Alcides Fonseca

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!

Adobe is betting real hard on RIAs now. After Flex and AIR, they are getting “Thermo” ready. Thermo is a “rich internet application design tool”. It’s kind of a Flex, but for designers. It’s pretty much graphical based (so that designers don’t need to code one single line) and integrates perfectly with Photoshop, Fireworks and the rest of the CS3. This might be a enormous advantage for Thermo to be chosen instead of Microsoft Expression Web.

But if you’re thinking it’s a designer-only tool, you’re wrong! Thermo’s code-view is actually the full Flex Builder application, so programmers can have fun with this tool almost as much as designers.

You can read more about Thermo in Read/Write Web.

Being a big fan of graphical designing of applications, like Visual Basic and so, I can’t wait to try this new IDE. I don’t quite like using Flash, but I believe gorgeous applications will come out from this in no time!

Michael wrote about how Silverlight is meant for designers. In fact, you should read it before you continue.

I believe Microsoft thinks software should be developed in team. It doesn’t matter if it is a pair or a big company with thousands of people working on that product. If you want to produce some good software, you need people to work on its different sides ( programming, design, database, etc…). More and more, the user interface is becoming a lot more important in software development. Microsoft is answering this demand with Expression Blend, a great tool for designers to implement good interfaces. It might be harder for a hardcore programmer to catch up with all its power, but it is possible! I took a look around Blend Expression and it was pretty familiar to me.

Regarding Silverlight as a RIA platform, I believe it will not be as used as Flash unless they come up with true 3D functionalities. Designers are used to Flash and if they don’t see any advantage, they won’t change! Maybe that’s why Microsoft doesn’t see Silverlight targeting the web. And on the desktop, .NET+Silverlight+WPF+... can’t be compared to AIR+Flash…

And by the way, if you are in Portugal, Expression European Designer Tour is coming up October, 24 and you can see some details in Filipe Freitas blog.

Bruno Figueiredo da APPU apresentou-nos o tema Usabilidade em RIAs de uma forma bastante interessante: Em vez de falar da teoria como já vi muitos fazer, em quase tudo o que falou, mostrava um pequeno screencast com um exemplo do mundo real, tanto bons como errados. Assim foi fácil para o público entender perfeitamente o que ele queria mostrar e ainda criar uma opinião dos websites em causa, e aprender com os seus erros ou qualidades.

Como webdesigner/developer, tomei notas de algumas das regras que achei fundamentais implementar:

• Fazer interfaces tanto para utilizadores iniciados como avançados, por exemplo usar teclas de atalho (ctrl+B) ou então ter um botão ou menu para o efeito (Botão para bold)


• Dar sempre ao utilizador feedback das acções que toma. É um caso frequente quando se usa AJAX, não dar resposta visível ao utilizador tanto de sucesso, como do erro. Já me aconteceu enviar informação num pedido AJAX e pensar que está no servidor, mas afinal deu um erro 500.


• Adicionar opção de undo. Quantas vezes numa aplicação web não desejaram retroceder a última acção?


• Seguir padrões. Se os utilizadores estão habituados a um certo modo de realizar uma opção noutras aplicações (quer web, quer desktop), ao usarmos o mesmo meio, estamos a facilitar a vida ao utilizador.


• Ser bastante específico quanto aos erros que ocorrem, para o utilizador corrijir-los mais facilmente.