MIX'08 - What else?
It's been fun to be at MIX'08 and I would definitely recommend to anyone never being in Las Vegas to at least get there once to see that! It is simply amazing - I would not spend my life there but for a week, that is an unbelievable place and the scene is set at the airport already. Well, enough about Vegas - I will probably write more about it and its night life on my private blog later on - http://emesas.home.services.spaces.live.com/
One of the major thing to retain from MIX'08 is about the convergence of the client development platform. Indeed, Silverlight 2.0 being revealed and being presented on Mobile Devices (WM & Symbian through Nokia), it now gives a very good insight of what the "near" future will look like - no more platform discussion, no more developer tools switching, no more Smart Client vs. Thin Client debate ... One fits them all? probably not, but with .NET 3.5 Next and Silverlight 2.0, developers will be able to leverage their XAML development and deploy on (m)any form factor devices - whenever it is on a Windows Vista OS for a WPF high resource demanding application or inside a Mac/Windows (/Linux) browser with Silverlight 2.0 (/Moonlight) for lightweight Web application (RIA) or on Windows Mobile/Symbian devices with Silverlight for Mobile. Still, developing Web application requires some knowledge about HTML & JavaScript but I see that convergence also happening there. XAML and HTML are so close that it is a matter of time when developer will only have 2 languages to know - one for UI (XAML) and one for Code (C#, VB, C++, Python ...)
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By the way, for HTML & JavaScript, half of the path is done already, Nikhil Kothari - one of Microsoft's .NET Framework architects - has developed a very useful and powerful compiler called ScriptSharp (S#) which "[...] generates JavaScript (instead of MSIL) for use in Web applications and other script-based application types such as Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets". The project can be found there http://www.codeplex.com/scriptsharp and I can tell you that in addition to me, a lot of developers inside as well as outside Microsoft are using it on a daily bases.
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and besides the vision, here are the products and innovations being released that week !
- Internet Explorer 8 beta - this is the most standard-compliant browser actually delivered. It is the only one, along with Opera 9, passing the ACID2 test and it comes with new innovations like WebSlices and Activities
- Deep Zoom technology & Deep Zoom Composer - directly from Microsoft Live Labs - this technology is simply amazing. It allows users to look at mega-pixels images from a Silverlight application without to have to download the entire file. A zooming interface that provide extreme close-up with performance and smooth transitions.
- Silverlight 2.0 Beta1 - the most (wanted) waited release of Silverlight in its managed version. Silverlight 1.0 was all about Media and Graphics, with the version 2.0, Silverlight opens door to business applications. Of course, you get the tools SL2.0 Beta1 for Visual Studio .NET 2008
- Silverlight reach Mobile devices - Nokia announcement for Silverlight on S60 and Microsoft announcement for Silverlight 1.0 on Windows Mobile 6 devices.
- Windows Live™ Messenger API - if the Contact control doesn't suits your UI needs and if the Presence API isn't just sufficient, try the Messenger Library and build your own Messenger Experience with the look and design of your web site. My recommendation will of course go for using the Messenger Library with Script#, especially if you are a .NET developer and not very comfortable writing programs that have more than 10 lines of JavaScript.
- Windows Live™ Delegated Authentication API - More granular than the Domain Authentication model, this new model is a Unified Model aimed at being the only one used by all Windows Live Data Services when it comes to delegate rights to resources. Don't be confused, Delegated Authentication API is more about Resources Access rather than Authentication. Think more about an API that helps Resources Provider (today Windows Live essentially) giving or delegating access to others - something I would rather call an Authorization API. I would not be surprised to see more Resource Providers other than Windows Live™ Data Services.
- Windows Live™ ATOM API for Photos and Storage - REST, RSS, WebDav .... so many ways and technologies for accessing information. As Windows Live™ Data Services get more mature, Windows Live™Data Services also get a new and probably a "unified" protocol to request data from the clouds. My recommendation here - Pay attention to ATOM - it might be the next big thing for data exchange in the clouds.
- Expression Studio 2.0 February 2008 Beta & Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview - with Silverlight 2.0 wave comes Expression family products wave as well. I haven't really touched Expression Designer 2.0 but I encourage Silverlight 2.0 developer to have a look at the new Expression Encoder 2.0 Beta. This version is not a solely product and is an optional component of the Expression Studio February 2008 Beta. You can add more Metadata to your videos and this metadata is directly exploitable by Silverlight' media elements, along with the possibility to directly edit and visualize your Silverlight player from Encoder.
Note that when installing Expression Studio 2.0 Beta, uncheck Expression Blend and install the 2.5 March 2008 Preview that works with Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 - Internet Information Server 7.0 Media Pack - get a tight integration with Silverlight and IIS 7.0 for your media & video scenarios. With Web Playlists and Bit Rate Throttling, turning IIS7.0 into a media server for small scenario (Media Services 2008 for Windows Server 2008 is the Enterprise solution for large scale) is now becoming a reality. With Web Playlists, you can enforce users to watch videos in a given order and you can give the freedom or enforce not to skip one video for another. With Bit Rate Throttling, Silverlight players will never consume more bandwidth as it is needed to watch a video, IIS 7.0 will serve the necessary data to ensure that the player has enough buffer to smoothly play but will stop serving data if the user disconnects or pushes the pause button (unlike today).
- Plus other miscellaneous things about WPF enhancement and performance improvements Q3CY08 and probably new Microsoft Surface applications coming soon.
Definitely, working at the Microsoft Innovation Center in Copenhagen - visit our Live Spaces -has never been so excited with so much innovation and so many new product releases. I am really looking forward to the rest of 2008 and to MIX'09 - so save the dates March 18-20, 2009, I'll be there !
