O’Reilly: Inside RIA

Mike Downey joins us to discuss the competition between Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash. Prior to working for Microsoft as a Silverlight Evangelist he worked for Adobe for 9 years with the Flash Platform. Joining us on the panel...

I've spent a few years studying the behavioral pattern associated with ubiquity, and I'm surprised at what I've learned along the way. Here right now, I'm going to unload my findings, and it's up to you to keep an open mind about it all and take a deep breath about the subject. Ubiquity is only important to you, the one in the "doing" seat (developing/designing). Ubiquity isn't important as much as the reasons why people will use a given technology in the first place. Ubiquity is simply a scorecard to track whether or not people are choosing NOT to install a plug-in.

Something you might not be aware of is that the part of Comcast that I work for is all open source. We use open source technology, we open source projects, we're even all on Macs which is something new for...

One year and ten months is how long it's taken Microsoft to release their third version of Silverlight. From the beginning, Silverlight has been media and consumer focused. Projects such as the NBC Olympics, Wimbledon, the NCAA March Madness basketball video player have defined what Silverlight is. What isn't as well known is that Silverlight is quickly becoming a viable option for RIA development.

Here are the results of a query on RIA job trends on indeed.com: One naturally has many questions about the data: what geographic area does it represent? How are duplicate postings handled? ... and so on, however the trend lines...

This poll was one that brought many votes and most of you don't feel that HTML 5 will be making any major impact any time soon. Over 40% of you voted for "I don't think so: HTML 5 doesn't touch...

Recently Mike Slinn wrote a post suggesting how Adobe could win the RIA war. War? You mean the whole Flash vs Silverlight thing? It’s not a war - it’s sibling rivalry. The only bloodshed I’ve seen is amongst those comment-stream melees that follow controversial blog posts, instigated by the usual suspects. Antagonisms aside, Adobe and Microsoft are working together, shaping our RIA landscape.

HTML 5 has been the topic of buzz lately in the Internet/RIA world. With new features like Canvas, offline local storage, etc. many have been suggesting (including a recent article from infoworld) that HTML 5 could steal market share from...

Summary: Adobe should address developers with a marketing program that is separate from their designer marketing program, and offer products aimed at hard-core developer interests. The goal would be to leverage the influential developer community to drive sales of products...

In fine tradition, Microsoft Australia hosted its version of the annual MIX event in Sydney. The conference, aptly named REMIX, featured the upcoming Silverlight 3, SketchFlow and Blend 3 products, though, much to my chagrin, somewhat superficially.

Earlier this month Smashing Magazine posted a broad review of Flash and Silverlight. The review covers the way the two products handle things like animation, publishing to the desktop, scripting, small file sizes, socket connections, capturing web-cam content, etc.

Expression Blend is a great tool for creating Silverlight applications. VIsual Studio is wonderful for coding, but every Silverlight RIA developer should have Blend open as well. Blend 3 only adds to the productivity enhancements.

This week Yahoo refreshes ASTRA, Smashing Magazine provides a great list of AIR resources, CNET uncovers the truth about the MLB switch back to Flash video, Scott Barnes speaks his mind about Silverlight 3, Google App Engine extends its reach, ExtJS introduces some changes to its licensing, and the Masters is delivered with Flash Media Server. All this and more on the Weekly RIA RoundUp from InsideRIA.

My top 3 features that are in and not yet in Silverlight. What are yours?

I've been knee deep in Silverlight lately, (which is why I have not stuck my head up to blog lately) and its all Microsoft's fault. Silverlight 3 has so many great features and the roadmap is looking so promising to me that I have been spending a lot of time wading through the features, some more mature than others, some just a glimpse of what is to come. What does SIlverlight 3 bring to the table? Hear it from someone who knows the leading tools from Adobe and Microsoft inside and out.

The Weekly RIA RoundUp returns this week with a new partnership between Adobe and Facebook, Ribbit asking the development community for advice, an easy way to include Silverlight content into Wordpress posts, a new release of Tour De Flex, a refresh for JavaFX and Netbeans, Titanium reaches preview release 3, and much more. All this and more on the Weekly RIA RoundUp from InsideRIA.

The jets and sharks, Hatfields and McCoys, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants, Adobe and Microsoft. Now several years in the making, the Adobe - Microsoft rivalry is gearing up. Especially with the anticipated new release of Silverlight 3 and Flex 4. As any seasoned Flex veteran will tell you, Adobe is the defacto standard for Rich Internet Applications. When asked about interest in Silverlight, the response may vary, but usually ends in “I haven’t actually spent a lot of time [or tried] it.” A product of Microsoft, Silverlight is. But as professionals in the RIA industry it is a good thing to be open minded. After all, as hard as it is to admit, Flash isn’t always the best tool for the job.

As they headed home from Las Vegas last Friday, the roughly 2000 designers and developers -- not to mention Microsoft employees -- returning from the three-day MIX09 web conference in Las Vegas had plenty to consider. For O'Reilly author and Silverlight MVP John Papa, the big news was the support for "out of browser" and line of business applications announced for Silverlight 3. For Vertigo developer Jon Galloway, the SketchFlow designer planned for Expression Blend 3 and demoed for the first time at MIX, promises to revolutionize the way designers prototype their user interactions. As for Scott Guthrie, VP of the Microsoft's Developer Division, reflecting on his keynote at an after hours reception, he was just pleased that MIX09 had come together without the "fire drill" of years past.

Silverlight can talk to a number of types of web services using REST or SOAP, returning JSON or XML, or even communicating with RSS feeds. Its important to evaluate the type of service you need before developing it.

Good design is important in any business application. With Silverlight there are tools and techniques that can help improve the design and make an application more testable, modular and scalable.