Mix08 keynote feedback
First of all, it 1 was an excellent keynote! Not that b.o.r.i.n.g keynote I’ve seen in TechEd Barcelona (Somasegar simply doesn’t have that charisma it needs to make an hell of a presentation!). And I deeply liked this keynote. Not that always-the-same keynote Mr Jobs does all the time2! They really called people to show interesting stuff made in their technologies.
From Ozzie’s talk, you get one thing: Microsoft is definitely moving from a software products to software services. I see them in 8–9 years to let go Office (the desktop app) and provide Office Online only. It has not been talking, but it’s a great solution against the piracy their been experimenting.
They did the right thing for standards, that’s true. However I will never forget that they did it one version later. IE7 would be the perfect version to make the move.
Improved scripting performance. That just the natural evolution, no big deal. It’s around the same values as the last firefox and webkit.
They also fulfilled one item of my ie8 wishlist, the HTML5 partial rendering. That’s the only nice thing I’ve seen.
Built-in developer tools. Everyone LOVES firebug. That’s just a copycat.
WebSlices. Have you heard of Safari’s WebClip? No special markup needed! They wanted to get in the microformats world, but I don’ think it was the best way.
Activities. This is the one point they wanted to integrate the social web in the browser. Although WebServices/Activities have a nice and easy spec, that’s again the wrong approach in my opinion. Search is already handled by OpenSearch and all the interactive context should be handled by microformats. Which I haven’t heard of in the entire keynote (and hSlice doesn’t count!).
Microsoft talks all the time about innovation, but the truth is I haven’t seen any in IE8. Has anyone noticed that the interface is exactly the same as IE7? Even the searchbox is the same! I really hope that changes until the Gold.
Just bare with some quick notes about SilverLight2. They’re focusing it in video, that’s what I learn from the news. They also showed some RIA examples, but does anyone see any real advantage comparing to Flex? Apart from being .NET? Me neither. The only thing I really wanted from Silverlight is years away: 3D. Is even any Silverlight Papervision3d clone around?
Oh wait, there was one lovely thing I predicted: Silverlight went mobile and also for Nokia’s. That’s the only way I’m gonna be using Silverlight for now.
1 Silverlight apps have the same problem as Flash. You cannot easily have a direct URI for each page. Microsoft should have made it better for Mix Sessions!
2 Before you zealot guys start to call me a Microsoft clone, I proudly own a macbook, and I wouldn't trade it for any other laptop running XP or Vista!
