MIXing Bowl
Microsoft's MIX07, the touted 72-hour conversation with Web developers and
designers, is drawing to a close as you receive this. The Las Vegas-hosted conference
was first launched last year, but quickly rose close to the top of the Microsoft
road tour stack, thanks in part to Redmond's frantic Web development tools efforts.
From ASP.NET AJAX to Expression Studio to Silverlight, Microsoft has been working
in overdrive the past year-and-a-half.
The MIX07 event certainly reflected that. While an awful lot of news has trickled
out over the past six months, Ray Ozzie and crew were able to hit a few long
balls. Among them: news that the next version of Silverlight (formerly code-named
"WPF/E") will support
the Common Language Runtime (CLR) of .NET, as well as dynamic languages
like Ruby.
What's clear is that Silverlight is not simply a media play. Instead, Microsoft
is aiming to take its managed code environment to the broader Internet. With
Silverlight as a target, .NET developers can use the same skills (and much of
the same code) that they employ to build Windows applications to build rich
Internet applications.
Also announced was the Microsoft
Silverlight Streaming service, a free online hosting service that will allow
developers to serve their Silverlight content off Microsoft servers at no charge.
Obviously, the service is an effort to nudge Silverlight out of its cage and
get it into the wild.
Executive Web Editor Michael Domingo was at the show and managed to track
down several key Microsoft representatives. You can find out more about his
reporting and that of our news editor Chris Kanaracus in the special MIX07 coverage,
in the May 15 issue of Redmond Developer News magazine.
What are your impressions of Microsoft's MIX07 activities? Has Redmond hit
critical mass with its Silverlight effort? Write me at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 05/02/2007