Alcides Fonseca

Levantar-me as 6 da manhã não foi tão doloroso como pensava. Até porque acordei as 5. Eu e os meus quatro acompanhantes (mais sobre isto no final) apanhámos o alfa e 3 horas depois estávamos a fazer o check-in no TechDays. Lá fui obrigado a andar com a camisa oficial do evento (não entra bem no meu estilo), mas tinha a vantagem de não me andarem a scannar o cartão sempre que queria entrar.

Começámos por ver a sessão do Mr. Rob Miles sobre XNA com os seus very silly games. Comparado às apresentações de Barcelona o público não respondeu ao seu humor bastante refinado. Mas todos gostámos.

Depois a sessão sobre o Robotics Studio que é uma coisa que já me anda há uns tempos na cabeça. O Rob Miles usa a plataforma XNA para ensinar os seus alunos a programar. Eu cá acho que a robótica é que era bastante útil neste propósito. E ainda quero ver se alguém estiver interessado em patrocinar um Lego Mindstorms NXT, eu dar-lhe-ei bom uso no meu departamento! Em relação ao Robotics Studio é bastante interessante o simulador que junta renderização do XNA com um motor de física usado em muitos jogos. Gostava de testar isto a sério!

A slot seguinte foi para descansar um bocado e rever a minha apresentação que vou falar num post à part e finalmente fui à segunda parte de silverlight 2.0. É engraçado, um bocadinho melhorzinho que o Flash, mas ainda não vale a diferença. Agora o 3.0 com 3d e aceleração gráfica vai fazer mesmo a diferença! E trazer os jogos de qualidade ao browser :)

Foi bastante engraçado o evento, e tinha miúdas giras, como em qualquer evento da Microsoft! Podem ver alguns vídeos sobre o evento, que dão uma ideia de como correu!

Só um pequeno rant: apenas se inscreveram 10 pessoas para ir gratuitamente ao TechDays, o que quer dizer que poucas pessoas na minha faculdade se interessam por ir a eventos técnicos deste género. É uma pena. Outra coisa que também me deixa em baixo é que dos 10 iniciais apenas foram 4 porque tinhamos uma data de coisas marcadas para o dia seguinte e não há qualquer facilitismo para alunos que faltem às aulas para participar a eventos. Já se forem professores não há problema e podem ou não marcar aulas de substituição...

Let’s start by big G, they’ve released the Google Contacts API. They’re second to Microsoft who have already did the same, in order to avoid situations where you have to give your email password to social networks, so they can import your contacts. A nice step, I just wish applications start to implement both of the APIs right away.

Now Apple, that has released the SDK for iPhone along with some news like exchange support and so. Like many noticed, they are targeting now the Business market with Air and this iPhone update (only possible to Microsoft new interoperability promise) and I guess they will make greater moves into that area in about one year or so. Regarding their store, they are being selfish and they are going to pay that price very soon. If they have hacked dotMac, won’t they be able to hack iPhone, and create a uTunes where you can get cracked software? And I bet a few developers will prefer this one!

Flock 1.1 was released. I have a bittersweet relationship with Flock. It used to be my main browser, but being an programmer I have some needs Flock doesn’t fulfill (not talking about Firebug). However if I only used the browser for social stuff like twittering, facebook, flickr, del.icio.us and have a wordpress blog, it would be perfect, just perfect.

With the release of Silverlight2b1, a few apps from partners are being shown up, and I really liked TextGlow, a online viewer of docx documents. That made me thing. Currently Office Online doesn’t have a collaborative tool. That makes ALL the difference when comparing to Google Apps. I believe the reason they’ve not released it yet is because they’re getting something really powerful built on Silverlight2. I can’t wait to try it out!

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!

Well, tomorrow in MIX08 keynote, Dean is going to talk about IE8 and even show it (rumors say at this time there is already a private beta program running).

The IE8 team (and some other guys at MS) noticed that the webdesigners and developers didn’t particularly like the IE8 behavior towards standards, and with MIX coming up, they definitely want to please designers, so yesterday they changed their minds and IE8 will follow the standards rendering the pages for default. This is a huge news! When everybody says that Apple listen to their users (regarding 10.5.2), Microsoft does the same about their ever-hated browser.

There is also one thing I guess their going to announce tomorrow: the fact IE8 will ship with the silverlight plugin. Everyone is expecting this, but it’s their way of convincing more designers to enter the silverlight wave. And Apple will also announce the same for Safari in next mac event…

After yesterday’s announcement, I’m already please with Microsoft, but there are a few things that would make me even more happier. First it would be the Microformats UI. After Mozilla dropping microformat UI support for Firefox3, this would be an excellent news to higher IE in people’s consideration.

Another news I would love to see is the OpenID support. Right now, I get the feeling Microsoft is becoming a security freak. They already have Cardspace support, but for regular internet surfers, they will only use it, if attached to an OpenID. So we could expect a Cardspace+OpenID support, but I guess not now.

The final feature, and this one would be the one I would really fall in love with MS, but I know it’s impossible, is the HTML5 (even if partial) rendering support. There are already a few folks wearing html5, so it would help people to move forward, and even pressure the standardization process.

John Gruber shared his thoughts on why Apple doesn’t want Flash on the iPhone and I believe that this should be reason for Microsoft to get Silverlight on the Mobile world.

In Microsoft’s events I’ve seen that they are trying to get people to use Silverlight (until now, they’ve failed in my opinion. Only a bunch of their partners is using it in the real world). In terms of results, you can achieve the same with Flash and all designers know it already. They believe it will be used because their desktops apps will also be built with the same technology (XAML), but I also haven’t seen those yet… Who knows if MIX08 will bring some big news?

Back to the mobile world, Microsoft is loosing to Apple’s iPhone mainly due to the user interface everybody complains on Windows Mobile. Nokia, LG and others are already following iPhone’s design patterns, and even the Android has some similarities. Yes, the “G Phone” that will be the main competitor for the Windows Mobile, since it will run on the same mobile (HTC and others). There are even some plugins to make WM more user friendly.

So I guess WM7 (or 6.5?) should have this astonishing interface and Silverlight based and if possible making it available to the Android Phones and even Symbian. That’s how they could make Silverlight a ubiquitous platform.

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.