Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

joewood — Mon, 05 May 2008 21:50:51 GMT

Thanks for the post.

It's not clear from this if you intentd to open the desktop to 3rd parties to contribute functionality. Is this something that you are looking to do?

Also, a portion of the desktop seems to be running Silverlight. Is it used just for media rendering or for any of the desktop views?

Going forward would you consider less of a lowest common denominator, a WPF 'live desktop' or Silverlight only? Maybe even a virtual folder in Windows explorer?

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Maxime H. — Mon, 05 May 2008 22:43:13 GMT

It's possible to edit file( Word or Powerpoint) online with the live Desktop?

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Mike Galos — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:13:14 GMT

As I've been saying (and is getting more apparent with each post here)...

File Sync is to Live Mesh

Microsoft Write was to Windows 1.03

This is going to be an amazing platform!

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Stumped — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:31:24 GMT

Yet another UI framework? How many is that now? Let's see if I can recall all the APIs that being actively promoted: Win32 (aka the tried and true), WinForms (when you must go managed and still want some perf), WCF (when you want sexy and slow), DUI (what happened here?), and now GPF? What gives?

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Alex Himel — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:14:02 GMT

These are great questions joewood. I'll answer each one individually.

We have developed Live Mesh to be an open platform. You can expect to hear more about our developer platform late this summer.

Currently, the Silverlight experience is limited to media. This feature was designed and implemented very close to the release as a way to validate Silverlight integration with our cloud and to offer a way to interact with media elements inline. You can expect to see significant iteration this summer around both this experience, as well as other uses of Silverlight within the desktop.

The current goal of the Live Desktop is to meet a lowest common denominator for basic functionality, and to offer an enhanced experience for users who do choose to download add-ons. A WPF version of the Live Desktop is unlikely because we want the Live Desktop to be available cross-platform and cross-browser. A Silverlight-only Live Desktop is certainly possible at some point in the future, but we are focusing on the HMTL/JavaScript version for now.

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Alex Himel — Wed, 07 May 2008 08:29:22 GMT

Great suggestion Maxime. That is definitely on our long-term wish list.

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Alex Himel — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:55:35 GMT

Let me clarify the proposed benefits of the Live Desktop architecture a little bit. The architecture is very well suited for the purposes of a rich AJAX application and as an extensibility model for the Live Desktop. Beyond that, at this time, it is not being advocated as a one-size-fits-all framework for web development. It introduces many interesting paradigms that are not often used in AJAX programming, most notably data binding, reusable controls, resource dictionaries, and the heavy usage of inheritance. I hope developers find this interesting, and am curious to gauge interest in offering the framework independent of components specific to the Live Desktop.

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

joewood — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:36:50 GMT

Thanks for the information.

Personally I'm not that interested in an HTML based desktop. I can't imagine using it over and above a native desktop - what scenario is it being aimed at? When a user only has access to a locked down shared PC ?

Rather than spending time working on an HTML version of Word (i.e. Google Docs) - I would prefer to see a Mesh enabled Office. Where the ATOM feed could be used to synchronize part of the file being edited to enable online collaboration.

And maybe a Silverlight version of Word/Excel, with cut down features that match something like Works and can be deployed in a sandbox.

Just my few cents.

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Wei Zhu — Sat, 10 May 2008 02:00:23 GMT

Good article. Alex.

It would be cool to see more detail documentation. For example, a couple of examples with code and as well illustration of the corresponding visual tree and logical tree.

re: Behind Live Mesh: Live Desktop architecture

Partha — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:58:02 GMT

How does LIve mesh bypass corporate firewalls? Please reply to mcp111@gmail.com

http://techcrunchit.com/2008/06/28/the-smoking-gun/

TrackBack — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:52:37 GMT

Behind Live Mesh: The Pub-Sub System

Live Mesh — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:33:50 GMT

Hey there! I’m Viraj Mody , a developer on the Live Mesh services team. I bet some of you are curious