The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009 : RIA

History repeating itself: Out of Browser

scbarnes — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:18:25 GMT

I’ve been following the concept of what RIA represents since well, I can’t honestly remember but it’s around 1998. My first glimpse of RIA was via Erik’s ye olde project called WebOS.com, which was a virtual web based operating system built with DHTML (pre-AJAX wave).

It began with Formats

For years I’ve studied the interactive industry and the twists and turns it has taken. I can even remember the days when SVG came onto the scene and how it was supposed to be the next best thing beyond what VML could offer (not to mention challenged VRML head-on)

It had somewhat of stagnant result, I think Flash offered more interactive and controlled state of play when it came to vector art + animation online in the early days. The secret was tooling though, formats on their own were still considered “amazing science projects”, tooling is what set them free.

As we moved forward in the industry, RIA began to emerge, it was somewhat of a hard pill to make others swallow as there were a lot of product misalignments in those days by Macromedia – I remember sitting in a conference in Port Stephens beating Macromedia staffers up on bad marketing and poor product SKU pricings.

HTML was a strong contender, as I remember sitting in CIO offices asking for $15k+ to replace JavaScript & HTML whilst also explaining that training was required. It was a tough sell.

RIA was born, but became hijacked

AJAX also emerged as being a strong competitor to Flash, so much so that when it’s acronym was first blessed a lot of us die-hard Flash zealots dismissed JavaScript as being this old redundant language that had little value. We were wrong of course, as AJAX not only dominated but essentially hijacked the RIA concept as when you have 90% of the world’s web developers locked into JavaScript as a “I know this language” it’s somewhat hard to fight against that majority ruling (i tried in both camps – Adobe and Microsoft’s and came out bruised).

Before a lot of this, No Touch Deployment (SmartClient) (2002) was a piece of goodness that Microsoft pitched in the early days as well, the basic concept was you could write WinForm like applications that could be deployed via a URL, whereby you open up the .exe via a webrowser and suddenly you had a rich desktop deployed from the web.

SmartClient had potential, but timing was just bad

The downfall for SmartClient I think was essentially the .exe extension and virus/spyware becoming more scary via mainstream press / technical experts. Imagine this, you load a URL, and a .exe is presented to you, you then agree to install it and it now has access to your computer within a specialized sandbox.

Not to mention Java Webstart was also a strong contender for the Java camp, given it’s seductive footprint around allowing SWING clients to launch via the web.

Later in 2003, Macromedia Central beta was released, which at first glance had a lot of promise. It was simply a Chrome framework in which you socket your Flash .SWF into and then it becomes a widget style application you can run, housed safely within a specialized sandbox.

It was much like the AppStore model you see today in the iPhone as well. Macromedia were onto something there, but the reality was that developers appeared to want to take it beyond the browser, and so Macromedia/Adobe camp went silent on the product for a while.

Out of Browser is an old concept in new technology

Fast forward to the present, Adobe AIR hails from the central DNA and Microsoft has put forward to options that hail from SmartClient – WPF and Silverlight.

WPF we have two flavors, .XBF (very similar to SmartClient strategy but more focused in safety and XAML) and of course the full blown .exe native desktop footprint.

The problem however, is that with reach comes a need, a need to be treated as a serious application but housed snuggly within a safe sandbox (i.e. see reasons for SmartClient failure to launch as to why).

Silverlight Out of Browser didn’t hail from Adobe AIR, and whilst it’s easy to look at the two options today at face value and go “ahah!..see its a copy..” the reality is this problem has been iterated on since 2002 and below 2002.

I think patterns are re-emerging from the past, and you’ll see us all taking old ideas and improving them as technology tree begins to open up new branches. Whilst one brand may have success in proving the concept has market potential today, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their competitors are just waiting and seeing. Innovation happens daily in both brands, and to simply associate a concept with one single brand is very limiting to what both had to offer the world in the past.

History repeating itself

In 1998 I studied VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) and used to code this beast of a language on a 30k O2 machine (given at the time GPU was highly expensive). The concept was simple, 3D web… it failed as the technology tree wasn’t ready for it.

Today, you see 3D (fake and real) in not only plug-in’s but now desktop clients. Sun’s Silicon Studios has a lot to answer for, as by crikey they had it wide open for pickings..

In 1998 I remember having Novell network on Windows 3.11 whereby you would have applications made available to you remotely via a network. Today we have Windows Azure pushing the same concept but more highly developed.

Point?

This industry is constantly re-innovating old ideas into new ways or approaches. I think the waters of purity around whom owned what and where are so murky that you’ll be hard pressed to argue how cleanly one is better than the other.

I’ve spoken to many staff from all brands (Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Macromedia, Sun, Google etc) about this very conversation and it’s amazing to hear how certain products derive inspiration from one another.

As Pablo Picasso once said:

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal

Scott Out.

RIA is slowly fading in terms of it's definition.

scbarnes — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 04:26:04 GMT

When I first started the RIA Evangelism role in Microsoft, I had this nagging feeling that the term RIA was just all over the place. Depending on which technology you are backing and which stream of alliance you uphold, the truth is the term was destined to be abused before it really took off.

I even tried to provoke conversation around it, by waving a big red flag and saying "Microsoft is about to use Rich Interactive not Rich Internet Application, debate me on it". Oh they debated me on it and lots of it, as the end conclusion was simply folks didn't care what the definition was, so long as we all understood Macromedia owned it in 2002. Such logic baffles me to this day.

I started to see some Adobe Staffers in many respects abuse the very term they acquired, by mixing the pool with Rich Branded Experiences against RIA, and if it had Flash - well it was RIA. I challenged many of them on that, and the result ended in personal character warfare.

After all these blog battles, arguments, debates and so on, the term is becoming lost in the struggle over which technology is better than the other. The true essence of what I thought RIA stood for has now become a buzz word, much like the "Web 2.0" or "Social Networking". That's sad, not because I am attached to the term, but simply because it's a much easier way for customers to frame the conversation with other customers, and not have to spend time educating them.

Ryan Stewart, has recently tried his best to define the term RIA, but has failed. It's not that Ryan doesn't get it, but simply - who is he to define the term? (In that it's not about Ryan, but who is he to define it? debate that first and then follow up with a merit debate on the semantics of the term).

Some folks loyal to the Adobe cause will support him, others whom aren't will argue the point with him (have already). In the end, the term is now up for debate, with no single winner or owner but simply open for mob rule.

The team with the biggest horde will own the definition - for a while, that is until someone or something with large amount of credibility and marketing power will change the landscape once again.

Can you sit here and honestly blame Microsoft in many respects for leaning more towards the term Rich Client Platform vs RIA, sure it doesn't start the conversation with the right framing - as most regard RIA has holy and all that is good ( DO NOT TOUCH stickers are ready to put around it's term). Yet, Rich Client Platform is simply a way for us internally to define what it is we are setting out to do. To build a Rich Client Platform.

Welcome to the Internet, where a terms definitions is as good as those who lobby for it inside wikipedia. Mob rules.

Meet "Dax", my idea for a mascot (not official).

scbarnes — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:46:00 GMT

I like both the "blue monster campaign" and SIlverlight and given I'm dabbling around in 3D at the moment, I decided to play around with the idea of combining the two.

Note: This is not the official mascot for Silverlight, instead it's simply me mucking around with 3D. Please do not use this in anyway in conjunction with Microsoft branding.

Here's "Dax" as I'd like to call him (why? dunno but Dax just stuck out as a cute name for the little guy). He's currently sitting in a surgical chair because he made fun of Flashbots new upgrades. He said they were rushed a bit to and looked like he just raided a dead storm trooper for them.

Flashbot obviously disagrees.

I'm so i love with these two cool characters, that I'm using them in my PowerPoint decks next week (TechReady 6 - Internal Microsoft conference in Seattle next week).

Here are some other picks

(Fig 1 - Since I'm an aussie, don't be alarmed at my accent fellow international audience members)

(Fig 2 - Here are your "Go Do's")

(Fig 3 - Putting Flashbot under the ...drill?)

(Fig 4 - Title Screen.. FLashbot's so proud of his new helmet)

(Fig 5 - Old title screen, Dax and Flashbot having a fall out over it)

(Fig 6 - Flashbot pinned to the wall heh.)

You define RIA.

scbarnes — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:58:30 GMT

Last night I put up my RIA Chat video teaser and I got a few direct emails from folks asking who said the quote at the end:

"..What you do with the UX Platform today will define what RIA looks like tomorrow.."

Well, *proud look* it was me. It's something I settled on a while back as at the heart of what RIA is today or tomorrow is really about what we do with the technology before us. I highlight this by ensuring the words "you", "define" and "RIA" are in different colour as that's ultimately the hidden meaning or agenda.

You define RIA by the way you build code.
You define RIA by the way you design interfaces.
You define RIA by the way you tell others about it.
You define RIA by the way you use it to spark adoption.
You define RIA.

A few readers may remember a while back I used the word "Interactive" vs "Internet" when defining RIA. It got into quite a heated debate (amazing how one little word can trigger so much emotion). In the end what made me angry, frustrated and depressed was that no one person stated how they define RIA. Instead we got into this semantic battle about who had it first, who's taking it tomorrow and why change something if it ain't broke.

Who said it was fixed? and who decides if it's broken? Lots of questions that I'm going to spend some time getting answers to and the people whom have such answers are..well..

You.. as you define RIA.

http://blogs.msdn.com/msmossyblog/archive/2008/01/31/something-is-being-built-and-i-hope-you-ria-kids-are-watching.aspx

Something is being built...and I hope you RIA kids are watching...

scbarnes — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 15:09:13 GMT

I've been a busy little Microsoftee and have done a lot of interviews over the past few months with folks from all walks of life. I'm about to go live very soon with a project. What's the project? not telling until it's finished. I will give you a teaser though.

It's nothing I've seen done here at Microsoft before so what you are seeing is simply a quick video tease.

(Note: RSS Reading folks will need to come visit the website to see the video heh)

My first chat is with someone from the hollywood movie scene. His work has inspired...

Release date is in February.. but

If you have someone you want me to talk to about RIA, then by all means contact me.

* Update: 1/02/2007 *

I've now included a Flash version of the Video.

Why Chad is excited about Silverlight 2.0

scbarnes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:08:12 GMT

I stumbled upon a post by Chad Campbell via my RSS reads (244 down, 9398 to go) and I enjoyed reading Chad's passion and insight into what he's thoughts are about the Silverlight 2.0 journey ahead.

Chad has also written or is writing a book on Silverlight 2.0, so be sure to keep an eye out for that.

This one piece made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. No, not because he read my post (that's 2 people now, mum and Chad) but because it provoked a discussion and that's what I love the most.

Your response to this question will probably determine where you fit on Scott Barnes' RIA Role Spectrum. Personally, I am slightly more to the developer side, however, I would definately consider myself an RIA Architect. Because of this, both aspects are important to me. So, when I'm asked "What is .NET?", I have to have a response that fits both sides of my personality (sounds like a frosted mini-wheats commercial). Well, I believe that .NET is about two and exactly two things.

The more I think lately the more given my role here at Microsoft is to spark adoption in RIA (in general) that my place on the RIA Role Spectrum is more "RIA Philosopher" than evangelist.. hmm.. might be another blog post ;)

http://cornucopia30.blogspot.com/2008/01/why-im-excited-about-silverlight-part-1.html

What if you could combine RIA with tomorrows multi touch innovation

scbarnes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:42:26 GMT

I was mucking about in YouTube today (smacks for me and not doing work) and I came across a project being built at MIT. This project allows folks to draw a physics based diagram which then comes to life on what appears to be a homemade (MIT style) "Smart Board".

Watch the YouTube video below to see how it happens.

I then also came across another video (next in the play list) where a teacher was instructing his students on various laws around what appears to be electronic circuits (I could barely keep up with it - I'm dumb though). I thought to myself what a great contrast the two illustrate.

I say this as when you watch the teacher instruct the students on the lesson, he is using chalk to outline various points in his lecture. In that he'd use arrows to illustrate the flow of a current in a electric circuit. He'd also then add variables to the equation which would in return produce different results.

What if he used a similar technology as the one produced by MIT? What if he was able to draw his electronic circuit in a way that visually came to life, allowing the slow ones (like me) to suddenly see how it's all coming together.

How does RIA play a role you maybe asking (well you are now)?

It gets better, as the picture below indicates; the teacher has just run out of room on his blackboard. Thankfully he has cascading boards which he then makes use of, but what if he continues to grow and grow and needs more room as he decomposes the situation further.

How does the students keep track or have the ability to refer to previous "boards"?

What if that person was to have a device, one that uses some of the RIA technology of today? What if they were able to communicate with the friend next to them - silently - with a Live messenger style query "..I have no idea wtf this means, show me.." their study friend could then overlay some drawing(s) etc on top and since he/she may know their friends learning habits find a better way to illustrate the lesson in terms that the friend understands.

RIA is a concept; it's not really a Flash, Silverlight, WPF or any one thing. It's merely a place in time where technology is able to aggregate data and present in different ways that reduces a footprint on any one person’s nominated platform. A friend once said, "Aggregated View of Disparate Systems".

We at Microsoft are building a UX Platform that is looking to keep these concepts all in perspective and that's essentially what a Platform is all about. Providing a foundation for tomorrows innovation.

In this case, take all of the above technology and look at how it could fit into tomorrow’s learning institutes. Who knows our ramp up to learning a topic maybe shorter?

I once had a great debate with Frank Arrigo's replacement, man at the helm Roger Lawrence about technology makes us smarter. I thought it did, but Roger put it to me that we aren't smarter but technology does help ramp up faster than normal. Our intelligence doesn't grow, simply our understanding.

I love this industry.

What resolution do you design RIA in?

scbarnes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:15:48 GMT

I read an interesting post this morning on how the author wanted folks to consider the 800px resolution for their designs. He cites that although he has a large resolution, it doesn't mean that he's not also using other applications at the same time.

...But with 1900+ pixels, I keep half for the browser and half for other stuff. If you go with 1000+ pixels, it doesn't leave me with enough room for my other apps, and I've got to (ack!) scroll sideways. It's not as bad with the ball on the Mighty Mouse, but most people don't have one and it's not exactly effortless even with one... - Sammy Larbi

It's an interesting point to debate, as whilst on one hand I do agree with him that the potential for your audience to overlay multiple smaller applications is there, yet at the same time the benefits of expanding your resolution to accommodate more on screen can also be in an asset.

Screen real estate is a hard subject to nail as even if you're the best information architect in the world, you will still annoy someone with your chosen path. The trick is to figure out you collateral damage, in that what percentage of your user base is going to disagree with your design.

The easiest way to work that out is to do some basic research, check the statistics of your existing site (assuming you had one already) then ask them but do so in a way that doesn't draw attention to your intent - as humans are funny at times, they do one thing but say another.

eg:

Q. Do you think Coke is good for your diet...
A. Yes, it's terrible...

The intent was it's terrible, bad, negative, stop!. Yet they will drink coke.

Here is a tip, we are habitual creatures and if you can compliment our patterns of habit, you're likely to become less annoying.

Take this blog for example. Below is a graph indicating my resolution stats for this blog.

Would it be a good idea for me to go back to 800x600 resolution? If not what would you consider my ideal resolution.

Know your audiences technology limitations, know your customers habits and above all plot your approaches into a Risk Matrix.

My RIA art...

scbarnes — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:46:59 GMT

12:33 AM and I'm currently putting together my power point deck for an upcoming internal conference (Seattle - February 4th - 15th). I typically like to use as many visuals as possible, as I've sort of decided that I'd prefer all my presentations going forward have a bit more "bang" associated to it.

The 3rd deck in is where I introduce myself and my title. I typically had a boring slide with basic text but I thought about it a bit more and decided to open up Adobe Photoshop CS3 and go to town on producing a better intro slide.

These are the results so far and putting them on a blog is not nearly as good as seeing them on a 24" iMAC at night.

Intro 01 - White..

I left some room to the left so I can put my details (name, email). I'm also thinking of designing a "digital passport" as being a RIA Evangelist I get to see cool UX day in day out.. so I think it's important that should I use a medium like PowerPoint that it represents this at the very least - in static form.

Intro 02 - Black (Favourite)

This is my favourite so far, as in a dark room it really comes up nice. The vision or story behind is that the words RIA are in the middle, which appear to be "popping" out of a monitor to indicate well, rich user experience. I've also tagged it with "Lighting up the web" which is a play on Silverlight's tag line "Light up the web"

I'm Proud

I'm proud to wear the title "RIA Evangelist" here at Microsoft as I think it's in many ways a first of many more titles to come that focus on our UX Platform. We are building a UX Platform made up of many pieces of connecting software along with looking to deploy such software on many devices going forward. I think we also have a really strong pedigree of designers on our payroll and the more I uncover them the more I am blown away by some of the upcoming idea's, solutions or products being produced.

Inspired by this, I thought it was time I also jumped in and added my own composition of art.

Now gimme a hug.... as have you hugged a designer today?

Finding your balance between AJAX and Silverlight

scbarnes — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:30:33 GMT

Tonight, I found via twitter a deck from Plaxo’s Joseph Smarr. In this deck he talks about the war injuries he received in heading down the AJAX route. It’s a great deck and worth checking out but what I liked the most about it, was that it reminded me of my struggle back in 2002 as a web start-up.

This is a story of how I made my first start-up work using RIA, but at the time didn’t know what RIA was or heard of it and it was also the reason I took up Flash over DHTML – aka AJAX.

I’ve got an idea, let’s build..

In 2002, both the Managing Director and I left the company we worked for and made a go of it with our own start-up. We had little or no money to begin with and our grand vision at the time was to build a CMS (Content Management System) that focused purely on user experience. As in those days, UX was something that most product teams would simply echo the following fatal words – “don’t spend too much time on the UI, function is more important” and thus you’d see some really scary CMS. So scary, that we believed that the CMS features weren’t the differentiator, but the user experience was (how funny life turns out).

We however, believed back then that UX was not only important but would separate us from the pack and with this vision; we set out to make our millions. I took Coldfusion and Flash 5 and decided to build out this CMS in a way that I felt was not only unique, but had elements that I’ve always wanted in a CMS but never found. The UX was simple, keep the graphics in a more “pixel art” form, steal as many ideas as I could from Apple in terms of their user interface guidelines and ensure that any mum or dad could use it – whilst providing areas of complexity for those whom wish to venture out of the ui sandbox.

I made use of DHTML (AJAX to the new comers to this space) and it was quite a bold step, as you see Internet Explorer at the time was probably the only realistic browser that made use of XmlHttpRequest. I chose to use XmlHttpRequest at the time simply because Flash 5 had imitated capabilities and I remember seeing Erik’s WebOS.com many years before (it’s by far the best AJAX/DHTML creation I’ve ever seen to date – incidentally Erik now works for Google - ie Google Gears). I wanted to take elements of Erik’s gratuitous but elegant use of DHTML talking to server-side and also apply them to my CMS and it was pretty much what we’d call “RIA” today (only there wasn’t a buzz term for it back then).

I chose to head down this path, as well, that was the technology at the time and it’s all I had to work with.

User Experience took a lot of trickery to get working...

The vision of focusing on UX was sound. We found some success with the early stuff I wrote & designed in the previous versions. As this is what we felt helped sell the first version of the CMS (as it had really weak features).

What we needed though was the ability to minimise the end users need to refresh and provide instant feedback as they interacted with the web application. In order to fulfil this I’d make use of a lot of iframe and XmlHttpRequest trickery, in that I’d write a Coldfusion wrapper which basically encased an iframe tag with server-side generated attributes. Then using XmlHttpRequest I’d ask the server to give me back the iframe in html packets, which using the Internet Explorer DOM API inject back into the interface – so yes, in 2002 I was using “AJAX” and didn’t think anything of it, as well Erik did it and it was a normal thing to be seen.

I first showed this approach working in what I’d call the “Publish Wizard”. The Publish Wizard was a feature within the CMS that allowed the end user to publish pages they had in draft form into real life static html pages (only with a .cfm extension to ensure parts of dynamic were in place). We chose to build out the pages in static form as back then search engines preferred static instead of blah.cfm?ver=1 style url’s (aka we wanted friendly urls).

The previous version of this feature I built used to basically generate the dynamic to static files in a way that was really bad for the end user. In that the end user would stare at a “Publishing..” text on a blank screen and wait for untold minutes until the process finished (we once had a government department that had 20,000 pages at one stage – so imagine that wait).

I wanted to improve on this, so I made use of the iframe / XmlHttpRequest idea’s I found in Erik’s work. I instead figured that Coldfusion needed to “thread” its processes as I found that if I could write 5 pages in one batch, it would give me 5 times the speed. The problem however still remained, in that the end user was staring at the dreaded “Publishing..” text. I decided to tackle this head-on, and decided that I needed a way to show progress but with a degree of accuracy as to show inaccurate progress would result in more human error (i.e. I also forgot to mention that users would assume it stalled and hit refresh, thus incomplete publishing and bugs would occur).

I found that if I were to create 5 iframes hidden, and using JavaScript I would update each of the iframe URL’s with a pageID to be published. Coldfusion would do its job and write out the dynamic pages to HTML and when finished would update a flag in their respective database rows. That worked, but what I really wanted to do was obviously show the visual progress being adjusted. The way I did this was using XmlHttpRequest I’d ask the server “what’s published so far” and it would return a percentage complete JavaScript object (yes, I was even using a quasi XmlHttpRequest JSON style solution).

The end result was that the user was seeing progress bar updates as each batch of 5 were being published. I thought this was brilliant and how great was DHTML!

The browser started to die, people were afraid.

The Publish Wizard worked a treat and the rest of the UI flowed in similar fashion, in that I’d find ways to ping/pong the server and use the iframe / XmlHttpRequest approach to minimise page refreshes. However, cracks began to immerge as once I started adding more and more of this technique to the UI, the memory started to climb.

Internet Explorer had memory issues (garbage collection) and I cursed its existence – it let me down!. Yet little did I know that it was actually my fault, as I wasn’t disposing of my variables after use and I’d cache way too many getElementById() results inside JavaScript.

It was too late in the end to recover, as by this stage we were roughly 1 year in and I was mentally exhausted from being a lone coder, designer and architect in one. I needed a break and I had lost the passion as well as the vision. The thought of turning back and re-writing a year’s worth of work was too much, and so we looked at exit strategies quickly. We made a fair bit of money and so it wasn’t a total loss.

The lessons learnt, AJAX can be an evil cretin at times.

I mention all of the above, as I see the same formula apply day in day out with Web Start-ups whom preach at me around why AJAX is by far superior to Flash or Silverlight runtimes. I simply sigh when I hear them, as I could argue the point with these folks further or I could simply let them be and hope they find a better way around the pitfalls associated with AJAX.

It’s relatively simple folks, the browser in a nutshell was never really meant to be pushed and poked into the way it’s been used today. We see great uses of AJAX daily whilst other times we see terrible, painfully poor uses of it. It’s a technique that should be used only when absolutely necessary and I state this simply from experience. Experience in not just building with it many years ago, but also watching others preach the AJAX gospel only to see them a year later hit what I call the browser barrier (similar to Moore’s law in terms of the thermal barrier).

It happens regularly; a web application starts out great, strong and really exciting in its use of AJAX. Yet as more and more features are added, suddenly the weight of the browser begins to fail and one or two pieces of the UI stall. Then another 2 and before you know it, you’re debugging JavaScript and Server-side code trying to figure out which part of the transaction is the one at fault – did I put a try/catch behind that ..Or is the event bubbling right? Etc..

A Runtime is the only way to fly

This is where Runtimes such as Silverlight or Flash play a strong role in today’s web application(s). It’s the right tool for the right job and to hide behind “I don’t want plug-in to be installed” is no longer a fair argument. It’s now a necessity to have both runtimes going forward as to do so will help shift this web 2.0 culture hells bent on using 100% Ajax applications into a different realm of user experience.

The reason why, is simple – the runtimes are mostly goaled on one thing. Make sure you don’t make your users wait and above all else, make sure you don’t make your developers wait either. Browsers on the other hand have to tread much more carefully as in the end they have to treat the web in many ways as either an application or a document. Runtimes simply treat the web as an application or animation, different rules apply and different calibre of developers & designers also.

The simple ability to accurately predict when a data stream is likely to finish download is by far the most basic and simplistic feature within a runtime, yet the browser cannot give you this data with as much degree of accuracy.

Plaxo found out the hard way, you don’t have to

I see Joseph of Plaxo’s deck and I think to myself that was me in 2002 and will this madness ever end? (Note: Joseph did an exceptional job and this by no means taking anything away from him in that regard - it's more a broader question).

Give the RIA idea a shot, pick up Silverlight and take it for a test spin, see what it can do to mitigate the pain ahead. Use both Silverlight and HTML together and yes, mix it up with some AJAX if you like, but consider moving away from a 100% AJAX driven solution as it’s not necessary in tomorrow’s web application. Remove the idea that search engine friendly RIA’s are a stumbling block and instead build in your own way of ensuring users can find information in a contextual way that suites your product. Leverage Live.com cloud’s API or Macros to help you achieve this as in the end separation of your content from your RIA is probably where you need to focus your energy the most.

Deep linking is simply a fool’s errand. Think of an alternative approach to that problem, and think of it at the start of your product’s architecture as it’s something you shouldn’t put off until after v1.

I’ve been mixing Flash, Silverlight, Flex, AJAX, HTML, Coldfusion, ASP.NET, PHP, Java and XUL together for many years trying to find an ideal way to build RIA. The end result overall was simply that I tried to hand roll too much of the workload myself whilst relying on the browser to do most of the work. Instead focus on ensuring your UX Platform scales in terms of performance and can talk back and forth between the servers.

I think Silverlight is going to be the better bet out of all that I've tried, and I state my job on it (heh)

Well done to Joseph for sharing his learning(s) around AJAX. I think it’s a great deck and special thank you to Ashley of Faraday Media for pinging me with this URL via twitter.

A new blog design, and I'm moving on..

scbarnes — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:52:30 GMT

Last year I spent a great deal of time studying research papers, articles, bloggers, anything related at all to RIA. I did this as being a RIA Evangelist for Microsoft It was important that I not only understand my audience but also what motivates them.

I don't have all the answers, but I have some and with what I have learnt, I've decided to joining forces with a larger brand. In that, I am joining blog forces with the Visitmix.com blog team officially and looking forward to focusing my energy there.

What does this mean for you, the reader?

Not much, as I my RSS feed gets fed from Feedsburner.com and so you shouldn't have to update your RSS feed going forward. If you however visit this blog via web browser, then it's simply a case of following the redirection URL or let the META REFRESH take over once I settle into my new stomping ground.

What's with the new blog title?

I've decided to change my title to the RIA Times, kind of a aggregated view of the RIA world according to Microsoft. Like it or lump it as that's the best thing about the interweb, free choice.

I have registered the domain theriatimes.com but I'll not to commit to anything just yet. Still mind mapping my approach around this one.

That all being said, my focus going forward as a RIA Evangelist for Microsoft is to ensure that we start to bring out the best in folks whom are adopting our UX Platform boots and all.

Why a sudden change in perspective?

Frustration. I spent a year waiting, some more waiting and finally gave up waiting. It's not just Microsoft but all brands, there just doesn't seem to be a constant flow of bigger picture discussions? You get some great gems every now and then but they are few and far between. What does seem to happen is the constant Silverlight vs Flash/Flex discussion and that annoys me as it's not the rants back and forth but simply the maturity of the actual discussion.

Instead I'll simply re-focus my efforts on finding deeper insightful conversations from many of you out there that are in the RIA space. Kick over a few stones if you will and see what we can come up with, all on Microsoft's time.

Evangelism for me is about sparking adoption and in order to create such a spark, you first need to assemble the relevant materials. That's what I'll be doing, hunting and gathering :)

"..The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man..." - George Bernard Shaw

Change is a good thing. Its fresh.. Come argue the point with me at MIX08 in Las Vegas this year!

Interview: Cynergy Systems' Dave Wolf

scbarnes — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:25:20 GMT

When you first type in http://labs.cynergysystems.com you are presented with a matrix style decision. On the left you have the red pill whilst on the right you have the blue pill. This one screen summarises Cynergy Systems really well, as it shows this is a true agnostic company willing to place bets on both sides.

In light of this, I decided it was high time I had a "sit down' with Dave Wolf, Cynergy's VP of Consulting.

Scott: Who are you, and what is it you do?

Dave: Cynergy is an RIA design and development firm. We build RIA software solutions for software companies and lines of businesses worldwide. We’re really one of the few companies around that built themselves from the ground up to design and build these kinds of software experiences. We have not only user experience development, but also back-end enterprise services development and our own design agency so we can really offer a pretty holistic approach to folks. Sometimes people look to us for just UX design, but often times customers outsource whole projects, so we end up being the entire software engineering team.

Scott: Cynergy are quite an agnostic company whom have perfected the art of using both Adobe and Microsoft technology, why?

Dave: We’ve always been focused on RIA development. That has meant a lot of things over the years but really historically our biggest practice had been around the Adobe stack. We’ve been talking about RIA and what actually became Silverlight for quite some time with Microsoft and when Silverlight 1.0 launched at MIX07 we were the first RIA firm to announce we were putting together a Silverlight practice ourselves. Our passion really has been building RIAs and picking out the technologies we think solve the real challenges around building these kinds of apps It has to be rich and engaging, have a really strong designer to developer workflow, and be a seriously productive development environment. Silverlight gave us all of that, but more importantly Silverlight brings along the whole .NET community which meant this incredible pool of talent that understands not only the technology, but they understand building serious enterprise class software. To us this is about solving customers problems, and doing that by tapping the right technology, rather than the one technology.

Scott: You’ve started to make movements in the labs space for Cynergy Developers, why and what is your biggest hope around this space?

Dave: Cynergy Labs is really exciting for us. One thing we’ve always felt really strong about here at Cynergy is that being a leader is about a lot more than just being big. It’s about providing real leadership and investing back into the community. RIAs have really created a world where if we can imagine it we can build it. Where software doesn’t have to be the same grey background and button bar at the top and where the data grid isn’t the only way to see and understand data. Frankly the only limit really is imagination and experience, and so we stepped back and said, “how can we foster imagination and build up real world experience?” and that brought Labs to life. A place where Cynergy folks can put forward ideas that we think provide a real contribution to our customers and the community at large, and we can provide both the place and the funding to make it happen. We also know we have a huge amount of experience in the whole RIA project lifecycle and we decided rather than say carve out some percentage of everyone’s time towards research, lets create Labs in a way where we could take these amazing ideas and build them out just like we’d build out any projects, with dedicated teams using our LookFirst user-centric development process.

Scott: Maestro is taking RIA to the device discussion. What motivated this?

Dave: The device is the next step in this whole user-centric experience revolution. The first steps were to focus on the presentation of the experience. In realizing that just because the data is stored in rows and columns doesn’t mean we have to present it to people in rows and columns. We can create visualizations that present data and information to people in such a way they can really understand it immediately. One powerful way to do that is to present information through broad strokes of reality. To present information in a way we might see it and interact with it in our physical environment, where in a “blink” you can see and understand it. But the next step is in how users interact with that data. That’s where the hardware comes in. The mouse’s addition to our interaction hardware revolutionized the PC by creating a more natural real world productive for users to interact with their software. That is what brought about Project Maestro. Can we now explore new hardware interaction devices that bring in these same broad strokes of reality we can combine with rich experiences.

Scott: When I last spoke to you, you said

“..If you thought RIA was a fad, just look at the hardware guys. Frankly they have proven to predict the future for generations.”

Could you expand on this?

Dave: There’s been a lot of pundits making noise that there is no need for RIAs and they are a fad. We have everything we need in HTML, CSS and the browser. I would counter that if you believe RIA is a fad, look around at the hardware guys who are right now building hardware meant to run RIAs. Whether it is the Microsoft Surface on one extreme, or the iPod on the other, or things like the Compaq touch screen PC’s right in the middle of the ramp, the hardware vendors are building RIA devices. Hardware is a harbinger of what’s going to stick because of the very high capital expenses around designing and deploying hardware especially compared to software. So seeing all of this investment by the hardware vendors is a huge sign that not only do they believe RIAs are real, they’re heavily invested enough to make sure they stay that way. This leads right into having Maestro be the first project made public out of labs. We think the combination of RIA and Hardware is where things are going next.

Scott: I blogged recently about RIA on Devices, what’s your thoughts on should we evolve the concept onto a device or not?

Dave: As I was saying before, there are two sides to enterprise software. There is displaying data and there is interacting with data. WPF and Silverlight and other RIA technologies are providing us with the canvas to solve the first problem of how do we present data. Although interactive design and development is a part of the data manipulation challenge, hardware is going to play a huge role moving forward. Bringing these tailored RIA experiences together with tailed interactive hardware we think is going to be really exciting. The question is what is the right form factor, and that’s what Project Maestro coming out of Labs was about. Let’s invest into research into this exact question.

Scott: What’s the biggest stumbling block for RIA today?

Dave: It’s really two things. People and Process. The people challenge is both having enough people, and the right kinds of people. RIA development can be more complicated because it takes all kinds of roles. It’s not just a developer for the front end, but a back-end services developer and a designer. One of the reasons folks choose us is that we have all of those folks and can put a total development team together made up of all of the right people. The challenge though is that when you have all of these people trying to work together, you need a really good process to keep them moving forward and working as a real team. This is why you hear so much about the “developer to designer workflow.’ Tools like Expression and Blend help a ton by having been built to work within these workflows, but you have to have the process down and your people indoctrinated into it. We’ve worked really hard for years to get our LookFirst process down and it’s incredible the difference it makes. We’re knocking out these incredible apps in a fraction of the time it used to take us to develop even primitive web apps.

Scott: What inspires your team to do stuff like Maestro or adopt WPF/Silverlight before it’s even released?

Dave: Passion! Our people are so passionate about the whole RIA space. A lot of this comes from seeing what’s possible with things like WPF and Silverlight. Once you see what some of these apps can be like, it’s hard not to be excited. We’ve designed and developed over 60 RIAs and everyone feels more innovative then the last. It makes you realize we’ve only scratched the surface of the kinds of visualizations and interactions we’re going to see, and that makes these Labs projects all the more exciting.

Scott: What is Microsoft doing right in the RIA space? – feel free to elaborate on what we are doing wrong as well.

Dave: Microsoft is doing a lot right. First off they really get the designer to developer workflow idea and have been working hard to get it folded into the stack in places like Expression and Blend. Secondly they also really get that this needs to be about building a real community inside the vast .NET development community. These projects take lots of people all interacting and collaborating. That means building out communities and putting collaboration tools out there to make this all fundamentally easier.

Scott: You’ve opened up more branches around the world, is RIA really paying that well? How is big business embracing RIA?

Dave: It really is. We’re privately held, profitable and expanding at hundreds of percent growth. We have been opening offices all over and we do that by finding great talent and putting walls around them. We reached the coolest milestone the other day. With the announcement of London the sun never sets on Cynergy <wink>. What has been honestly the most surprising to me has been the amount of traction from big business. It’s not just the start-ups and bleeding edge types. Its Banks and Manufacturers and Fortune 50 software companies that are really engaging with RIAs. You combine that sign with the hardware vendors and our growth and it paints a pretty incredible picture.

Scott: In a Sydney bar we had blast telling people Carson is really Damian Lewis, How many times since you have done that?

Dave: Actually we only chose Damian Lewis because we were in Oz. Usually we go with the more rare but more popular Anthony Michael Hall move.

or or

Carson is the one on the left, President of Cynergy Systems. I also would like to note that Anthony Michael Hall once played Bill Gates.. so Carson and opening up companies around the world? hmmm...

Cynergy Systems have also just recently opened offices in both Sydney & London. This is definitely a company to keep an eye on as we move forward in the RIA space.

2008 Prediction: The year of the RIA Device Discussion.

scbarnes — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:55:22 GMT

Like most technology bloggers today, I also will take a stab at a prediction for 2008. The prediction is simple; this will be the year that we engage in discussion around devices and RIA.

State of Play

Devices are getting smarter, more usable and most important of all – cheap. If you are like me, you may have a lot of devices attached to your name lying around the house or work. I myself have 2x XBOX 360’s, 1x XBOX Original, 1x iPod Touch, 1x Zune, 1x iPod Nano, Samsung BlackJack and well heaps more.

I’m what many would call an “Enthusiast” when it comes to device ownership. Yet what does a lot of these have in common? They are essentially connected. The problem however is that they each require unique approaches to developing against and this is bad form and in my opinion, now becomes prime candidate for the RIA discussion to take place.

RIA is still at its infancy. It’s still heavily focused today in what it can do on the desktop but when you look at the context of what RIA hints at, it's really about delivering rich connected experiences within a sandbox existence.

The problem I foresee with RIA is it keeps getting pushed into inheriting desktop models, thus the sandbox boundaries start to be probed. It’s the wrong discussion, the right discussion is how to agree on a sandbox and then deploy the agreed sandbox to multiple devices. As this in turn can provide a prescribed format in which developer(s) can build once and then deliver to one or more surfaces.

This isn’t happening – Yet..

In 2007, Potential was on the horizon

Adobe and Apple are two power brands that are rumoured to get married soon. The rumours state that iPod Touch / iPhone and Flash Runtime are expected to be joined at the hip via some partnership of some kind between the two brands. The initial problem with this theory is that Apple and Adobe will have to agree on the terms of competition centred on QuickTime delivery vs. Flash delivery not to mention tooling such as Final Cut Pro vs. Adobe Premier.

It won't stop there either, Adobe AIR could also potentially hurt Apple with its Safari compete as what AIR really hints at is “please park me on a device” given its unique sandbox positioning. Thus the waters can be considered murky if the partnership were to go ahead.

However, let's assume Apple and Adobe was to become partners. This could now become a very interesting conversation to have as now the RIA debate gets hotter and stakes in the game get higher and harder. The state of play may very well change - not to mention the ripple effects associated with Apple/Adobe RIA's of tomorrow. As they now become a portable and desktop experience with a one-to-many build and delivery workflow.

Where does this leave Microsoft? I have no doubt we’d deliver a proportional response to this hypothetical should it arise (we essentially have strong movement in this space today), but the point is that it’s an attractive value proposition to consider - even for a brief moment – thus I’d encourage you to Start the conversation now while the overall RIA landscape is in its infancy.

The first part of the RIA on device discussion starts with UX Platform.

The overarching piece to the RIA conversation is UX Platform. It comprises of not just development environments (tools, workflow etc) but also client surfaces likely to be reached. It won’t stop there, the respective brands that play a role will also need to bid, broker, barter whatever it takes to get their nominated technology onto such devices - thus it requires an early bond with strong partners. The flip side to this is that there will also need to be an attractive developer base behind it – as no developers means limited solution delivery.

I firmly believe that Microsoft has the correct ingredients going forward, it’s relatively early days but the device discussion can still be influenced. The mood is right and this year is a great time to think beyond the browser and consider how our UX Platform fits in with tomorrow’s markets.

Going forward, three things are clear:

Brands like Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Google, Mozilla etc all have strong stakes in this game.
Audio/Video is the first hunting grounds (market channel), as its got enormous amounts of eyeballs whom are found UX wanting.
Developer & Designer workflow are at both a complex and yet fragile state one wrong move by the above brands and it could hurt significantly.

What’s not clear is who is likely to get 2/3 market share around devices with their nominated RIA solution (of course I’d say Microsoft has potential etc but I’m biased). This is where the next frontier will be and I predict 2008 is the year in which the discussion is going to be had.

I state this as it in 2007 we saw iPod Touch / iPhone and the first thoughts around that centered on how Social Network phenomenon like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr could get a piece of that action.

In short, RIA’s begging to be built, but with no SDK to match the proposed demand.

Telerik RadControls 'Prometheus' and Silverlight..

scbarnes — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:30:47 GMT

I've been an avid user of telerik's "RadControls for ASP.NET" for quite some time now. RadControls are essentially a control framework built on top of ASP.NET technology which allows the average ASP.NET punter to produce Rich AJAX driven solutions with skinning capabilities. They have things like "RadWindows", "RadComboBox" and so on, basically a great add-on to ASP.NET AJAX.

Well, they've now seen the light so to speak - they are also producing a new iteration of their framework only this time they are leveraging the power of ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight. It's name given is called "Prometheus" which essentially is borrowed from Greek mythology (ie: brother of Atlas heh).

I've not yet gotten a hold of the beta (*hint*) but what I liked about this approach is the fact they are essentially combining both AJAX and Silverlight under the one roof.

I foresee the first few cycles of Silverlight development to be hybrid approach, in that either using Adobe Flash or AJAX. Why I foresee this? well it's new for a start and with all new things there is this prelude to greatness if you will. Where crazy stuff gets built and we all sit back, think about it and then evolve it further and further.

Secondly, most folks whom I interact with that are using Silverlight today have both Flash or AJAX skills built in. Whilst Silverlight is offering more and more as it iterates, these folks typically like to keep their existing code snippets or ideas intact as they progress forward down the learning Silverlight path.

It's not a bad thing, it's actually quite exciting as I think the Rich part of RIA will shift slightly and I hope that things will change in the future around how RIA is defined today.

Control Frameworks like the ones Telerik produce are a great start to what I think will be a productive future.

More Information:
http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-prometheus/overview.aspx

Who builds video sites these days anyway?

scbarnes — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:58:43 GMT

Well, lots actually. Take today, I woke up around 7am to get a start on some ideas / projects I've been brewing for a month now. I never got a single thing done as I was swamped in Video related S.O.S requests around Silverlight driven video sites. Now these weren't mah and pah's fish`n`chip shop brands, they were some powerhouse brands (local and international).

In total i had 4 email threads going at once ranging from architectural advice through to review(s) etc.

I honestly thought the Video + Content was pretty much being played out (I mean how many more times can you do the same thing?) yet each time I look at them, I see new stuff.

Yet, when you look at the market research and the figures that attach themselves to them, video is in high demand going forward. This will bold well for RIA going forward, although I still wouldn't rush out just yet and classify a lot of these "RIA". Happy for Rich Interactive Video Site, but let's not abuse the term just yet.

That said, I'd love to see more and more of these genre's as I find them fascinating in terms of some of the direction they are heading.