Category Archives: internet

internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring

Adobe Thermo: Visual programming for designers

Adobe has taken the wraps off Thermo, a new tool aimed at bridging the designer/developer gap by enabling designers to create an interactive user interface without writing code, and making it easier for designers to create components that developers can code against. Graphical components can be converted into MXML objects.

Designers will be able to work with placeholder dynamic data, giving a more accurate idea of what an application will look like at runtime.

An important feature is round-tripping between Thermo and Flex Builder. Yes, this sounds similar to what Microsoft offers with Expression and Visual Studio:

The designer’s work can be incorporated directly into the production application with no loss of fidelity, and designers can continue to refine the design throughout the iterative development process.

There’s a blow-by-blow account of the Thermo demo at Max in Jen deHaan’s blog post. It sounds as if it went down well at Max. Don’t get too excited though: this is a sneak preview, so no product before 2008, maybe later than that for the release version.

I’m not at the conference myself; I’ll be attending the European Max in a couple of weeks time, and I’ll find out what I can about Thermo.

Personally I’m not excited by live data at design-time. Borland has had this for years in Delphi, and it never struck me as a huge advantage. Then again I am not a designer. Round-tripping is a big feature though, and the ability to take graphics out of PhotoShop and easily convert them to programmable components sounds great.

It’s also interesting to see the unfolding of another chapter in the Adobe/Microsoft wars. There are even family connections. The Thermo team is led by Mark Anders, one of the inventors of Microsoft’s ASP.NET.

internet, microsoft, windows

Microsoft Office Live Workspace: what’s missing from the FAQ?

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A lot. It seems that Microsoft’s Office Live Workspace is free hosted SharePoint. You will be able to save and open Office documents directly to and from the Internet. A genuinely useful service; but here are a few questions that are not covered in the FAQ:

Can I create or edit documents using just a web browser?

My guess: presumably not. Microsoft will require you to use Office, or whatever offline editor you used to create the document.

What do users not running Windows and/or not running Office see when they access a shared document?

I’m not sure about this one. Presumably they can download documents and open them if they have a compatible editor or viewer. That’s not online collaboration though. Sharepoint also has the ability to render office documents as html, through an HTML viewing server:

The HTML viewing server provides support for users who want to view the content of files on the Windows SharePoint Services Web site, but do not have Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or Microsoft PowerPoint from Microsoft Office 97, or a later release of Office, installed on their local computer. Even users who only have a Web browser (Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator) can view content by having the native Office file format converted to HTML automatically.

Will this be part of Office Live Workspace? That’s not yet clear.

How do I access Live Workspace documents offline?

Good question. Mary Jo Foley has the best report on this, and quotes Corporate Vice President Rajesh Jha,:

Groove will be the way you take any Workspace offline, Jha said

Now, a Live Workspace plus synchronized offline store would really get my interest. But when, how, and at what cost?

What files types can be stored (and a few related questions)?

Live Workspace is not just for Office docs; you can store other file types as well. The FAQ says:

For your protection, we don’t allow the uploading of files that could cause security issues such as .exe files.

Does that mean any file type that is not on a security blacklist? Or is there a whitelist of safe file types? If we are saving from a non-Office application, will the Live Workspace appear as a virtual directory in the file system? What about saving from other operating systems?

How much space is available?

Can’t believe it’s not in the FAQ? If it is, I can’t see it. It says:

You can store over 1,000 Office documents in your workspace, based on the average file size and use of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint by students, work, and home users.

I hate being treated like an idiot. (PS: the consensus is that it is 250MB).

When will Office Live Workspace be available?

That’s not stated.

That will do for starters. Microsoft, how about adding these to your FAQ?

blogging, internet, web authoring

Upgrading WordPress

This blog is now running on WordPress 2.3. The differences from 2.2 are minor from the user’s perspective, which strikes me as a sign of maturity: it was already very good. Unfortunately the team did not address my number one wish, which is paged comments – but I realise I am in a minority as the feature has only 8 votes at the time of writing. There is a plug-in, but it does not work well with the theme I use. I am not complaining though; WordPress is fantastic and I am a loyal user. I have started using it for longer articles as well as blog posts; it is effective as a simple content management system for this site.

With the upgrade to 2.3 I have also converted to a Subversion install. This means I can do a Subversion update to grab the latest version, making it easier to stay current.

Matt Mullenwegg is speaking on WordPress.com architecture at the Future of Web Apps conference in London later this week. I will be there and blogging.

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internet, software development

Zimki closure shows the perils of hosted web platforms

A couple of days ago, a low-key posting on the Zimki blog announced the closure of the service:

We regret to inform you that the Zimki service is to be withdrawn and therefore will no longer be available from 24 December 2007. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause…There are no plans to opensource Zimki…We hope that Zimki has helped to increase your knowledge and understanding of the possibilities that utility computing and an online application framework can bring.

Zimki is a platform for online applications, and boasted rapid development, use of a familiar language (Javascript), fault-tolerance and scalability through use of a hosted platform:

There was also this claim in the documentation:

Zimki itself will be released as open-source software soon freeing you from fears of lock-in that having only a single-provider may cause.

Apparently this was a promise that counted for nothing. Anyone who seriously committed to Zimki has some rapid rethinking and migration to do. Zimki simply advises its users to remove their data and applications from its platform before it closes for ever in a few months’ time.

Well, there were plenty of warning signs. In July, parent company Canon Europe announced that it would cease to invest in the project – this Reg story has the details. But it strikes me that the Zimki story is thought-provoking for anyone contemplating a move to hosted applications. The concept makes huge sense, provided that the platform you choose does not run into problems beyond the control of its users. Just how big and financially stable does the provider have to be, in order to reduce that risk to reasonable proportions?

internet, software development, web authoring

The battle for the dominant Web API

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Thought-provoking post from Joel Spolsky on web client APIs. He says that whoever has the best AJAX library will be the next Microsoft.

Spolsky dismisses “the p-code/Java model” (which would include Flash and Silverlight 1.1 as well as Java applets):

Sandboxes are penalty boxes; they’re slow and they suck, which is why Java Applets are dead, dead, dead. To build a sandbox you pretty much doom yourself to running at 1/10th the speed of the underlying platform, and you doom yourself to never supporting any of the cool features that show up on one of the platforms but not the others.

I don’t follow his logic here. First, “sandboxes” may be slow compared to true native code, but they are faster than any browser-hosted Javascript, at least until Tamarin comes along. Second, AJAX apps are generally as much or more hobbled than plug-in applets.

I’m not dismissing the idea of compiling to Javascript though. There are interesting projects that do this already. In addition, Spolsky seems to be thinking along the same lines as Microsoft’s Eric Meijer, who told me about the misleadingly-named “LINQ 2.0”. But I think plug-in based apps will be important as well, both as entire applications and as rich components within AJAX apps.

Personally I hope there will not be a “new Microsoft.” I’d like to see diversity based on web standards.

internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring, windows

Scott Guthrie on .NET futures

I’ve posted my interview with Scott Guthrie, from the UK Mix07. It covers topics including LINQ, Silverlight, the work with Novell/Mono on Moonlight (Silverlight for Linux), ASP.NET futures including MVC, and offline web applications.

Guthrie is a General Manager at Microsoft, responsible for most of the development teams working on .NET. He did some excellent presentations at the UK Mix, intermingling live coding and demos with slides, talk, and dealing with ad-hoc questions – not an easy task.

There were several things I found interesting in his answers to my questions. On a technical level, the way Microsoft’s various implementations of the Common Language Runtime share code is intriguing. In particular, I was fascinated to learn that Silverlight and the desktop CLR are built from the same code tree. There is a second code tree for the CLR, but it is for the Compact Framework, not for Silverlight. The implication is that the performance of Silverlight and its compatibility with other .NET code should be pretty good.

How then is Silverlight much smaller than the desktop CLR? The reason is that most of the Framework library is missing. That’s the trade-off.

Another point of interest is the strength of Guthrie’s reaction when I asked about offline web applications, and Microsoft’s platform versus other approaches such as Google Gears and Adobe AIR. When a spokesperson takes the trouble to trash the competition, it is often a sign of concern.

borland, internet, software development, web authoring

CodeGear’s Ruby on Rails IDE is released

CodeGear has released its IDE for Ruby on Rails. Called 3rdRail, it installs an instant Ruby on Rails environment, and features code completion, project management, refactoring and integrated debugging. The Eclipse-based IDE runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, and a 30 day trial is available. I’m downloading it now.

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internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring, windows

Want a job? Learn Silverlight, not WPF

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I keep an occasional watch on technology trends in the UK by the haphazard technique of browsing to Jobserve.com, bashing in some developer platforms, and seeing how many vacancies come up. I last blogged about this in August 2006, and before that in January 2006, March 2005, and August 2004.

Real-world job vacancies trail the conversation we have about cutting-edge web platforms by some margin. To give you an idea, in March 2002, three months after the first official release of C#, Jobserve had just 153 vacancies for C# developers, compared to 1894 for VB and 2092 for Java. Today, C# has 2933, VB and VB.NET 1906, Java 3741.

But that’s not what caught my eye when I looked this morning. I searched first for WPF, and then for Silverlight. WPF went final in November 2006, at about the same time as Vista was released to manufacturing. That’s nine months ago, but Jobserve has only 28 jobs which specifically mention WPF.

Silverlight 1.0 was released earlier this month. It’s a great video player, but many developers are waiting for Silverlight 1.1, due sometime in 2008, which supports .NET programming as well as multimedia. Component vendor Infragistics told me at the UK Mix07 that it is not bothering to release components for Silverlight 1.0, but has lots in the pipeline for 1.1. Keen to work with Silverlight in the UK? Jobserve has just 30 jobs to choose from.

The numbers are tiny (thought let me note, even CodeGear’s long-established Delphi can only muster 93 jobs), but I’m intrigued that Silverlight is actually a hair ahead of WPF in this context. Tomorrow it may be different; but it accords with my own assessment. I like WPF; it’s a better API than Win32 for coding a GUI. But it is a hard sell to developers of those boring business apps that make up the bulk of software development today. Unless you are making big use of visualization, it’s likely you will be more productive with tried-and-tested Windows Forms, or native Win32 code.

Silverlight is different. It is an immediate win if you have desktop .NET apps which you would like to convert to web applications, or ASP.NET apps for which you would like a richer client. Why Silverlight and not WPF? For one thing, cross-platform, essential for public web applications and very useful internally as well, with all those Mac-using designers (and now the CEO wants a Mac too). For another thing, lightweight deployment. When you install or upgrade the .NET runtime on a Windows box, you hold your breath as it updates a gazillion system components and hope that no bizarre error code appears. When you install Silverlight, you just click OK to a browser dialog, and it works.

The contradiction in the title of this post is that both Silverlight and WPF use XAML, so in learning one you are to some extent learning the other. Nevertheless, I now believe that Silverlight will be a more significant platform than WPF, and I’ll be interested to see if future job vacancies back up that prediction.

Update: Ryan Stewart has some US figures which are more positive for WPF, though again the absolute numbers are small. Interesting to watch.

internet, microsoft, multimedia, web authoring

LiveStation uses peer-to-peer, Silverlight for live TV

My final report from the UK Mix07 “Sneak peeks.” We were shown LiveStation, a Silverlight application which uses peer-to-peer technology developed by Microsoft Research to show live TV in a desktop application. Desktop and Silverlight? Yes, the app we say uses browser hosting to transform Silverlight into a desktop runtime. This is not too good for the cross-platform aspect, though it would seem possible to do the same thing with say WebKit (Safari as a component) on the Mac.

The broadcast quality was adequate for casual viewing but not great. However the player does look hassle-free to operate. Unlike the BBC’s troublesome iPlayer, this is for live TV rather than playback of previous broadcasts. Still, with both Silverlight and Flash supporting high quality video codecs, running cross-platform, and offering smooth installation with plenty of scope for interactivity, it looks like the BBC has some good options if it decides to re-examine its iPlayer technology.

The company behind LiveStation is Skinkers, which acquired peer-to-peer technology from Microsoft in exchange for a minority equity stake.

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internet, microsoft, software development, web authoring, windows

Microsoft to support PHP in Expression Web 2.0

The closing session of UK Mix07 was a “Sneak peeks” in which we were shown a variety of snippets of varying degrees of interest. One was a brief glimpse of Expression Web 2.0, Microsoft’s web design tool, showing “PHP script” on the File – New menu.

The extent of this support was not discussed. The minimum would be some level of syntax highlighting, which would be trivial to implement, so this may not amount to much. Still, it is interesting as a sign of the times. When I spoke to some folk from Zend a couple of months ago, they emphasised their IIS support and good relationship with Microsoft, so it looks as if both sides want to play nicely together.