February 21st, 2007
"WPF/E" not shipping first release with C# and CLR support
Microsoft is talking about it's Expression Studio product at the Future of Web Apps event in London and Tim Anderson had some interesting information from some of the folks working the Microsoft booth:
A couple of notes on Microsoft, a newcomer to this conference and showing off the Expression range of design tools. First, I noticed that several ex-Macromedia folk are now working for Microsoft, including Andrew Shorten who presented Flex here last year. Shake-out from the Adobe merge, but good for Microsoft in my view. Second, the first release of WPF/E will be soon, but without C# and CLR support; this will follow in the second release. Interesting, especially since Flash 9 already has a JIT compiler for its JavaScript implementation. However the plan is that there won’t be a long wait for the updated WPF/E - less than a year, I was told.
Obviously the "WPF/E" bit is interesting news. I had been told that a CLRified version of "WPF/E" would be shipping in the 1.0 release but I think the plan for the team is to make a lot of small updates in quick succession so that they can grow the product as customer needs expand. It's a good strategy, but even "less than a year" is a long time to wait for managed code.
The other interesting part of the quote is the mention of a lot of the ex-Macromedia folks working at Microsoft. While a lot of these guys have been at MSFT for a long time, Andrew Shorten is one name that caught my eye. He was a pretty big part of the Flex world in the UK and I wholeheartedly agree with Tim that the merger shakeout seems to have worked out well for Microsoft. Andrew seems like the kind of guy that would be a tough loss. It will be interesting to see what he does now that he's on the other side of the RIA fence.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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