Architects Rule! : RIA

UI extreme makeover = UI2

pdestoop — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:54:00 GMT

According to AMR Research, UI2 = user interface x user interaction

The next iteration of user interfaces—derived from portal frameworks, enabled by a new wave of rich Internet and interface technologies, and encompassing a mass of social networking and web-2.0-style collaboration mechanisms to be delivered on an expanding array of devices—will no longer be a thin veneer or presentation layer. Rather, UI2 will transcend the concept of user interface to encompass user interaction, a technology platform that will accommodate and govern the way people interact with systems, participate in processes, and collaborate with each other.

… … … …

The 10 components in the UI2 framework

The high-level components and considerations for a UI2 framework include the following:

· Security and identity management—This is an essential foundation that ensures people are in fact who they say they are. Upon approval, they are permitted to access the right information and processes.

· Integration—UI2 must provide integration to numerous sources through various mechanisms, including sophisticated, back-end integration and federation, along with surface mechanisms like user-created portlets, gadgets, and mash-ups.

· Business process management—Integration and networking is not enough to ensure the efficient accomplishment of business tasks. Forms, approvals, and workflow will be readily available to UI2 users.

· Content management—UI2 will require better content management to ensure the quality and integrity of information in the capture, organize, and publish process. Traditional document management, web content management, digital asset management, and records management will be combined with next-generation content capabilities in blogs and wikis.

· Navigation, search, and retrieval (NSR)—UI2 will also require that people can find and discover information in the context of their work tasks and—better yet—that the information can find them. This expanded definition of enterprise search will require text analytics, social tagging, and semantic technologies.

· Personalization—Personalization allows a scalable way of directing people to the right information according to their privileges and preferences.

· Intelligence and analytics—Both are needed to monitor the trends and capture the activity on the portal and offer dashboards and scorecards to the many constituencies that use them for performance management and decision support.

· Social networking—This is becoming part of the fabric of the new web. Companies must capitalize, using it to extend knowledge management efforts. Enterprise efforts tend to start practically with corporate directories and evolve into knowledge and expertise networks.

· Unified communications and collaboration—These bring together all means by which people communicate and collaborate to reduce costs to better ensure compliance and records management as well as allow people to manage interactions more efficiently.

· Presence awareness and beyond—That little status icon is more important than you think. It will be enhanced by mechanisms like Twitter to allow people to advertise presence, availability, and activity. We’ll be able to publish and detect presence not just as online or offline, but with an understanding of physical or virtual location (that is, where you are on the web). “

The vendors that will dominate the UI2 field per AMR: Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Vignette.

The full report can be read at:

http://www.amrresearch.com/Content/View.asp?pmillid=21608&pubid=3697&custid=483747

Designer + Developer = Dev-igner: launching our local newsletter

pdestoop — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:06:00 GMT

Today we're launching our local newsletter for Web Developers, RIA Builders and Interactive Designers. All those guy's and yes a lot more girls than in the solid developers space, are looking at teh next web. Silverlight 2 is hot in this space, and equally important what we're doing with e.g. Blend and Visual Studio in this area of specific web development.
Please feel free to subscribe for the newsletter and enjoy the articles on-line.

Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint

pdestoop — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:44:00 GMT

The Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint is source code and guidance for developers describing how to use Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies together in business applications and Internet Web sites. SharePoint applications that use Web Parts can now be built using Silverlight user interface elements. This capability enables a fresh look at data exposed through SharePoint Products and Technologies using the modern graphics capability in Silverlight.

Read all about it here!

A special note to congratulate our Belgian Sharepoint MVP, Patrick Tisseghem, who contributed as an "external consultant" for this blueprint!

Technorati Tags: RIA

Silverlight available for WSUS & Windows update.

pdestoop — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:08:00 GMT

This will make it easier for systems administrators to deploy Silverlight into enterprise environments. As from last week , Silverlight is available as an optional update for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 via the Windows Server Update Services tool (and, inevitably, Microsoft Update, since WSUS relies on Microsoft Update as its source for updates).

Many customers have requested help with deploying Silverlight internally, and this change will hopefully be welcomed by enterprises who want to distribute Silverlight within their organizations using their established management tools. By adding it as an optional update, enterprises can control the roll-out of Silverlight within their organizations and schedule its installation as a background task so that the perceptible impact is minimal, and ensure that end-users can view Silverlight content without requiring administrative rights to install the plug-in.

I'm really glad this is now available: the need for administrator rights to install a web plug-in is not unique to Silverlight, of course, but it's been raised a number of times as a potential blocker to enterprise adoption. Having this available will solve that problem and make it far easier for enterprise administrators to control deployment of Silverlight to their users.

Technorati Tags: RIA

Important break-through for Silverlight

pdestoop — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 23:02:00 GMT

OLYMPICS - NBC Universal and Microsoft Team Up On Web Offering for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games using Silverlight

Topline - NBC Universal, owner of the exclusive U.S. media rights to this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, China (August 8-24, 2008), announced at the CES conference in Las Vegas that it was teaming up with MSN and Microsoft in an unprecedented strategic alliance to create “NBCOlympics.com on MSN”, a next-generation online experience for Olympic fans across the United States. With thousands of hours of competition video in both live and on-demand formats, deep analysis and results delivered from NBC’s award-winning broadcast and digital media teams, and Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to deliver deeply immersive user experiences, NBCOlympics.com’s coverage will be powered by MSN and Microsoft technology to complement NBC’s broadcast programming and put millions of fans in control of the Olympic sports, athletes and countries they want to watch. The new alliance was announced during the keynote presentation of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Noteworthy:

NBC abandoned their original plans to have a Flash-based video player, and decided to switch to Silverlight 2.0 (yes, when delivered, this app will be the first major Silverlight 2.0 app to light up the Web)
Millions of users are to be foreseen for this NBCOlympics means millons of PC's will have installed the Silverlight runtime. Silverlight on every desk and in every home (somehow sounds familiar :-) ? Getting there!

Silverlight 2.0 and ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions

pdestoop — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 21:11:00 GMT

On 11/29, Microsoft announced continued innovation and momentum around the Web platform including more details about the next version of Silverlight, ASP.NET Extensions, and more. The purpose of this announcement is to clarify customer expectations about when to expect future releases of Silverlight and more in general to provide more details about the upcoming MS innovations in the Web space.

Read all about this on Scott Guthrie 's blog

Technorati Tags: RIA

RIA battlefield: and the winner will be....?

pdestoop — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 10:51:00 GMT

This very interesting "Joel on Software" (non-MS) article looks back at the lessons of PC history to determine what the critical success factors will be for the winner in the RIA space.

The author shows that all the same dynamics and forces are in place now, for RIA, as is was back then with for example "Lotus 1-2-3". He also describes the need for a "RIA SDK" that will play the role of unifying framework that Windows or Mac played for PC applications (and this is also the real thread for Windows).

Very interesting reading, definitely worth the 15 minutes investment of your time!

Technorati Tags: RIA