Scott over at Lazycoder has something that Microsoft should think about

What I’m really looking for is a chart showing me which technology I should choose when developing my next web application. ASP.NET + AJAX? Silverlight? WPF? Microsoft is falling farther into a technology maze.

This is something that came up in our blogger lunch today with Ray Ozzie. When you develop with Microsoft, the sky is the limit, from the web to the desktop. The problem is that because a lot of this stuff is so new for Microsoft developers, it’s going to be tough for them to figure out when they should use which technology.

I’m not sure the answer is something as formal as specific guidelines, and the community should step up a bit here, but it’s something Microsoft should keep in mind.

[tags]Microsoft, developers[/tags]

I came across ApolloHunter while reading feeds today. I can’t tell how many people know about this, but it’s got most of the major Apollo applicaitons all in one place so you can view, viote and download them. Seems like this could become a nifty community for sharing Apollo apps down the road.

[tags]ApolloHunter, Apollo, Adobe[/tags]

PC Magazine did a review of Dreamweaver CS3 and while praising the product left the editor’s choice pick in the hands of Expression Web “by a nose”.

How worthwhile is the award? PC World acknowledges that Dreamweaver CS3 is a pretty awesome product and describes it as an essential upgrade for current Dreamweaver users. I’ve played with Expression Web and I was impressed, but the problem Microsoft has is that there are a TON of Dreamweaver users. Even if they have what some consider to be a better product, making any headway in the market is going to be VERY tough.

They’re going to have the same issue with Expression Design, people are simply too entrenched in Illustrator. But Blend is another story, because right now I really don’t think Adobe has a competitive tool to Blend, which is an “Interaction Designer”. Now obviously if you aren’t building WPF or Silverlight applications, Blend is useless to you, but it will be interesting to see if Blend can help the market share for Web and Designer. I’ve also seen some spiffy stuff with Expression Media.

[via ScaryNoises]

[tags]Dreamweaver CS3, Blend, Expression, Expression Web[/tags]

In catching up with some of my trackbacks I found a great post by Chris Messina about the importance of view source as Rich Internet Applications start to take off. He wrote it as an addendum to his panel at Web 2.0 Expo in which he lamented the fact that these new technologies were going to move the web from a place where example code is just a click away to one in which everything is obfuscated.

He makes a lot of good, solid points, and as the view source issue becomes more important, I think we all need to look to people like Chris for some guidance and ideas. I’ve talked about how I’d like to see more developers enable their source on RIA projects, but it isn’t reasonable to expect *everyone* to do so. Part of the allure of Flash is that it allows you to keep your code (mostly) private.

So as a community, it behooves all of us to be as open as possible when we can, but also join in the conversation about ways to make Rich Internet Applications more accessible to both budding developers and budding designers. The important thing, as Chris says, is to make sure we can ”learn from, adapt and merge prior art — source code that you’ve found elsewhere — and that, in turn, can be improved upon and release, furthering a virtuous cycle of innovation and education”. View source is a great way to do that, but when view source isn’t an option (for whatever reason) we should think about other solutions which achieve the same goal.

The more people can tinker, modify, hack and tear apart Rich Internet Applications, the more quickly they’ll be adopted. That means more developers and better applications.

[tags]Rich Internet Applications, accessibility, view source[/tags]

One of the strange thing about Silverlight is that unlike Flash, it doesn’t have any native controls, it just uses HTML controls and has some special hooks for ASP.NET AJAX (keep this in mind when you’re calling Silverlight a “Flash killer”). But the team at Telerik have built some pretty cool 3D cube controls they are calling RadControls for Silverlight and are selling them over on their site.

The interface (which requires the Silverlight plugin) takes the combo box metaphor and puts it into a cube. I think from a UI perspective, it’s a very neat way to select furniture. The script is a bit slow on my computer, and I’m not entirely sure how they did it, but it looks pretty spiffy.

[Via Mike Harsh]

[tags]telerik, silverlight, controls[/tags]

Friday night and I’m reading feeds about RIAs. I’m not sure what that says about me, but hey, what can you do. This one is about the MTV reversion from their touted all-Flash site back to HTML. It’s interesting to see things like this happen. MTV is obviously a very media-heavy site, but going all Flash didn’t work for their users.

So what happened? Well, MTV lists a few reasons for the switch back. 1) It’s faster, 2) Simplified navigation, 3) Accurate internal search. What’s interesting is that a lot of the comments seem to miss the old, site. They don’t appear to miss Flash as a technology, but they liked the UI tweaks that were made with the Flash site.

So is there anything to be learned from this? I’d say the MTV Flash site was pretty well designed, but it still didn’t seem to go over well with users. The “native” browser experience is still important, so a blend of Ajax and Flash still seems to be the best solution when creating a consumer-facing site. Applications are a different story though I think.

Thanks to Jajajax for the heads up. More thoughts here and here and technorati.

[tags]MTV, HTML, Rich Internet Applications, Ajax[/tags]

I’m late to this, but on Thursday Robert Scoble blogged that Tjeerd Hoek, the director of user experience design for Windows is leaving to join Frog Design. Most of the comments focus on the Google vs. Microsoft angle, but from an RIA perspective, this is VERY interesting.

Frog Design is one of the best design firms in the RIA space, and they do great work with Windows Presentation Foundation, Flash, and Silverlight. It could be that after Vista shipped, Tjeerd just wanted new challenges. But the fact that he went to a design firm that is known for its technology agnostic approach is worth thinking about.

If the great design minds gravitate towards the people building solutions instead of the people building platforms, users are probably better off.

[tags]Tjeerd Hoek, Microsoft, User Experience, Frog Design[/tags]

Interesting article from Wired about how “Web 2.0″ is starting to impact traditional software companies like Microsoft and Adobe:

As people gravitate to the Internet for more and more free services and solutions the web browser could become the central window through which our daily lives are conducted, potentially replacing most desktop applications.

I don’t think I can hit this point home hard enough. When I talk about RIAs being the future of software, this is exactly what I mean. Are you going to be able to recreate Photoshop or Microsoft Office in a browser? No way. You can do things like Google Docs, sure, but while that has 80% of what you need (in theory) for Microsoft Office, it doesn’t do it all.

So as the web becomes more important as a delivery mechanism for software, where do these companies turn? Well, they build out their own platforms. Adobe has Flash, which is powerful and just getting better. Microsoft now has Silverlight, which we may get a full story on at MIX. These RIA platforms give a lot of the flexibility and convenience of the web but allow for powerful, rich desktop-like experiences.

Do you really think in 10 or even 5 years we couldn’t see Photoshop delivered in Flash? RIAs are the “boxed software” of the future. With more economically stable licensing models, less worry about piracy, and software delivered as a service all wrapped up in a web package, what’s not to love for these companies?

Thanks to Alex Barnett for the link

[tags]Adobe, Rich Internet Applications, Flash, Silverlight, Microsoft, Web 2.0[/tags]

I was over in Redmond yesterday getting some information about Silverlight. I can’t say anything of course, but I was both impressed and excited for what Microsoft is doing. They’re taking the RIA space VERY seriously, and that’s going to show at MIX when they take the covers off of everything.

Luckily, they’ve set up a blogger’s area so that people like me can hang out and try to tell everyone about the news. Their THEY’RE (I can’t believe I did that..ouch) calling it the BlogZone, and they’re going to provide food, internet connections, XBox madness and plasma screens. Between the news and how awesome the BlogZone sounds, I’ll probably be setting up a permanent base camp there. I think there are some famous faces (and another famous face)making an appearance as well.

As the news comes out, you’re going to hear a lot about Microsoft vs Adobe. Part of that is obviously true, but I look at it a bit differently. The fact of the matter is that the RIA world is valuable and getting bigger. No company can afford to sit on the sidelines. It’s going to be a fun ride!

[tags]Silverlight, Adobe, MIix07, BlogZone, Microsoft[/tags]

I came across an interesting job post for a company, Blist, I’m fairly familiar with looking for a “Rich Internet Application Designer“. The “RIA Designer” position is going to become one of the most important jobs in the Rich Internet Application space. Jesse Warden talks about this a bit (his wife is a usability ninja)

What does a RIA designer do? Creates interfaces, makes usable designs and works with designers and developers to create those interactions. It’s a pretty important part. They are part information architect, part RIA developer, which is kind of a tough mix.

The position really hasn’t existed until now because usability in software, let alone web applications, wasn’t as important (or easy). Now it is, so these people are in high demand. And what tools do they use? Expression Blend seems to be the best thing right now, but Fireworks is out there. It’s something that will be interesting to watch over the coming months. RIAs are actually helping to create NEW types of jobs. I think that’s a good sign.

[tags]Rich Internet Application Designer, Rich Internet Applications, Expression Blend, Blist[/tags]