Of Driving and Driving (and Silverlight and Expression Studio)

A total of 6 hours driving were spent in total yesterday. Was a damn killer, I'm absolutely shattered today. The Microsoft conference I went to though was pretty interesting. It was about MS Silverlight and MS Expression Studio. In typical MS style however, nothing seemed to be "new". Silverlight is going head to head with Flash. However there are only two things that I can see that Silverlight has that will even let it be a contender. One is it's ability to manipulate video. That is pretty damn good. We saw demo's of 6 or 7 thumbnail video clips all running at the same time and you can click on one of them, it expands, sound fades in and plays. Everything was seemless and nothing hung up. However this way done on a local machine, so I'd like to see it across the internet. The other thing that I think is pretty good is that Silverlight can take in XAML code and just use it. There's nothing else to it. This is their biggest plus point. XAML is an extensible mark up language (the A is for application) and it does look great how it works straight into Silverlight.

My problem however, is why do we need another solution for web apps? We have Flash. It's an industry standard and it works. Adobe are making excellent advances with Flex and AIR towards better online apps than what Flash (the program) can produce and people love it. I was talking to a bloke there yesterday that was singing AIR and Flex's praises. He was only there so he could see if Silverlight had anything to offer. His opinion? Not really.

Silverlight also can't (yet...) do "real" 3D work. Flash can, if you don't believe me then check out a previous post about Papervision 3D. It can do "fake" 3D and granted, it does it nicely. All the effects and animations are all very nice.

However.

My problem I guess is that "A" in XAML. Application. My view of Flash is that it can, and does, everything from an annoying advert that draws your attention to it by showing you boobs, to fully working amazing websites with forms and shiny bells and noisy whistles. But Silverlight seems more directed at apps. In this sense I don't think it will be competing with Flash (app) rather Flex and AIR. These are the tools that seem to be aimed at Flash apps now. And they are doing it well. Silverlight might be easy with it's XAML -> Deployment thats all you need. But Flex and AIR seem to be the ones giving you better control in a language formate that makes sense to a developer.

Oh, I said on of the D words. Developer and Designer. Normally two separate things, you either have a head for code or you can make designs look just so. MS have other ideas, they feel that they can unite the Designer and Developer as one. By using their new Expression Studio. Designs are exported as XAML, coding is (shockingly enough) in XAML, thus allowing you to code and design everything yourself. Personally I feel that's a huge mistake. They are two completely separate jobs.

However, for a proper design and development team I can see that passing the XAML from one Studio program to the next without losing any information or having any conflicting issues is something that every D&D team would love. This showed at the conference when a talk was given by a man named Tricky. He, apparently, could not code in the slightest and only did design work. He designed something and then passed it straight on to the coders. And this set up works, its a proven set up.

But what does Expression look like? Think Dreamweaver and Illustrator. Then there is a media encoder/re-encoder (which actually looks pretty impressive but think something along the lines of Premiere just not as much functionality, but still good!), a media organiser and finally a program called Blend that brings everything together.

Oh and they are all in a black, shiny theme.

Finally I want to talk quickly about my day today. Had a meeting about sorting out the placement area, went pretty well. Got plenty to do over the next week or so. Which is defiantly good. This is such a long post I just can't type any more! I'll blog some more about Silverlight and Expression when I try them out.

Peace.