, and a couple of other people. Overall it was a great session, we started off on some developer-centric conversation and then went into strategy with Ray.

I asked about the inclusion of the Dynamic Language Runtime, something Scott announced during his part of the keynote and something that garnered a bit of attention. I asked Scott what strategic point of it was and whether or not their developer base had been clamoring for the ability to write Ruby against the CLR. The answer to the second was 'not really'. It's compelling for them, but wasn't a huge draw. The answer to the first was that Microsoft wants to bring as many people as possible into the CLR and give them the freedom to choose what language they want. That's a good story, and I'm curious to see what the end result. Evan Williams, the creator of Twitter, one of the most popular Ruby applications out there said it was going to be great for his team because they could build a Silverlight application on top of Twitter using the same skillset they used to build Twitter itself.

The strategy questions were more interesting. In particular when Lee Brimelow asked Scott whether or not we could see an Apollo-type desktop client for Silverlight now that the CLR runs on Mac. Scott said no, but that precipitated a conversation about "in browser" experiences and "out of browser" experiences (I'm not sure Ray or Scott totally get Apollo). Ray said there is a lot of discussion within Microsoft about what applications should run in the browser and how important close ties to the operating system were for big applications. His insight here was excellent, as the founder of Lotus Notes, he talked about how they tried to create an "abstraction layer" so that they could be cross platform. He said focusing on that abstraction layer made them mediocre on all platforms. With WPF Microsoft gives developers a sandbox with all the trappings of a full desktop application, something users know and understand. With browser applications, he said that the model was a bit restrictive for full applications and said Silverlight will focus on enhancing the web experience and not trying to replicate the desktop. There was some talk of Apollo, but as I said, Ray didn't quite seem to grasp that Apollo applications are really desktop experiences with the ties that he mentioned being important. It will be interesting to see how that plays out between Adobe and Microsoft.

This was my first chance to actually chat and listen to Ray in a closer setting. I was really impressed. I think he really believes in the Rich Internet Application space, even if the implementation of the applications differs. I think it's going to be a good contrast for developers who are looking at the various RIA offerings. Flash and Silverlight aren't clones of each other. In many ways, they differ in their approach to enhancing the web.

April 30th, 2007

Quick thoughts from the MIX keynote

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 9:44 am

Categories: Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight

Tags: Web, Media, CLR, App, Ryan Stewart

I've got the main post coming in a few minutes (it's up now), but here are my "liveblogging thoughts from the keynote today at MIX.

Ray Ozzie is hyping up Win32 applications. He's describing it "as close to the metal" as you can get and praising the virtues of how rich the experiences can be. He tells us "then came this little thing called the web" and is talking about all the freedom it provides. He's telling us that as with other platform shifts, the best solution for this one will be one which blends the two worlds. This is exactly what Rich Internet Applications are and Microsoft is answering with Silverlight. He just used the word "Rich Internet Applications", so John Dowdell should be happy :). Ray is a pretty good pitch man for RIAs. He praises the virtues of rich client applications and the media-rich, complicated applications that RIAs make much easier. Microsoft wants to span "the rich web", "the rich pc", and "the rich device". If I didn't know better, I would think this was an Adobe keynote.

Now we're on to the news. .NET is going into Silverlight, so we DO get a cross-platform CLR (Common Language Runtime). He's using the term "Universal Web". Ray, you should call it the Universal Desktop ;). Quick slideshow of all the nifty WPF applications, Yahoo Messenger (Frog Design), Rosxio,some in house apps and the venerable New York Times Reader.

We've got the CLR in Silverlight and we're on to talking about the Live cloud. I get to sit next to John Musser as he's listing off the APIs. Ray says they're building a services platform. One that leverages the universal web as well as experience first deployments like the PC and mobile devices. The third part of the Silverlight service is "Silverlight Streaming" so you can upload and post Silverlight apps to the Live cloud.

Scott Guthrie's turn. The crowd loves him, big applause. He's going to give us some demos. Okay, Scott is telling us how we actually BUILD apps with Silverlight (also, you can go download it on the community site.). He's defining the "media and RIA" space as a blend of the web and the desktop. Now .NET runs across all of those so you get a common language and common tools across the whole spectrum. Quick info on the media stuff. Most of it's old hat, it is going to be good competition for Flash video though. Avenue A |Razorfish is giving us the down low on the Netflix app. Pretty cool demo, typical media stuff. Silverlight makes it easy with a very high quality codec.

Scott's back, talking about the designer/developer workflow.  Silverlight will focus on that. Expression Studio is shipping today to help with that. Wayne Smith up to tell us about the workflow. (Sadly, my battery is dying - Vista sucks the battery life out of the Mac Book Pro), so I'm going to have to shut down and take mental notes.

April 29th, 2007

MIXing it up at the coming of age party for Rich Internet Applications

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:18 pm

Categories: Adobe, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight, WPF, Windows Presentation Foundation

Tags: Developer, Adobe Systems Inc., Internet, Internet Application, Microsoft Corp., Conference, Ryan Stewart

I'm getting on a plane at 8:00 Pacific Time to head for Las Vegas and Microsoft's MIX conference. With the rumors swirling around about what is going to be announced, this should make for a very news-heavy conference. And even though the most prominent RIA company (Adobe) isn't involved, I can't help but thinking that this is going to be a bit of a coming of age party for Rich Internet Applications.

A ton of time and effort went into the MIX conference. In just a couple of iterations, this has become a big conference for Microsoft with heavyweights like Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie involved. But this isn't your typical Microsoft conference, it's focusing on things like experience, design and 'devigner' workflow. It's talking about technologies like Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation and ASP.NET AJAX, all some form of Rich Internet Application technology.

MIX is partly Microsoft's call for designers. But it's also a call to Microsoft's own developers that this stuff is here and it's important.Adobe and Macromedia always had designers, and when RIAs started to take off, they were able to use that designer base to create some great experiences. But Microsoft has developer numbers that Adobe can't match. For the first time we're seeing the lines between those two groups blur and Microsoft and Adobe are reaching into each others camps trying to grab resources. There's a battle for developers going on, but there is also a battle for designers and a battle for the best workflow. When those areas all come together, we can build some great applications.

MIX is partly Microsoft's call for designers. But it's also a call to Microsoft's own developers that this stuff is here and it's important. In some ways Microsoft is taking a risk by talking to its large developer base about cross platform web technologies like Silverlight. If those developers don't like the Microsoft solution, Adobe will be happy to tell them about others. In the end, MIX is going to bring together a new group of people and get them talking about better software and better experiences. I'll drink to that.

April 24th, 2007

Is Silverlight a Flash competitor or an Ajax play?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 4:20 am

Categories: Ajax, Flash, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight

Tags:

Quick clarification. Flash and Silverlight are obviously competitors when it comes to videos and general features (vector graphics, animation, ect) but the point of the post is more to think about the next step in the value chain. For Flash, that seems to be building rich applications with Flex. For Silverlight, Ajax seems to be the way to add more value. Just trying to clarify the title.

On the road to MIX, every blog post and news tidbit should be taken with a grain of salt. The only thing we have for tangible Silverlight news came out of NAB, a conference that focuses on video. So the full story isn't there yet, but looking at how things stand before MIX, I think Silverlight looks a lot more like an enhancement to Ajax than a true competitor to Flash.

For one thing, the technologies are very, very different. Flash compiles down into a binary, which means it can stream and give you things like progress events as the runtime fires up. Silverlight on the other hand, is just text files, so the runtime has to go from zero to hero before you can do anything. Furthermore, Flash has a ton of functionality encapsulated in the runtime. It has its own JIT compiler, its own scripting language, and a healthy set of controls. Silverlight (as it stands now) uses JavaScript as the scripting language and depends on the browser for most of the interaction processing.

When you use the Flex framework, you can create real, desktop-like applications. Take a look at sites like Fauxto, Scrapblog and Picnik. Those are rich, powerful applications running in a browser and are much closer to full desktop applications than they are to Ajax applications. Silverlight doesn't have anything like that right now. Dave Wolf from Cynergy, a big RIA consulting company, was excited about Silverlight but had this to say:

Today Flex represents a significant portion of the dozens of RIA development projects we are working on with Ajax coming in behind it. Silverlight, for now, does not have the muscle or ability to deliver the kinds of incredible RIA’s we are building with Flex, but do not discount Silverlight moving forward.

Dave's post is a good read because he is coming at it from the standpoint of a company that wants to build Rich Internet Applications for clients. He has a lot of praise for what Silverlight represents, Microsoft's entrance into the RIA world, but understands the shortcomings. So what's the time frame?

Silverlight integrates very well with Ajax and JavaScript. You can create an Ajax application, throw in some XAML and render animations, video and vector graphics easily without modifying your development environment or having to worry about scripting across languages and compilers - Silverlight just uses the browser's. So Silverlight looks like a very compelling sister technology to Ajax, ESPECIALLY Microsoft's own ASP.NET AJAX, which seems to be doing well in the Web 2.0 world.

Right now I'm left wondering if Microsoft's RIA strategy consists of a combination of ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight. If so, we won't be seeing full desktop like applications from that side any time soon. But if we get to MIX and start talking about including parts of the CLR in Silverlight, then this story gets a bit more interesting.

February 22nd, 2007

5 Rich Internet Application conferences you should attend this year

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 7:45 am

Categories: Adobe, Ajax, Apollo, Cynergy, Design, Flash, Flex, Microsoft, Mix07, OpenLaszlo, Rich Internet Applications, WFP/E, WPF

Tags:

This post is long overdue, and I apologize because I think a lot of people may have spent their conference budgets or already made plans. In fact some conferences, like 360 Flex, are already sold out. We have a rich slate of conferences to choose from this year, which I think is an indication of just how much mindshare RIAs have gotten and how many people are excited about things like the "devigner" role. So if you're looking for conferences this year, which ones should you focus on? Here's a list of the 5 most important conferences for developers, designers and RIA enthusiasts of all kinds:

• Dx3 Conference and Expo | Boston | May 15 - 18: They have a great speaker lineup and their covering the widest array of technologies. Whether you're into WPF or Apollo, this conference has it along with sessions on workflow, creating experiences, and how all of the pieces fit together.
• Adobe MAX 2007 : Dates haven't been announced for this yet, but expect it sometime in the middle of the Fall. It's Adobe's signature conference and they do a lot of product releases and pushes around the conference. This year, I'd expect Apollo to be released to the wild if everything is on schedule.
• Microsoft MIX | Las Vegas | April 30 - May 2: This is Microsoft's second iteration of it's conference focusing on designers/developers and it looks to be a good one. With WPF having been released, the Expression Studio being tested by developers and designers and "WPF/E" quickly approaching release, this could be a news making conference. As with MAX, it's vendor focused, but will be Microsoft's cotillion into the design space.
• Web 2.0 Expo | San Francisco | April 15 - 18: The Web 2.0 expo has a suprisingly good RIA track with sessions on Apollo, user experience and the devigner. I'm also moderating a panel on Rich Internet Application Platforms that will help frame the discussion of how we move beyond the browser and onto the desktop. The conference also provides a frame of reference for how Rich Internet Applications fit into the wider web world.
• Ajax World Conference & Expo | New York City | March 19 - 21: This one is right around the corner, but the remaining RIA conferences for the year are Flash-heavy affairs, which is good, but I want to focus on breadth of information. Ajax World has a Flex track, will have some Apollo sessions, has an OpenLaszlo track and highlights a lot of different Ajax technologies including Microsoft's own ASP.NET Ajax which ties in very nicely with "WPF/E". You can even get 700$ off thanks to Cynergy Systems.

Are there any conferences that I missed and you're planning on attending?

January 14th, 2007

Is "Technology X" a desktop version of the .NET Framework for Mac?

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 6:09 pm

Categories: .NET 3.0, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Tags:

This "Technology X" thing on the About page of Mix 07 is killing me. I can't tell if it's something big or something small that I've already heard of. Mary Jo Foley solicited ideas for it and garnered a bunch of responses. WPF/E and WPF are already mentioned on that page though Visual Studio isn't, so maybe "Technology X" is the newest version of Visual Studio which will include "Cider", the WPF designer.

Then I started doing some reading about the Channel 9 video I talked about earlier and discovered some interesting thoughts. Paul Wilson wrote a post titled Breaking News: Future Version of .NET Framework to Run on the Mac and then goes on to back it up with sources, including the video. Now he also doesn't mention a time frame (no one does). This is also only barely related to "web experiences" which are supposed to be enabled by "Technology X". But it would make a pretty big splash. But Paul linked to Keith Elder who talked about the mobile implications for WPF/E. Maybe "Technology X" is a version of WPF/E for devices.

So who knows. Hopefully you guys have better ideas than I do and some thoughts on a subset of the .NET framework on the Mac. If WPF/E supports managed code, I wonder what else has to be done to give developers access to that outside the browser.

January 14th, 2007

Some clarifications on WPF/E from Scott Guthrie

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 2:39 pm

Categories: Expression Studio, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Tags:

On Thursday Channel 9 posted a video with Scott Guthrie and Scott covered a wide array of topics including a bit about Expression and WPF/E. There was also some information that I hadn't ever heard before. Scott said that "2007 is going to be a pretty fun year from a web development standpoint" and with their releases, including IIS 7, Orcas and WPF/E, I think he's right. This post ended up being longer than I thought it would be, but there was a lot of good information that came from this video and it cleared some things up for me that I wanted to point out.

In the beginning he gives an overview of WPF/E talking about the fact that it is a cross browser, cross platform runtime that helps create better web experiences. Then Rory asked about tools for WPF/E and this was something I haven't heard much talk about. WPF/E uses XAML just like WPF, so you can use Expression but I hadn't realized that Orcas, a new version of Visual Studio, is going to support XAML as well. Scott described an interesting workflow. Developers can design a rough user interface with Visual Studio (an IDE with which they should be very comfortable in) and then designers can open up Expression, check that exact same project out, and fine tune the design without having to bother the developer at all. It can also go the other way with designers creating the UI and developers checking that project out in Visual Studio and modifying it as needed. I don't think I understood the workflow before this, but that's a very, very powerful thing if it works.

Scott then describes a bit more about WPF/E and focuses heavily on the Ajax integration. WPF/E seems to be positioned to work very well with Ajax and Scott described how developers can write JavaScript code against HTML elements as well as WPF/E elements interchangeably so that you can code all of the JavaScript together. He also said that managed code is coming (even on Safari and the Mac) and they'll be showing more of that at Mix. He also stressed that WPF/E is going to support multiple Ajax frameworks so that if you're using Dojo or any other framework, WPF/E will fit in nicely. This is becoming an even more compelling story for Ajax developers who want to extend the richness of their applications. And Microsoft seems to be trying to win over a different set of developers because they're going to include a session on using PHP and WPF/E together at Mix.

He talked described XAML and pointed out that it is clear text which makes it easy to share samples, easy to view the source and easy for web browsers to search. I'm not sure those are great points, but I am curious to see how the search engines handle XAML files and whether or not they can get valuable information from them. Scott mentioned two blogs which you should be familiar with, The WPF Blog and Mike Harsh's blog. Both have great WPF/E examples.

Then there was a back and forth that I didn't quite understand. Scott talked about the video features of WPF/E, which was a focus for the CTP and is a big part of the WPF/E story especially when you think about the needs of Ajax developers. But after that he fielded a question from Rory about extending the framework to other platforms. WPF/E will support managed code, so the question has always been what does that mean for .NET? Scott said that they are talking a lot about the in browser experience and the out of browser experience and that there will be more about it at Mix. That gave me big pause and I really wonder how this strategy is going to play out. Obviously Mix is going to be a very, very big deal.

January 5th, 2007

Universal Desktop Daily - Friday, January 05, 2007

Posted by Ryan Stewart @ 1:52 am

Categories: Flex, Microsoft, Mix07, Rich Internet Applications, Rich Media, Universal Desktop Daily, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere

Tags:

Hey, look at this, the first UDD of the new year. I'm sorry I've been slacking this week with these but I've been swamped with work. I still have a lot of fun doing them so hopefully you enjoy a few of the links from time to time.

• Flex 2.0.1 has arrived and Ted Patrick, the Flex Evangelist, has some great information about what this means for RIA developers.
• This post about online video advertising caught my eye. He has some good information about online video and I like his thoughts (and concerns) about where this is headed. Video is here to stay, but I hope we move towards a much nice platform for distributing it and stay away from annoying popups.
• Terrence Ryan of the Wharton School has some predictions for Web Applications in their environment this year. I used to be a Wharton developer which is why this caught my eye but I also think Terry brings some "consumer cred" to the predictions. I especially liked "We will roll out at least one RIA that didn't actually need to be rich."
• Thanks to Rob and K. Scott I found a couple new WPF and "WPF/E" blogs. The first is Eric Lee's blog that will cover Visual Studio Team System and WPF and the second is WPF Wonderland which looks like it's going to be a great resource for WPF and WPF/E. Subscribe and subscribed.
• Mary Jo Foley points out a weird occurrence on the Mix 07 site, a mention of Technology X. I'm not sure what this is, but my curiosity has been piqued. Any ideas?

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.