From Brian Goldfarb’s keynote address.
- rich - multimedia, desktop, television
- reach - multiple browsers.
We’ve always had to compromise.
Microsoft’s package to address all our digital experience:
- WPF - Desktop applications
- ASP.net - servers
- Silverlight - web
- .net Compact network - mobile
- xna - Xbox 360
Microsoft wants to provide the tools and the platform on which developers can build.
The Star Reader
Serm from The Star demos The Star reader, built on Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). People can now read The Star offline. The reader changes form 3 columns to 2 column layout when the window is made narrower. Horizontal navigation automatically creates a “more” tab to house tabs outside of screen width. Images are resized on the fly. Very slick looking application. Even allows users to highlight portions of articles, add personal notes and bookmark articles into a personal bookmark.
Does WPF only work with windows?
Brian goes on to talk a little about Silverlight. In my own opinion, it primarily address video. It is able to output 780p. @www demos the beta Discovery Channel website. It outputs video fullscreen 780p, extremely smooth and high quality.
Microsoft’s WPF, XAML and Silverlight provide a framework for web developers and designers to produce interactive web interfaces. This is very similar to Adobe’s Air.
Microsoft Expression Studio is made up of Expression Web, Expression Design, Expression Blend and Expression Media. This is head to head with Adobe’s Creative Suite.
Expression Blend is being demoed. It is very interesting as a tool for creating interfaces, somewhat like Flash. It is a WYSIWYG editor that comes with built-in animations you can use. They’re now creating a video player with controls. It looks really as easy as drag and drop. It generates XAML which is pretty readable. Laurance Moroney from Microsoft managed to create a basic video player in ten minutes. Impressive.
Internet Explorer hung during the demo. Laughter ensues.
A chess match between C# and Javascript to show performance between the two. C# was able to see ahead far more possible combinations per second, winning the match.
Beau Ambur from Metaliq demos Top Banana, an amazing video editing solution running off the web browser made in Silverlight 1.1. Design-wise, the app is stunning and breaks conventional video editing interfaces. It is delivered via web in under 50kb, according to Beau.
I’ll concede that AJAX and DHTML isn’t able to match that. Of course, being a demo, we aren’t qutie able to scrutinise it, but maybe when it goes live we can see if Silverlight delivers on its cross-browser, cross-platform compatibility.
The keynote is over. I’m impressed.
Comments
Darn, sounds like an interesting event. would have tried to attend if I knew about it beforehand.
Silverlight has received many good reviews, even from the traditional MS basher. This entry from Techcrunch gave a thumbs up for the product: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/30/silverlight-the-web-just-got-richer/
I tried to get Mike Downey from Adobe to give his thought on this at iX Academic Forum but not much came out.
Posted by: Edmund Leng | June 30, 2007 12:11 AM
Hey Edmund, sorry about not informing you guys earlier. Was roped in to help out last minute.
Silverlight on its own I have no qualms with, but I need to investigate further into the whole package (WPF + Silverlight). The XAML markup underlying resembles tag soup Microsoft Frontpage coughed up circa 1997. From a glimpse I had of some markup, it lookes like they mashed presentation with content again.
Posted by: Lucian | July 2, 2007 9:25 AM
Here are a couple of XAML links to check out below. I’ve not heard anyone compare it to FrontPage before, that is new. Post more once you investigate! —Leon
http://www.xaml.net/ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms752059.aspx
Posted by: Leon Brown | July 5, 2007 2:41 PM
Thanks Leon! I’m sure you’ve heard people say that Expression Web is Frontpage 2007. :)
When XAML was shown to a few web designers back in 2005, there was already apprehension that it didn’t separate content from presentation. It didn’t come as a surprise, MS Frontpage was a terrible web authoring tool as far as standards were concerned. MS Word’s “save as HTML” feature has spawned a legion of horribly marked-up webpages.
I’d be interested to see if Expression Web has changed, as it sells itself as creating standards-based sites.
Posted by: Lucian | July 6, 2007 11:05 AM