Aggiorno hits RC0 with 3 new aggiornings

Aggiorno, the web developer add-in for Visual Studio, just hit Release Candidate 0 this week and packed with bug fixes we are also making available 3 new aggiornings.

In this first incarnation, Aggiorno lives as a Visual Studio 2005/2008 add-in, assisting Web developers in accomplishing complex tasks in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.

The following video shows the new aggiornings in action, making required fields for the script and textarea elements a snap to fix.

Following a similar experience as the Add alternate text to images, this 3 new aggiornings will guide you to add the missing script type and column and rows properties to your textarea elements which are required per compliance with the XHTML standard.

So go ahead try you self and give Aggiorno a chance... to learn more you can check my post about Aggiorno from last week, or visit the Web site.

Cheers and happy aggiornings!

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Technorati Tags: Aggiorno,Artinsoft,Products,Web,ASP.NET,XHTML,Standards Compliance,Visual Studio

SEO for RIA: the status a few days later

Earlier this week, Adobe made public the news that they had provided Google and Yahoo! with a tricky special version of the Flash Player, which in turn will allow them to dig inside the thousand of Flash enabled Web sites out there and crawl inside them in order to pull out more relevant information that what they previously could.

And there was hype.

The world, though, has not changed that much from the day before the announcement, at least not as I write this down. Google has had access to the to the SWF composition for years now; only now they've been rumored to have paid Adobe a license fee to access the source code for the Flash Player in order to emulate real humans interacting with the content, or is that Ryan who is doing the work?

But then people has been asking, where does Microsoft stand today with Silverlight? As of what I know there hasn't been any comments (at least not public) on this topic.

Microsoft has .XAML and the .XAP extensions, the second been just a zip file renamed; which pretty much are open for anyone to consume, crawl and index; all this available to the world from day 1. XAML at its end is XML and it remains XML once deployed (different to MXML that gets pre-compiled to AS3 and later to binary format for it to be published); which could allow savvy developers to XLST the markup to XHTML, provide a site map as per normal practices and best part, one the content owner, will have the chance to decide what the bot gets to see and what remains invisible.

An approach similar to this was put into test by Ted Patrick about a year ago with its Flex Directory, he tried to make the content of the application SEO friendly, thus exposing it as an XML document with an associated XSLT that will then put a Flex presentation layer in front that will consume the data recursively (by making a call to itself) and thus rendering the contents to he user as a user friendly application. Problem was there was no deep-linking mechanism supported.

As for deep linking, same principals apply here for both Adobe and Microsoft; you still need to figure out how your end users move in and out of the solution you’ve built. This still requires a RIA Architect to decide how this composition comes together. Google is unlikely to automate this for us, as in the end this is what the sales pitch during this week has been.

As I read somewhere in the Web, there is more to this than what has been covered. Here is how I see it:

The problem at hand still remains unsolved (so don't think on throwing that SWFObject nor the SWFAddress code away, just yet), all that happened really is Adobe took out some insurance to keep the .SWF extension relevant through the welcoming arms of Google and Yahoo!

As for Live Search? Adobe told The Register that they had talked to different teams at Microsoft to use the version of Flash Player with their Live Search service. No agreement has been reached, and negotiations are no longer active.

But just as Ryan says,

It would be great if this was open and anyone could use it. That’s been the direction Adobe has been going so hopefully it turns out that way soon.

And making echo of Steven Hodson from Mashable!

Search is not - or should not be - about the companies. It should be about all the companies being able to provide the best results they can to anyone who wants to use any search engine they choose

Time is early in this game and lots of plays has to be undergone before we really see clearer into its results; the ball has been put on the move and it's for the rest of us to make the most of it.

As for the rest staying with the good old XHTML Web, you make want to give Aggiorno a try, as from where I see it's the only magic going on right now.

Have you got a Crystal Ball to see what's next?

Update: and when I thought I was the only one with this on me head, I found this posts laying around

• My Frustrations with Google and Adobe...
• SEO, Nothing changed.
• Flash's New SEO is Over-Hyped

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Technorati Tags: Aggiorno,Adobe,Microsoft,Silvelright,Flex,Flash,SEO,Search,Web,Yahoo!,Google

Aggiorno: improving the web for you

Last week I told you guys about the changes that have undergone in my professional life as in the last months, and one big part of the change was joining the Artinsoft Research family and the chance to work with the Aggiorno team for a start.

In its first incarnation Aggiorno lives as a Visual Studio 2005/2008 add-in that assists Web developers in accomplishing complex tasks in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.

As you can see in  the following video, we put, famous blogger, Nikhilk Kothari's Web site into a test and show you how by just executing a set of aggiornings (this is how we call our smart refactorings) we were able to bring the Web site to almost full compliance and improved its accessibility.

Since developers can leverage their knowledge of the Visual Studio user experience, Aggiorno’s learning curve is gentle providing results right out of the box.

Getting your Web ready for the People and the Engines... all of them

Standards compliance and accessibility seats at the core values of what the team is doing and they want to help make it a reality to all web developers out in the wild.

Aggiorno is currently in public Beta, which translates to: out of the box Aggiorno can assist you with

• Adding Alternate Text To Images
• Assign Tab Index
• Converting Text To XHTML Lists
• Converting Text To XHTML Paragraphs
• Extracting And Merge Inline Style

But now that you are into making things the right way, Aggiorno can also automate the following tasks for you

• Fix Deprecated Elements For XHTML Compliance
• Replace CENTER Tag By Inline CSS
• Replace FONT Tag By Inline CSS
• Update Deprecated Attributes
• Update Other Deprecated Tags
• Fix Syntax Errors For XHTML Compliance
• Fixed Malformed Entities
• Replace Characters With Entities
• Make Tags Lowercase
• Make Attributes Values Quoted
• Use Default Attribute Values
• Fix Tag Structure For XHTML Compliance

Just like that, right click on your pages, click Aggiorno, choose the aggiorning you want to run and let Aggiorno do it's magic and your Web site is nearer to its nirvana of accessibility and compliance.

Here is a teaser on how it works.

Oh and one more thing... Aggiorno works on XHTML, ASP.NET and even PHP source code, so go call it for a wide of options.

Under the covers

Aggiorno was born as an initiative to provide means of productivity and reliability to the masses in a straight and user friendly way. It's tag line is "Improving the Web one tag at the time" and the team perform to make it a reality to the thousand of web developers out there.

Aggiorno is powered by the same technology that Artinsoft has used throughout its more than 10 years of experience transforming businesses code source from different platforms like Java, PHP and Classic ASP into the .NET Framework in both simple and quite complex scenarios.

The Sky is the limit

The cool thing about Aggiorno is that because of they way it is architect, it provides the team with the necessary flexibility to integrate Aggiorno's core engine with different platforms, having a straight separation between the engine and its presentation layer, allowing the team with the chance to come up with different form factors, therefore providing with its power to a wide variety of audiences.

Now what?

So now that you are so out of your mind with what Aggiorno can do for you, here is where you can go and learn more about it and let's us know what do you think about.

• Learn more about Aggiorno and how it works
• Access to the Aggiorno channel in blip.tv and see how it works
• Subscribe to the team's blog to learn more about standards, accessibility and to have access to Aggiorno news at once

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Technorati Tags: Web,Visual Studio,ASP.NET,XHTML,Standards Compliance,Accessibility,Refactoring,HTML,PHP,Aggiorno,SEO

Microsoft Volta as a Declarative Web Distributed Computing Toolset

Today Microsoft Live Labs announced Microsoft Volta. Volta technology preview is a developer toolset built on top of .NET to further excel the development of software+services applications enabling you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns.

Supporting the lines of the Live 2.0 roadmap, Volta is presented as an experiment for the community to work around and provide feedback on how this declarative architecture enable Architects to tune, alas Grid-computing, the way its application behave and distributes their processing load across several tiers.

It is no surprise that more and more our every day applications are becoming all interconnected. Most of our collaboration tools live somehow in the cloud and it's their connectivity and ability to mash up what makes them valuable, but just as this connectivity grows it makes the process of architect decisions a complex and almost imperfect task, getting us to continue tune its distribution to match the execution availability sometimes stretching the boundaries of quality and availability in or to pair up the ever-changing business needs.

With Volta you architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Given that this technology is in an experimental mode you can foresee changes in the way of how the toolset will evolved, but for us architect-geeks it is a great way to starting trying new models of architecture applications and get tips towards how we build our future business models.

If you want to learn more about this new model, go on a check out their technology site here.

Cheers!

G.

Update: Here is an amazing post from Erik Meijer who is part of the team, talking a bit more of what Volta is and how it came to be.

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Technorati Tags: Volta,Microsoft,Microsoft Live,Live Labs,.NET,Distributed Computing,Architecture,Experiments,Software+Services,Web,Ajax,WinFx

Silverlight 1.1 is now Silverlight 2.0 and more to come...

Today will be moved to history as the day Silverlight 2.0 feature set was made public along with the road map of what Microsoft feels like is the future of ASP.NET 3.5.

Just a week after Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing, ScottGu's team keeps working fearlessly in the next round of features that will mark ASP.NET and Silverlight as big contesters for the future of both the Web and the RIA world.

Silverlight 1.1 moves to be Silverlight 2.0 and will go into Beta on Q1'08; such release will ship with a GoLive license allowing companies to build upon it and move applications to production.

ASP.NET will see itself upgraded with an Extension Release that will sport a set of Framework Extension excelling manageability in the way we build applications and improvements to current technologies like AJAX, Silverlight integration, and Dynamic Data consumption.

Last but not least important, IIS 7.0 will present a new deployment strategy for applications residing both in single or over web farms that will allow version, deployment and roll back of features both from the command prompt or thru the management shell; all of this as part of the release of Windows Server 2008.

A lot of traction has gone into twitter during the last half an hour and I guess this are great news that we all welcome. Let's keep our eyes open to the future and how it all behaves.

Microsoft, and specifically the Visual Studio team has been doing a great job during this decade, sometimes even pushing the boundaries of the technology itself towards the developer community and the digital world itself. Keep up the good work!

For more info I encourage you go check ScottGu's blog post here.

Cheers!

G.

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET,Microsoft Expression,RIA,RIE,Microsoft,Visual Studio,Orcas,WPF,ASP.NET,XAML,IIS,Windows Server 2008

Uninstalling Beta 1 and getting Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 in afterwards

Gosh! It's been a few days I don't come around this bits and it's due to a lot of stuff going in my head, laptops and life... which can be translated into great stuff!

Getting back to my virtual life after a long weekend of vacations by the beach with my friends, I had the chance last Tuesday to install the new version of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 on my Vista laptop and XP desktop.

Both installations went fairly painless after expending a good 5 minutes around the web reading other people's experiences.

It took me about an hour to get Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1 out of my system, although I would like to point out a couple of tricky things:

1. If you installed .NET Framework 3.5, before installing VS.NET Beta 1; by the end of the uninstalling the applet will ask you for those installers, so as a workaround here just cancel that, and it will end the installation without the .NET Fx 3.5. After this happens just uninstall the .NET Framework from Add/Remove Programs normally and presto.
2. Now, before you call it for the day and go in and install the new bits you will have to uninstall the Web Authoring Components, this is a small library with an icon of Office in the Add/Remove Programs, go and remove it.

Ok now this is it, this is what it took me to have successfully uninstalled the beta bits.

Now to the new ones, it took me about another hour to do this: here is a workaround I found to the issue of not being able to install from a remote place.

The only reason Visual Studio .NET won't install from a remote location is because .NET Framework 3.5 won't do it, so go ahead and install the Beta 2 bits separately (this is a download of about 118MB) and after this is done, kick the install bits of Visual Studio with out having to copy the 3.5GB to your local machine.

Once you get this done, you are almost done with the install - what? yet there is more to do?! : yes there are two more things:

1. Go to this post from ScottGu and download and run a small batch script that will fix a bug with the Binding Policy of System.Web.Extensions.dll and ASP.NET 2.0.
2. And, optionally, in case you had a previous version of Orcas running on your system (the one you just uninstalled before) you will have to run devenv /resetsettings from the command prompt located at C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\ this will reset the settings so that it won't mess with the previous settings and upgrade to the new ones.

Ok, Done! After all this manual work you and I have a working copy of Visual Studio .NET 2008 Beta 2 on your machine.

So here is to us both!

Cheers and enjoy the new bits!

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Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 1, C#, .NET 3.5, .NET 3.0, Microsoft, ASP.NET

ColdFusion 8 Shipping!

Just got back from the beach and I found in my mailbox an email from Adobe Direct telling me the big news that the final bits of ColdFusion 8 had just been shipped!

Along with this great release from Adobe, Adobe's Ben Forta has came out with a great series of posts regarding resources associated to this big step in Adobe's Server Framework.

Go check it out!

ColdFusion is here - on the comments side there's been a good discussion between early adopter users and a full hand of Product Managers from Adobe.

ColdFusion 8 Performance Brief

ColdFusion 8 IDE Extensions - a source of resources to integrate CF8 with your favorite development environment.

ColdFusion Developer Articles

Technorati Tags: Adobe, ColdFusion, ColdFusion8, Scorpio, RIA, RIE

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 & .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 are out and with Go-Live License from Microsoft

Just today Microsoft made available its latest updates to its family of Platform Development with the refresh to the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 they are getting the Beta 2 label.

As part of this update Microsoft has also grant its Go-Live license to such products, allowing people to do production development and releases based on this bits, which will be a great step further to see production ready web sites using Silverlight and LINQ technologies.

Note: Remember that the final launch for this products is expected for February 2008. So we are still some good 7 months away from that state.

Based on this new evolution on Microsoft Development Technologies the company is renewing its statements associated to the mission they see this products playing in our dev shops:

Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and development teams to rapidly create connected, secure and compelling applications on the latest platforms, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office System and the Web.

As new community previews will raise along the year, we will see improved performance and better work flow with the ecology of tools like Expression Blend for creating compelling experiences that will allow the user to get immerse in usable worlds excelling its productivity... plus encouraging for the Software + Services worlds that Ballmer and Gates have been taking about during the last couple of weeks.

So, now lets go get the bits here.

Enjoy!

Update: ScottGu has a great post here, including some quick overview of this release and some post-installation notes as to make sure everything will work as expected.

Update2: Channel9 has a great video here with an interview with Soma and ScottGu talking about what's new and what is there to expect with this new release.

Update3: Here are my experiences getting this bits installed just as well as couple of tricks to get Beta 1 uninstalled.

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Technorati Tags: .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, Ajax, Atlas, Microsoft, ASP.NET, C#, Development, Programming, Expression Blend, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Visual Studio, WinFX, WPF, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL, Silverlight

IronRuby is in the wild as a pre-alpha with its own source code freely available

It's been some busy and interesting days for me lately as I am on board learning a new wave of tools, languages and architectures.

One of this newly -for me at least- dynamic architectures surrounds is Python; and as I'm opening my mind to the "think dynamic" I found ScottGu cheering up for a different, yet quite impressive, dynamic language making it to the .NET family: IronRuby.

Just as there is a current heavy-duty wave of applications being surfaced in LAMP-like environments, powered by Python, Ruby and tens of RAD Frameworks being built in top of them, Microsoft has not stop playing and hence has brought its own flavors of dynamic seeds with one subtle difference, this seeds are supported by the strong power of the .NET CLR and its API.

As ScottGu states on his post

Today's IronRuby drop is still a very early version, and several language features and most libraries aren't implemented yet (that is why we are calling it a "pre-alpha" release). It does, though, have much of the core language support implemented, and can also now use standard .NET types and APIs.

...

The end result will be a compatible, fast, and flexible Ruby implementation on top of .NET that anyone can use for free.

Part of the samples being made available on the web with this release is a WPF hello world application written in IronRuby showing the strength of what would be enabled once it gets feature complete.

If you want to start playing along with this set of bits John Lam has a post showing you how to download and build your this preliminary release.

Also, if you are interested in what the world of ASP.NET dynamics looks like check out this video on ASP.NET Futures (May 2007) showing IronPython in action with Dynamic Data Controls.

Enjoy guys!

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Technorati Tags: IronPython, IronRuby, ScottGu, ASP.NET, .NET3.0, .NET3.5, WPF, Microsoft, Visual Studio, Web2.0, WinFx, Ajax, Dynamic Languages, DLR, CLR

Channel 8: A new member to Microsoft Channel Family

A couple of days ago Microsoft launched to the public a new technology channel targeted to college students around the world. With this new channel, called Channel 8, Microsoft complements the technology-driven channel triad joining the already known Channel 9 and on10.

As part of the content that will fill up this new on-line channel, there will be information regarding the Imagine Cup, which is a world wide coding tournament targeted to College Students, swapping places around different cities across the globe every year, this year it is time for Seoul-Korea to host the event.

If you want to know more about this new channel and its future go on and watch this video where Joe Wilson introduces everybody to the new concept and what to expect from its different sections.

And to keep an eye on them here are the RSS feed and Video Podcast that you can easily add to your iTunes and sync your iPhone or iPod Video for offline watching.

Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: Channel 8, Channel 10, Channel 9, Microsoft, Channel, Video, Video Player, Education, Imagine Cup, College, Computer Science, Programming

Silverlight 1.0 RC is almost out... but before it hits the road be prepared!

As the Silverlight team gets ready to the lunch of Silverlight 1.0 RC in a couple of weeks, Tim Sneath et team want to make sure that before it hits the road, and the masses, you will be prepared and will make the changes to your application so that it won't break once its out... why is that?

Well, as Microsoft's Joe Stegman points out in this post, there are a few changes in the Silverlight 1.0 RC API that might make your application break, although rest assure that moving forward this API is locked so you won't have to go thru this process again.

Even though there is no preview of the RC release as for you to go and test your applications as of now, this guys have put together a small zip file with some reference material and resources, based on Tim Sneath's post, this package includes:

• A new silverlight.js file that detects both the beta and the RC version;
• A breaking changes document that highlights differences between the beta and RC;
• An updated Visual Studio template that demonstrates the correct way to embed the new control;
• A EULA that governs legal usage of the above items.

Which pretty much will guide your way between the RC bits hits their way out the oven.

More info in Tim Sneath's post, here.

Enjoy!

Update: Fixed the zip file reference.

Technorati Tags: AsP.NET, Silverlight, Microsoft, Web, Web2.0, RIA, RIE, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2008, Orcas

Regarding my previous post & why do you have to hate every single approach from Microsoft

I see lots of hate for Microsoft in everything this guys do as if by doing this people will look more intelligent or revolutionary - I ain't no microsoftie I just like things to work the way they should, and don't make me feel stupid.

People tend to talk about how crappy Microsoft's products are but I don't see much of talking about Firefox being such a crappy thing on a Mac as it is (well at least Scoble made it public), but sadly as it is Safari is even worst so we are sticked to it... or how pathetic the tab management is... Firefox is just a good browser as IE used to be, with IE7 Microsoft tried to get its act a bit together but there is still lots of room for improvement... as there is for Safari (sorry Steve, this ain't as good as you told us it was) and Firefox (with all its plug-ins and even Grease Monkey, which I have to say is quite good)

Regardless if the screen shots on my previous post are a Microsoft thing (I think we are sure they are not) we should be looking farer than our hand and look on what an oppotunity this might create for the community... this shots might have been the Learning Paint 101 project for some kid, but it also brings some good ideas into how raw the world of the browsers is.

Have you guys put into mind that the browser is just a regular window that renders somehow a bunch of text and images (yes and some rich stuff thanks to 3rd party plug-ins)... Rather than play word games like little kids we should be asking for more functionality, more interaction... we ain't in the 90's no more, and some how we haven't moved that far from the Netscape days...

IE 8 Fakes that might bring something innovative to the UX crowed and eventually the world

Just a few minutes ago I came a cross a Digg post referring to some blogger - link is in Spanish - who claimed have gained access to screen shots of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 Alpha version; so I went in for a sneak peak... and this is what I found:

Now, even though these are fakes shots they do bring some interesting ideas to the User Experience arena that, if looked from a partial view can take us back to the drawing surface and give us something to play with.

First of the things that comes to my mind when I these shots, is how cool would it be to have a context-based browsing experience; just as Office 2007 have provide us with access to several of their buried gems, a context-based browsing interaction can serve as framework for free applications and services, that are already available in the wild.

Imagine that you go to YouTube or any of the many video sites out there and have the browser intuitively allowed me to add the video to my iPod, iPhone or Zune; or why not to my iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player Library; be able to subscribe the RSS of a any interesting website to my preferred RSS Reader, or Podcast client, or just flag for a later read / listened (this one comes from one my work mates, Aaron, who always struggles to have a store point for Have-to-read-later-things)... this kind of approach ain't something that people will overlook at... we have Real already betting of this ground... plus hundreds of services out there serving the world.

I know currently there are several alternatives that can live up to this kind of requests, Grease Monkey is one of them for Firefox, Netscape and AOL have tried themselves too, but nobody has done one truly Rich Internet Application that is as intuitive as the iPod or Office 2007, and that allows for everyone to excel the productivity of the Web in their desktop in terms of experience.

Open the infrastructure, provide some usability guidelines and provide a gallery where anyone will be able place their service or widget and let the world built the next greatest contextual browser!

Anyone interested on getting in this wagon with me?

Update: as a replay to this post and some of the comments I've seen on the net I couldn't resist and write something that could state my feelings, so after this one read up here.

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Technorati Tags: IE, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Browsers, Web, Web2.0

So you want to suite your application for the iPhone

So you want to suite your web application or service for the iPhone?! Wonder no more, Apple has just posted a set of guidelines that will explain the basics of what you need to know to take advantage of the new interactive model they are bringing to the world with its famous gadget.

Between the bullet point that do you want to follow in order to provide the best experience in the iPhone you will:

• Understand the capabilities of iPhone.
• Follow established design practices for the web.
• Adopt iPhone-specific design principles.

One of the points that really calls my attention is the differentiation they do between multi touch interaction and the regular mouse-driven single point interaction built into the device.

Similar to this approach, people should take some of this guidelines and back port it to similar interaction approaches in mobile devices, even though it will probably not be 'til the end of the year that will see alternatives devices like this popping out in the wild, it can serve as a good design practice for current models using pens and ink as means of interaction.

Cheers!

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Technorati Tags: Apple, IPhone, RIE, RIA, Web, Web2.0, Multi Touch, UX

ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit just got upgraded

ScottGu posted this morning about the new release the team over the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit put together.

This release comes with the release number 10606, and as with previous released versions it is available both in its binary format as well as its source code, the later which you can extend and modify accordingly to your needs.

For this release over 125 bugs were fixed plus animation support for some extenders, event support across the Toolkit, a Script combiner for reducing Toolkit scripts' download time, Dynamic context support for controls using Web Services, fixes to make ASP.NET Validators work with Toolkit extenders and Accessibility improvements.

On the ASP.NET website there are over 39 free videos with "How-to" and Tutorials showing you how to leverage Ajax technology on your web applications and more.

Enjoy!

HTWWO: Rich Interactive Experiences

These past days the world has witnessed a mirage of applications and services targeted to the development of Rich Internet Applications and Alternative Media. 

Some how these new comers have put me to think why we haven't evolved from using plain old html pages rather than using cool, nice looking, desktop applications... should it be because of the easy of access and navigation, or, might it be just the fact that pretty much everybody can create them easily and anywhere... which defines that by offer everything lives on the web today! 

The browser, as we know it, has allow for information to be at the reach of everybody's fingers since day 1; no need to install, configure or waiting for applications to load - sometimes slowing and even crashing the entire system: the browser has been good... it's been good until today! Today it gets revamp and becomes in way cooler place to be!

Let's go backwards a bit, with Mix07 Microsoft unveiled Silverlight 1.1, successor to what was previously known as WPF/E or version 1.0 of Silverlight.

Silverlight comes as a direct response to Adobe's Flash - with one small difference, Silverlight has a built-in CLR that is cross platform (Mac OS X and Windows) and lives in a 2MB install in the cloud; which means: cross-platform support for .NET is in the house!- I know this sounds corny, but it is quite amazing...

During the same keynote, the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) also made its debut as the base for all dynamic languages to build from, shipping with IronPython, Dynamic VB, JS, and Ruby; DLR is open for anyone who wants to create its own dynamic language with .NET support. The codebase is available on Microsoft Codeplex with full modification rights...

Now on the other side of the road is Adobe, who had released Apollo a few weeks prior to that, introducing a light weight platform to run Flex and Html based applications on the desktop, providing access to OS level functionality previously not available on web-based app's. - I wonder if we will get to support embedded Silverlight some day!?

Anyway, with Flash 9 Adobe has set the rule as the platform for deployment of Rich Internet Applications on the browser, with support for video and a good sandbox for both designers and developers, Adobe lays the ground for today's next generation of applications running on the cloud... but now, this time we have got here with roommates! Now set ur ideas run free!!

I've got to say that Adobe and Microsoft have done a terrific job putting together their Creative and Development suites to work as one, empowering the whole modern UX workflow to rise and take off from the oblique normal websites of yesterday; those that we all have come to love with some boring pain - at least I have.

New times are yet to come, and as a colleague of mine put it the other day, we have set the base for incredible things, now we just have to make them happen!! - I am exited to live it myself!

Cheers!

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Technorati tags: HTWWO, WPF/E, Silverlight, Microsoft, Adobe, Flash, Flex, User Experience, RIA, RIE, Rich Interactive Experiences, Web2.0, Products, CS3, Orcas, Apollo, .NET, DLR, CLR

Managing IIS from the command prompt

I found myself today googling about how to interact with IIS thru a batch script so that I can start, stop, create, delete... u know to be able of performing most of the tasks you can do by using the IIS Management Shell.

I found this article over TechNet and got quite impress about this shell application called iisweb that comes with Windows Server 2003; that enables you to do this and some other tricky actions over an IIS instance in the machine where it runs or even access remote servers and work on them.

Go check it and save it in your pandora box, you never know when you will needed...

ASP.NET 2.0 app_offline.htm

Found this morning in my daily RSS reading a post in the ASP.NET Daily Articles that shows how to bring an application down for maintenance or upgrade without even getting to open IIS and stop the service.

It seems that ASP.NET supports a feature for routing requests to a special singleton file (called app_offline.htm), making the rest of the application unavailable for serving those requests. Allowing webmasters to work behind the scenes on the maintenance of the site or application (just make sure u set enabled=true in the httpRuntime tag)

I know that for most of us this feature will come handy during those days of build release and critical fixes.

For more information here is a list of related posts:

• Scott Guthrie on App_Offline.htm and working around the "IE Friendly Errors" feature
• John Peterson on Taking an ASP.NET 2.0 Application Offline
• msdn on Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application Using XCOPY

Fireworks 9 Beta

Just this morning got an email from the Adobe Team in charge of Fireworks 9; it seems I got accepted in the Beta User team to start trying out the new peace of software this guys are working on.

I've been using Fireworks since the MX version for prototyping and web mockups and got to say it's a really cool tool, and has allowed me to do really great things in the web arena.

Lately I've been using it to do some prototyping and wireframes for a WPF application I'm currently working on and has fit the bill just ok. There are things that need improvement, that is for sure, but as it's getting better and better is shaping itself as the prototyping tool for anything visual u need.

Due to the DNA I won't be able to post screenshots nor talk about its functionality thought I will try to crawl the web for resources associated to it and make them available as they show up.

For now there is a nice article published by the Edge magazine last month that talks about some new features.

The guys over Brand Spanking New have put a good post over some of the new and existing features and the way they work in the new version and how they have evolved from previous versions, go check it.

In the mean time for those new to Adobe Fireworks go check the Development Center @ Adobe.