Nashville Microsoft Event
Just got back from the MAX 2007 conference today. Stepped off the plane and drove over to meet my co-workers at Opry Mills for the 4 hour Microsoft Event regarding Silverlight ... or so we thought. I think the speaker spent 30-45 minutes on Silverlight. The rest was on LINQ (which is actually pretty cool) and Windows Communication Framework (JMS anyone?).
Anyway, none of us came away overly impressed. I do think Silverlight has potential, I am just not sure to what degree it will compete. On the one hand, it is MS, a world class tool development shop. You know eventually the tool will rock for developers (who knows, maybe even designers). But after the session was over I spoke to the speaker and mentioned how far ahead I felt Adobe was with Flex, and he told me they only had like 3-5 guys on the tool team atm. Huh? I don't know, he made it sound like it was a couple of guys' pet project. David (co-worker) made a good point...could they just be waiting to see what sort of interest level develops?
They guy did say something like, "Ignore the marketing speak, Silverlight IS here to compete with Flash." He showed several features that were similar to where Flex is/may be going (see Flex Roadmap Part I and Flex Roadmap Part II). Specifically, the fact the there are separate design and developments tools that can work off of the same project, and that the design tool generates the components using shapes and other graphical elements. He also showed of the HD video capabilities that were "superior" to Flash (he was not aware of the announcements at MAX
Several people asked about components in Silverlight. He indicated the Silverlight component toolkit was going to take care of this. This is sort of like how it is with Flex components. The language and installable runtime itself only defines the building blocks for components. No component library comes down with the runtime. It is up to the designer/developer to include what he/she wants. Also, after the session I asked him more about components. He indicated that when the release version of Silverlight 1.1 comes out (the C#/full CLR runtime version that is in alpha mode right now) the component toolkit should be pretty rich. I think at this stage we just have to sort of wait and see.
Anyway, none of us came away overly impressed. I do think Silverlight has potential, I am just not sure to what degree it will compete. On the one hand, it is MS, a world class tool development shop. You know eventually the tool will rock for developers (who knows, maybe even designers). But after the session was over I spoke to the speaker and mentioned how far ahead I felt Adobe was with Flex, and he told me they only had like 3-5 guys on the tool team atm. Huh? I don't know, he made it sound like it was a couple of guys' pet project. David (co-worker) made a good point...could they just be waiting to see what sort of interest level develops?
They guy did say something like, "Ignore the marketing speak, Silverlight IS here to compete with Flash." He showed several features that were similar to where Flex is/may be going (see Flex Roadmap Part I and Flex Roadmap Part II). Specifically, the fact the there are separate design and developments tools that can work off of the same project, and that the design tool generates the components using shapes and other graphical elements. He also showed of the HD video capabilities that were "superior" to Flash (he was not aware of the announcements at MAX
Several people asked about components in Silverlight. He indicated the Silverlight component toolkit was going to take care of this. This is sort of like how it is with Flex components. The language and installable runtime itself only defines the building blocks for components. No component library comes down with the runtime. It is up to the designer/developer to include what he/she wants. Also, after the session I asked him more about components. He indicated that when the release version of Silverlight 1.1 comes out (the C#/full CLR runtime version that is in alpha mode right now) the component toolkit should be pretty rich. I think at this stage we just have to sort of wait and see.
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