And then my battery died. But…
…one the most amazing and unexpected announcements of the whole keynote came for me in a WPF demo towards the end.
In an update to WPF that should be available some time this summer, we’re going to get SHADER SUPPORT in WPF.
Yes, that kind of shader.
It was demoed during the keynote with some custom shaders being applied to WPF content (including UI elements) presented in 3D.
WPF team, I love you guys.
(image credit: LearnWPF Blog)
Mix08 Keynote – Silverlight & WPF
First let’s get to the obvious Silverlight announcements we “knew” were coming during this keynote:
- Silverlight 2.0 Beta is available!
- Expression Blend 2.5 (!) March Preview is available!
- [update] Silverlight Beta tools for Visual Studio 2008 are available
- formal announcement of Silverlight Mobile device support!
In my presentation last weekend I was asked about Silverlight adoption stats, which I predicted we’d get during the keynote. We did, with:
- a montage of apps already built with Silverlight
- the stat of 1.5+ mllion installations of Silverlight runtime / day
Now, you can ignore the rest of my notes if you want, and go check out the Silverlight 2.0-powered Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia demo: http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/ It incorporates the “Big, Wide and Deep” Microsoft Research technology I wrote about a year ago. GREAT application of that technology.
…or, read on…
Silverlight and Media
3 key points here:
1. Improving experience: Adaptive Streaming – “please choose your connection speed” not only fails the Mom test but even for an “expert” you don’t know if you will receive consistent bandwidth over a shared or patchy connection. So the streaming service can now adjust the bitrate automatically even without user input. No code.
- Evidence: Move Networks – strategic partnership with Microsoft (Disney etc)
2. TCO: Streaming and progressive download experiences using Windows Media Services 2008, which is free to run on any Windows Server 2008 box. The quality of the service is a big reason why the Olympics will be hosted using Silverlight. For the case where users stop 1/2 way through a video, set up bitrate throttles for video, so that after a burst, you are only paying for x seconds of unwatched video.
3. Business Opportunities: Great demo of advertising intergration into a page using Silverlight, Blend 2.5 March Preview, Video.Show integration, XAML used to present dynamic ad content on top of video. Ari Paparo from DoubleClick showing advertising integration opportunities in order to monetise web properties.
Olympics Evidence for Silverlight Media: Perkins Miller, Sr VP Digital Media, NBC Sports and Olympics. 2200 hours of live coverage, which will then be made available as video on-demand (VOD). How to deliver in a way that is interactive? Today they delivered an engaging demo where you can do instant replays, overlay expert commentary, send and share links while watching, have a UI to see what’s going on across many feeds, set up picture-in-picture, watch 4 LIVE feeds at once, and have community interaction (see top videos etc.).
Silverlight and RIA
- Multi-Language support
- WPF UI Framework subset – layout management, data binding, styling, animation
- Robust networking stack (REST, SOAP, WS-*, standard HTTP endpoints, cross-domain networking, sockets)
- Integrated Data Support (incl. built-in support for LINQ, local cache)
- Small download, fast install: 4.3MB download, 6-10 seconds to install on clean machine
- Control templating and skinning model from WPF comes to Silverlight – including visual tree and animations!
- shipping the controls as source!!
- shipping a testing framework that allows you to write unit tests!
- shipping over 2000 unit tests that cover the Silverlight controls!
Silverlight 2 Beta 1 and WPF 3.5 evidence
AOL - mail client – power of Control Templates, basically. meh.
Hard Rock and Vertigo - 70,000 pieces of rock memorabilia
***** Demo – first GREAT demo of the morning
2 billion pixels
oh my goodness: http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/
Aston Martin – online, dealership and ownership experiences
- online – Silverlight experience
- dealership – WPF and XNA experience
- ownership – “true telemetry” proof-of-concept demo
p.s. I can please has an Aston Martin? for demo purposes?
Cirque du Soleil - WPF Line-of-business app demo – Head of Casting, Resident Shows America, Krista Monson
***** Demo – second GREAT demo of the morning!!
They managed to make a WPF line-of-business app demo really engaging and relevant. Wow.
Mix08 Keynote – Internet Explorer 8
After a brief intro by Scott Guthrie, the technical component of the keynote began with Dean Hackamovitch’s first public demo of IE8.
[Quick update: you can download the IE8 Beta here.]
I know that this conference is fundamentally about connected systems, and the web browser is a vitally important component.
But I thought this was a profoundly boring way to begin the technical announcement part of the keynote.
At first I was like “meh,” but then there were a couple of great demos that redeemed this segment, which I’ll mention after listing Dean’s 8 new things about IE8:
1. CSS 2.1
– of all the w3c working groups, this one should have the most impact
2. CSS Cetification
– 702 test cases made available under BSD license to w3c
- by default, IE8 interprets content in the most standards-compliant way
3. Perf
– much improved, esp. JScript related to strings
4. HTML 5 Start
5. Dev Tools
- set breakpoints in IE using “Developer Tools” . You can add a watch, there’s an immediate window, CSS style tracing and more.
6. Activities (integrate site into rest of web)
- “Smart-tag” like activities when you select, e.g., an address, a product that we can find on ebay, etc., without having to leave the page (using a hover-over window)
- very easy to extend
7. WebSlices (deliver user-specific content)
- allows me to subscribe and interact to portions of a page that interest me.
- examples: an ebay auction, the Facebook status
- dev experience: just add a div to the page, no need for a separate feed
8. Beta1 for Devs available after the keynote
- Get IE8 Beta here
My initial thought on this part of the keynote: IE8 does NOT make for an interesting demo. Why is this where we are starting our day?!
But then the things that engaged me:
- Showing IE8 responding to “Network Connection Lost” — and support for DOM storage
- Dev Tools built in to IE8 for setting breakpoints in code, adding watches, immediate window, CSS style tracing, and more.
Already available: First look at IE8 Activities and WebSlices
So in summary
Mix08 Keynote – parting thoughts
I’ve just stepped out from the first Mix Keynote I’ve attended as a consultant rather than a Microsoftie. There was no real shocker in there, but it was a solid keynote and I am enthused by a couple of exciting announcements
Ray Ozzie began by saying he sees Mix08 as one of several milestones on a path culminating at the PDC event in October. The evolution he sees happening around the web are organized around 3 core principles:
1. (impact to the individual:) Think of web as hub (social)
- linking, sharing, ranking, tagging will become as familiar as file, edit, view
2. (impact to the enterprise:) Power of choice as enterprise moves to embrace the cloud
- enteprrise based software, partner-hosted services, and services in the cloud
- distributed, federated services between enterprise data center and the cloud
3. “Small pieces, loosely joined”
Connected Devices
– “Personal Device Mesh”
- unified device management where devices can report in for management, health, location
- an app plat cognisent of all your devices
- software+service offering
Connected Entertainment
– license your media once, and enjoy the media anywhere you want
Connected Productivity
– Office, Office Mobile, Office Live
- Office Live Workspace – wide public beta yesterday
Connected Business
– “inevitable shift toward utility computing in the Enterprise”
- Exchange Online, Office Communications Online, Office Commnications Server, SQL Server Data Services
Connected Development
– .NET offerings
More to come over a couple of posts.
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