I have some thoughts on day 2 from the PDC that I thought I would share.

First of all, Microsoft Office 12. This is easily going to be the best version yet. Versions 6.0, 95, 2000, XP, and 2003 had some changes, but the look and feel remained the same. The menu bars and options just grew to unmanageable levels.

The next version will use ribbons. This is a tab type concept which will show all options available for that particular concept. So you will no longer have to search menus to figure out what to do. The beta's looked awesome!

Also, the format is XML, but a zipped version of XML. In other words, a DOCX is basically multiple XML files in a zipped file. You can change styles, add in headers, and other files programmatically. The Schemas should be published soon.

Sparkle and Acrylic. These are Web Designer tools, that allow people to design sites directly from C# or VB.NET Web Forms. The demo's really looked great and the forms concept allows developers to work with the template the designer created directly.

AJAX or Project Atlas. If you have not seen this, you should get the whitepapers and the betas. This is up on ASP.NET.

http://beta.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=47

ASP.NET “Atlas” is a package of new Web development technologies that integrates an extensive set of client script libraries with the rich, server-based development platform of ASP.NET 2.0. “Atlas” enables you to develop Web applications that can update data on a Web page by making direct calls to a Web server — without needing to round trip the page. With “Atlas”, you can take advantage of the best of ASP.NET and server-side code while doing much of the work in the browser, enabling a richer user experience.

From the developer community, the Office and ATLAS presentations were packed. They even moved to the overflow rooms. Tons of interest. Will provide links to the schemas for Office and the links to Atlas samples as they come.

The night event was at Universal Studios. Main problem was that the beer lines were long and they ran out of Beer at the tables. Sad ending to a good day….