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Dax Pandhi has a nice screencast video on creating a simple animated button in Microsoft’s Expression Interactive Designer. From the commentary it’s obvious that Dax comes from a Microsoft world but I found his insight comparing some of the features to the Flash IDE helpful. Good stuff.

Good timing too, with Microsoft’s Mix06 happening this week and the various impressions of Sparkle, err, Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer, coming from some Macromedia community luminaries who are in attendance.

The Article I Think I Read
I burned a good hour of time that I didn’t really have today looking for an article that I’m pretty sure I read a few years ago. The way I recall things it was sometime in maybe 2002, the article was published on macromedia.com and it described a fictional “day in the life” in which the principal “character” was helped in their day to day routines by various “intelligent”, occasionally connected devices and software. Things like reading and writing email, buying concert tickets, tracking current events and making social plans all being done while she made her way to the coffee shop, rode a train to the office etc. A vision that’s pretty common today but back when I read this article it all seemed quite revolutionary to me and ever since I’ve been watching for it to become reality.

Did Kevin Read the Article?
In October I was lucky enough to be sitting in the audience during Kevin Lynch’s keynote at Macromedia’s Max when he first talked about “Apollo”. Something tells me Kevin read the article too. Here, go check out the video from that keynote and you’ll see how familiar it sounds. Choose ‘Day One’ > ‘Platform Future’ (3rd thumbnail from the right), then jump ahead to around 1:08:00 (yup, the ability to direct link that would be easier for me too).

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft have released a public community technology preview (CTP) of their Expression Interactive Designer (Sparkle). Its built upon the “in pre-release” Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) so be sure to check the system requirements if you’re thinking about giving it a go.

Check out Manuel Clement’s blog for some commentary. He links to some insightful thoughts from “Jared” at mindfury.com.

I’m going to grab a beer and take a look at today’s channel9 interview with some of the Sparkle gang.

John Gossman, who is currently a developer on Microsoft’s “Sparkle” Interactive Designer, has blogged a backgrounder on how he came to work on the application.
The History of Sparkle: Year One

Apparently he was a “technical lead” on Toolbook a number of years ago. What that bodes for Sparkle is unclear ;-)

Wow, what a week. Way back on Tuesday Macromedia released Studio 8 and the Flash Player 8. Then on Wednesday Microsoft announced Sparkle. Topping things off is a looming deadline at work which makes me even more grateful for the distillation folks have been providing. So here’s a collection of Sparkle reactions that I’ve found interesting.

Robert Scoble started the week off by saying that Sparkle is no Flash killer.

The Expression Suite press release is here.

Of course the Channel9 video. A 1+ hour, nearly 1 gig, .wmv of Scoble lobbing softballs at members of the Sparkle team. Freakin’ inspiring and worth the entire hour. Something cool about what they’re doing over on Channel9 - the content is genuine. No editing when software or people slip from the “script”.

Macromedia’s John Dowdell trudged through comments on Slashdot’s “Flash, meet Sparkle” article and linked to those he considered noteworthy. (Thanks JD!).

Jon Meyer, who at one time was a PM on Sparkle, has an interesting point of view. He seems to be suggesting it is the ubiquity of Ajax that is the main threat to Sparkle. He also mentions Flash a half dozen or so times and there’s some good discussion in the comments section.

Sparkle vs Flash on publish.com. Interestingly Matthew David feels that the term Flash-killer should be hyphenated. Seriously, it’s a decent read. (Tom Adams pointed this one out).

Eweek has another blurb by Matthew David on Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E).

Dax Pandhi thinks about programming power and predicts that “WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself“.

I think Scott Barnes feels the same way. Regardless, the enthusiasm makes it worth the read.

Peter Elst looks at Sparkle from a Flash user’s perspective.

Víctor Bayón thinks about how Window’s Vista is part of the Nike-ization of the software industry. The focus shift being from the functionality of the OS to the user experience. He points out that Sparkle is how MS see that shift being made:
http://www.virart.nott.ac.uk/idue/eng/weblog/2005/09/experience-iii.html

Tinic Uro, who is an engineer on the Flash Player, was at PDC and got a look at Sparkle:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/09/microsoft-sparkle.html

Okay this one isn’t on topic Sparkle wise but Molly Holzschlag takes Steve Ballmer to task for declaring that Microsoft will “win the web”:
http://webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_09.html#a000573

The perfect platform does not make a perfect app. A platform that is capable of drawing beautiful things does not make beautiful things.

Nathan Dunlop works as a designer on Avalon (Windows Presentation Foundation) and has some insightful things to say about Sparkle.

http://www.designerslove.net/2005/09/sparkle.html

I can’t help but think he expressly used the term platform.

And I though only Mac users were obsessive ;-)

Dax Phandi has been downloading the Windows Vista beta 1 since July 27. With just under 9 hours to go it would seem he’s in the home stretch. He’s also posted a great list of tasks he’s managed to accomplish while waiting.

Shaun Inman has a big list of IE7 beta links.

Included is a link to the Register piece that seems to have ignited a huge pile of blog belligerence. The important part of this seems to have gotten lost in the squabbling - IE7 beta may or may not cause some browser toolbars (such as the Google Toolbar) to stop working. The IE team plan to work it out and will continue to support the toolbar API.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) and Microsoft have announced that they will be collaborating to promote web standards, specifically in regards to how Microsoft implement W3C and open document standards.

WaSP are the folks who brought you the Acid2 browser test and the browser object tag test suite (among others).

Microsoft are the folks who brought you… well… alot of stuff that necessitated the creation of the Web Standards Project.

More here.

PCMag.com have a short article looking at the alpha version of Longhorn that Microsoft is releasing to folks at WinHEC this week. Looks to be the first in a series of pieces exploring the new build so it may be worth subscribing to their product review feed.

microsoft-watch.com has an article wondering if Microsoft will be able to meet the (most recent) Windows Longhorn timeline. It looks like a fall 2006 release should things go according to plan:

- April 2005: Preview/pre-beta release to OEMs and software vendors at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.
- Summer 2005 (Microsoft is saying early; we’re hearing July/August): Longhorn Beta 1 released to testers.
- Late 2005 to mid-2006: Interim Longhorn builds (similar to the Community Technology Preview releases that Microsoft’s developer division has been delivering) go to testers
- Some time in the first half of 2006: Beta 2 released
- Q3/Q4 2006: Longhorn released to manufacturing and delivered to PC makers so they can preload it on new machines
- Holiday season 2006: Longhorn hits retail

Scoff away if that’s what you do. No doubt it’ll be bumpy but Avalon sounds pretty cool.

Microsoft recently made a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Avalon available to MSDN subscribers. (Avalon being the display engine that will be a part of the upcoming Windows Longhorn). There’s an interesting MSDN article here titled Introducing the March 2005 CTP: What’s New in “Avalon”. The XAMLPad tool sounds kinda cool, allowing developers to edit XAML, the markup used to represent the application’s UI, and see the results in realtime.

As well, designerslove.net is a fairly new blog from a member of the Avalon team focusing on Avalon from a designer’s point of view. Looking at the Flippin’ CD button entry (I had to dig for that permalink so it may not hold up) I can’t help but wonder if Avalon will be in danger of going through growing pains similar to the early “skip intro” Flash days. Folks were so caught up in the razzle-dazzle, look what I can do type of libertation that Flash provided they lost sight of the user experience. As both a developer and a user I find the phrase with great power comes great responsibility would fit well here. There’s still alot more to be played out with Avalon so perhaps my concerns are unfounded at this point. We shall see.

Speaking of concerns, I came across this bit of confusion in the Longhorn Developer FAQ:

Will my existing Win32 and .NET apps continue to run under Longhorn without modification?

The goal is that apps written against the documented Win32 APIs and the .NET Framework will absolutely run well without any modifications under Longhorn when it ships.

Isn’t one of the main beefs about WinAPI it’s shortage of documentation? What the hell does “absolutely run well” mean? Again, perhaps me being overly skeptical however it could do with a little clarification. Besides that particular item was written 18 months ago and the Win32 question is probably a little clearer now, right?

Got that designerslove.net link from Robert Scoble.