Now that Mix is over, it’s time to write a rather large post on the event that took place last week in Las Vegas for the 4th time. The 5th edition is already announced (Mix10 I guess), it will take place March 15-17, in Las Vegas at Mandalay Bay (up until now, Mix has always been at the Venetian).
Was Mix09 a good edition, compared to previous ones? Absolutely! At Mix06, the first year the conference was held, the main focus was on ASP.NET Ajax, which allowed “at that time” writing richer and more compelling user experiences. Mix07 was of course marked by the announcement of Silverlight 1.0 beta and 1.1 alpha (which would later become Silverlight 2). A year later, at Mix08, Silverlight 2 officially reached beta status. And this year, Silverlight 3 arrived in beta. Silverlight 3 is looking at a release date later this year.
However, not only Silverlight was the star of the show: the second day of the event was marked by the RTW of IE8, the all-new version of the popular browser. After a long road, the new browser is here and it contains a number of interesting new features, which I’ll cover later in this post.
Mix09: the event. Now on DVD!
If you didn’t have the time, money… to attend the event in real life, don’t fear. All sessions are recorded by Microsoft AND are available for free on the Mix09 website. If you want to get your modem hot from all the downloading, head over to http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09 for all videos of the event. Note that you should plan to take some days off work to see them all, there’s more than 120 videos online. Check out Mike Swanson’s blog for a complete list of the sessions, a batch file to download all sessions and a batch renamer for all content (http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson)
Also, many speakers have uploaded their demos to their blogs, so be sure to check them out.
Silverlight 2 + 1 = Silverlight 3
Star of the show was of course Silverlight 3. The released version is a beta, not yet feature complete, meaning that some parts of the software that will be in the final version aren't there yet at this point. All the necessary tools and SDKs are available, you can find the link below. A very important note: if you are developing Silverlight 2 applications, you should not install this release on your production machine, because it makes your setup a Silverlight 3 config. Currently, Silverlight 3 apps are incompatible with Silverlight 2. A virtual machine might be the best option here.
Out-of-browser
One of, if not the biggest feature of this new release is out-of-browser support. It allows you to place your application directly on the customer's machine, enabling an off-line experience that's the same as the online experience. All this becomes possible without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. Any Silverlight application that is out-of-browser enabled, can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click. Also, it can test if the network is connected, update itself and also has access to Isolated Storage. The API for this is very easy, I'll be writing an article on this soon.
Is this any different from Adobe Air, which enables an offline experience as well? Yes it is. Air needs a separate runtime which is about 20mb in size and provides access to the entire hard drive of their customer’s computer, which can be a significant barrier if the customer does not have complete trust.
Also, the adoption rate for Air is well below the rate for Silverlight. So far, Silverlight has an install base of about 300 million, since its launch about 5 months ago. Microsoft estimates that about 400.000 developers and designers are currently using Silverlight already.
Silverlight for Eclipse
Up until now, the Silverlight tools were mainly aimed at Visual Studio developers. Microsoft now also has a Silverlight plugin for Eclipse, called Eclipse Tools For Silverlight (Eclipse4SL). This way, Mac developers can join in in developing Silverlight applications as well. The current version is a CTP.
Expression Blend 3
While not only targeting Silverlight, the release of Expression Blend 3 is great news for Silverlight developers and designers, offering full compatibility and support for Silverlight 3 effects, along with integration with Visual Studio 2010 and WPF. One of my favorite features is the Photoshop and Illustrator import, enabling smooth integration with workflows already in place. During the import process, designers have the freedom to view and import Photoshop files layer by layer. Layers can be easily regrouped and elements retain their original formats, layers, layer positions, editable text and vectors.
Another great feature in Blend 3 is SketchFlow, a way for rapid application prototyping. Using SketchFlow, designers can rapidly map out and experiment with the UI flow of a concept with SketchFlow. Built-in ‘sketchy’ styles enable customers to concentrate on an overall concept of a solution rather than focusing too early on the detail.
Important feature you may ask for enterprise? Absolutely! Business application experts can use SketchFlow to rapidly explore different UI flows and scenarios for their line of business applications without any technical knowledge of the underlying delivery platform. These ideas can be easily presented via the SketchFlow player which provides the ability to not only interact with prototypes, but also enabling the user to provide in-context feedback using the built annotation capability.
To download all the tools for Silverlight development, go to http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/default.aspx.
Microsoft Web Platform
Let's first take a look at what is really meant with this new term, the Microsoft Web Platform. The MWP is the software of choice when building Web solutions or applications for businesses, large or small. If you’re looking to create your company’s global Web presence, building applications for your small business or launching a new Web site, Microsoft has the solutions for you.
The platform includes several components, including the Web Platform Installer and the Web Application Gallery.
The Web Platform Installer Includes:
- Internet Information Services (IIS) 5.1 on Windows XP SP3
- IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 SP2
- IIS 7.0 on Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008
- SQL Server 2008 Express
- .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
- IIS Extensions including:
- IIS 7 Media Services 3.0
- IIS7 Administration Pack
- Database Manager for IIS7
- WebDav 7.5
- FTP 7.5
- FastCGI for PHP support on IIS6
- URL Rewriter
- IIS 7 Application Routing
- Web Deployment Tool for IIS
- ASP.NET and features such as ASP.NET MVC
- Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio
- The Community Version of PHP v5.2.9
The Windows Web Application Gallery is a collection of the most popular Open Source and community Web applications that run on Windows. It provides a simple streamlined way for users to explore, discover, and install ASP.NET, PHP, and other types of web applications and solutions on the Windows Platform.
More information and all the downloads can be found at: Microsoft Web Platform
Azure Services Platform
While the Azure platform was announced in November last year at PDC, a number of updates to the platform have been released. This shows that Microsoft is committed to delivering a comprehensive cloud platform.
The following updates were done on Azure:
- Windows Azure: An update to the Windows Azure service delivers advancements in interoperability, flexiblity, geo-specification, and the ability take existing IP to the cloud.
- Applications written in 3rd party programming languages such as PHP can be deployed and run on the Windows Azure infrastructure with FastCGI support, providing an easy to use, scalable cloud runtime and storage environment while giving developers the power to choose their preferred programming language. For .NET developers, Full Trust is now available so all aspects of the .NET Framework can be utilized, including invoking native and legacy code components and giving existing code investments new life in the cloud. Over the next few weeks Geolocation will be available, enabling customers to specify the datacenter location for applications and storage to optimize for lower network latency and comply with location-based regulatory and legal requirements.
- SQL Services: SQL Data Services (SDS) recently announced an accelerated roadmap to provide a cloud database as part of the Azure Services Platform.
- In this updated roadmap, SDS will deliver a fully relational database service in the market to provide customers with the ability to use existing investments in on-premises SQL Server T-SQL development and use a full relational data model in the cloud. This approach enables greater developer agility and faster time to market by supporting the use of existing applications, tools and knowledge, and featuring distributed, cloud based functionality that will work with other online services or with existing on-premises solutions. The public availability of these updated service features will be mid-2009 and commercially available later this year.
- .NET Services: .NET Services makes further enhancements to embrace web standards, interoperability, and provide connectivity on-premises with the cloud, and disparate groups with each other across network boundaries. These services allow customers to easily federate data and messages with its Service Bus and Access Control services. By supporting REST, ATOM, JSON, SOAP and HTTP web standards, web developers using any programming language can use the service to connect, collaborate, and create federated applications.
- Live Services: To accommodate increasing popularity and demand, Live Services was announced at PDC 2008 as an open Community Technology Preview, where any developer can start utilizing the web services and incorporate them into socially-aware applications connecting to 460 million Windows Live users. We will announce Live Services updates in the future, but have nothing specific to announce at MIX ‘09.
More info on Azure can be found at Azure Services Platform
Windows Mobile 6.5
An updated version of Windows Mobile was also shown at Mix. The most remarkable features are the new version of Internet Explorer Mobile, the addition of Widgets and Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
Internet Explorer 8
Finally, Internet Explorer 8 was also released. Internet Explorer 8 takes a big step forward in browser innovation for the way people use the web today. Internet Explorer 8 makes it easier to visit sites you’ve been to before with the new Smart Address Bar and enhanced Favorites Bar, works with your search provider to suggest likely searches based on what you type into the Enhanced Instant Search Box, groups tabs to match the way you browse the web and gives you Accelerators and Web Slices to keep you closer to the sites and services you use every day.
IE8 is also safer than ever. Specifically, Internet Explorer 8 improves upon our protection against social engineering “phishing” attacks with the new SmartScreen Filter, which helps protect against malware sites and downloads. Internet Explorer 8’s new Cross-Site Scripting filter helps protect users against Cross-Site Scripting Type-1 reflection attacks, one of the most common attacks against Web sites.
It's also more reliable than ever. It includes a new Compatibility View mode to help ensure that users can access all the sites they use today without display or functionality issues. Additionally, the new architecture of Internet Explorer 8 helps ensure that a single tab crashing does not cause users to lose their whole browser session, and crash recovery restores the crashed site and content
Internet Explorer 8 is available on Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista (RTM), SP1 and SP2.
To download IE8, go to www.microsoft.com/ie8.