A while ago Microsoft and Eolas had a small argument over who owns the rights to the technologies that allow plugins to play in MS Internet Explorer. As a consequence of that falling out IE was "updated" so users had to "click to activate" active content (Flash, Quicktime etc). The workaround was for developers to embed their content using external javascript. It was a big deal and for those of us who noticed it involved quite a bit of work hunting down all affected projects. That was April 2006. Well now the nice people at Microsoft and Eolas have had a chat and an agreement has been struck. So they are going to "update" the browser again so it works just like it originally did. This will start to happen in April, 2008. Though it will take a while for there to be a consistent base of users with this behaviour. I imagine it would be easiest and safest to pretent this new update isn't happening and keep using the external javascript.
This disagreement between MS and Eolas is about money (and probably quite a lot of money) and thats the way the world is. But the internet is bigger than these two companies and this argument has had a significant impact beyond the pay packets of their lawyers. I doubt there has been an internet user anywhere who wasn't affected by this process in some way. Surely they could have continued their negotiations without making us all suffer for it. I guess I don't expect companies like Microsoft to care but a bit of community consideration once in a while probably wouldn't hurt their bottom line.
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Friday, November 09, 2007
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
ReMIX : Expression Web - Dreamweaver Cloned
Expresssion Web, Microsoft's newest web developer tool has been out for a while. But after an initial review of the functionality and looking at a few screenshots I hadn't looked much further. Over the last couple of days at ReMIX I realised why. Expression Web is really a scaled down version of Dreamweaver. It has many of the features (but not all; apparently support for PHP development will be introduced in version 2) presented and organised in a way that is almost identical to Dreamweaver. A lot of the time it just looks like Dreamweaver with a butt ugly skin. Some of Expression Web's "exciting" features have been available since Dreamweaver MX (2002?). For example they were very proud of the following features:
All ReMIX attendees recieved a free copy of Expression Web and at work we'll find a suitable test machine for the install so all may gaze at Expression's splendor. But only for a little while. Because we'll need to get back to doing some real work with Expressions more fully featured parent : Dreamweaver.
- Design/Code and Split views
- CSS Properties panel
- CSS style editor dialog
- Page Structure breadcrumbs
- Application panel with data bindings
- Master Templates and nested templates
All ReMIX attendees recieved a free copy of Expression Web and at work we'll find a suitable test machine for the install so all may gaze at Expression's splendor. But only for a little while. Because we'll need to get back to doing some real work with Expressions more fully featured parent : Dreamweaver.
ReMIX : Silverlight surprises
After the Day 1 keynote at ReMIX we moved into the real business : the presentations. During the day there were two real areas of surprise that emerged for me. The first relating to Silverlight and the second was relating to Expression Web and Visual Studio 2008 (I'll talk about this in a seperate post).
After MIX there was a lot of blog traffic about Silverlight. Following along it was clear that Silverlight was a genuine challenger for Flash's crown. But what got a bit lost in all the hype was how much of the excitement was about what Silverlight might offer. Today I realised how limited a platform Silverlight currently is. The original beta release doesn't provide many common controls that are essential for any RIA. For example, they hadn't considered providing a text input control. The upcoming version 1 release will fix this oversight. But many important controls will still be missing and are not going to be part of a version 1.1 release slated for early 2008. Examples of missing controls are a Tree view, Accordian and dataGrid. Equally surprising for someone with a Flex background is the abscence of a styling mechanism and the very restrictive layout engine (both are being 'considered' for v 1.1).
One of the questions I had been asking myself is how to approach this new technology. It seems clear that both Flex and Silverlight will offer advantages in different areas. Should I attempt to have a similar level of knowledge across both technologies or should I aim for expertise in one and maintain a good overview of the other. Certainly the developer experience in Flex and Silverlight is very similar. Both use XML for visually laying out the application and code to manage user interaction. But there is still a lot for new comers to learn in the detail of the differences. From what I saw today it is clear that I can put off my decision at least for the next year.
Silverlight is a long way from being ready. I already mentioned the lack of many necessary controls. But presentations demonstrated that Silverlight requires a lot of unnecessary complication to perform simple operations. This isn't surprising. Earlier versions of Flex were quite confusing compared to the current version with most of the refinements occurring during the Flex 2 beta. All of this, in my mind, suggests it's too early to jump in and try to gain any sort of detailed understanding of Silverlight. As the Silverlight framework finds it's feet there will be regular developer tremors as the ground shifts around them. I recommend we meet back here one year hence to re-assess Silverlight's readiness.
After MIX there was a lot of blog traffic about Silverlight. Following along it was clear that Silverlight was a genuine challenger for Flash's crown. But what got a bit lost in all the hype was how much of the excitement was about what Silverlight might offer. Today I realised how limited a platform Silverlight currently is. The original beta release doesn't provide many common controls that are essential for any RIA. For example, they hadn't considered providing a text input control. The upcoming version 1 release will fix this oversight. But many important controls will still be missing and are not going to be part of a version 1.1 release slated for early 2008. Examples of missing controls are a Tree view, Accordian and dataGrid. Equally surprising for someone with a Flex background is the abscence of a styling mechanism and the very restrictive layout engine (both are being 'considered' for v 1.1).
One of the questions I had been asking myself is how to approach this new technology. It seems clear that both Flex and Silverlight will offer advantages in different areas. Should I attempt to have a similar level of knowledge across both technologies or should I aim for expertise in one and maintain a good overview of the other. Certainly the developer experience in Flex and Silverlight is very similar. Both use XML for visually laying out the application and code to manage user interaction. But there is still a lot for new comers to learn in the detail of the differences. From what I saw today it is clear that I can put off my decision at least for the next year.
Silverlight is a long way from being ready. I already mentioned the lack of many necessary controls. But presentations demonstrated that Silverlight requires a lot of unnecessary complication to perform simple operations. This isn't surprising. Earlier versions of Flex were quite confusing compared to the current version with most of the refinements occurring during the Flex 2 beta. All of this, in my mind, suggests it's too early to jump in and try to gain any sort of detailed understanding of Silverlight. As the Silverlight framework finds it's feet there will be regular developer tremors as the ground shifts around them. I recommend we meet back here one year hence to re-assess Silverlight's readiness.
ReMIX : UX Sux's
Today was the first day of the ReMIX 07 conference in Melbourne. ReMIX is the Australian version of Microsoft's recent MIX conference and was designed to kick start Silverlight development in Australia. During the keynote this morning there was a lot of talk about getting designers more involved in the development process. Despite that the vast majority of the audience were self confessed developers. Still I wonder how inclusive the designers (and for that matter the developers) found the language. For example, Brian Goldfarb spent much of the keynote talking about "form factors" (ie mobile phones are an example of a form factor, desktop computers are another example) and "market vectors". I imagine the only attendees who might feel at home with this jargon are involved in marketing not interactive design. Even worse it turned out the obscure UX used throughout the agenda turned out to be an acronym for "user experience". It seems that even bad acronymns can offer a poor user experience. More humourous was Goldfarb's insistence on referring to R.I.A's as a whole word (pronounced ree-a) making me think of nothing so much as diarrhoea.
Whats my point? It just this; if you can't talk a language that your audience can relate to how do you hope to convince them that you developed a product with their needs in mind. Microsoft have never really understood design and it's importance for usability. But they've never tried to develop designer tools before. If they have any hope of getting designers on board they have to understand designers and what they are looking for in a software package. Flash itself was never that cool. It became cool because some really cool designers embraced and made it do cool things. If Silverlight is to become as successful as Flash it needs to engage designers. But it will never achieve that as long as they fill their speeches with marketing jargon.
Whats my point? It just this; if you can't talk a language that your audience can relate to how do you hope to convince them that you developed a product with their needs in mind. Microsoft have never really understood design and it's importance for usability. But they've never tried to develop designer tools before. If they have any hope of getting designers on board they have to understand designers and what they are looking for in a software package. Flash itself was never that cool. It became cool because some really cool designers embraced and made it do cool things. If Silverlight is to become as successful as Flash it needs to engage designers. But it will never achieve that as long as they fill their speeches with marketing jargon.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Noise on the Wire
Over the last few days there has been an excess of noise on the feeds around three topics:
There's not much actual information around the first two mostly speculation and FUD. The third has been coming for a while with a launch a few weeks ago and some online presentations since then.
Everyone will be watching CS3 with interest as it is the first big release since Adobe swallowed Macromedia. This will tell us a lot about the impact of this merger. At work the ability to easy integrate between the design and web teams will decide how quickly we upgrade. For my personal client work it will be about integration with Flex and so I'll probably wait and see what happens with the next Flex release (later this year).
There's not much actual information around the first two mostly speculation and FUD. The third has been coming for a while with a launch a few weeks ago and some online presentations since then.
Everyone will be watching CS3 with interest as it is the first big release since Adobe swallowed Macromedia. This will tell us a lot about the impact of this merger. At work the ability to easy integrate between the design and web teams will decide how quickly we upgrade. For my personal client work it will be about integration with Flex and so I'll probably wait and see what happens with the next Flex release (later this year).
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