Mix06 round up
I spent the first half of last week at the ().
The ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ made some announcements (), but the rest of the conference highlighted a number of forthcoming technologies that will no doubt be of interest to the Mashup Community:
Microsoft Vista
From the product's conception, Microsoft has expressed a very public goal with Vista to bring Internet content "out of the browser" and onto the desktop. Clearly web services, feeds and API's are at the heart of the mechanisms that power this concept, and of course that's of interest to everyone who's participating in this environment.
The mechanisms through which this vision is realised include the Vista Sidebar (think OS X widgets but on Windows) and Windows Presentation Foundation (aka WPF, aka Avalon) – a new way of creating mashup-like short-time-to-market applications.
Windows Presentation Format – aka Avalon
WPF is a new display engine that is packed with the WinFX component of Vista. Most of the application is represented by XAML (a new markup language worth learning), which seems quick to learn but powerfully rich.
You can read more about WPF on the or access the .
Windows Presentation Format – Everywhere
Microsoft claims WPF/E to be a cross-platform, cross-device version of WPF. It's designed to run in a browser, and Microsoft were keen to demonstrate it working in both Firefox and also Safari on OS X.
It looks like Microsoft's attempt to produce a rival product to Flash, but like WPF is powered by XAML and Javascript rather then a compiled binary. It has it's own DOM model which can be manipulated by existing Javascript libraries modified to traverse the WPF/E DOM within the document's parent DOM.
Atlas
Essentially a free AJAX framework from Microsoft, it seems to be heavily geared up for use with ASP.net – however it appears that it will work with our languages, including non Microsoft ones. I'm not sure what I make of Atlas yet, so I'd be interested in your views! You can find out more about Atlas, and download the latest development version from .
Internet Explorer 7
IE7 will also feature as a main part of Vista, although it appears this will be released before Vista ships (which is expected to be in 2007 now). If you havn't already done so, it's probably worth to ensure your websites continues to be compatible with the latest version of the browser.
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