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Microsoft has released Silverlight 3, the latest version of their rich media application platform which rivals Adobe Flash. In addition, a release candidate of Expression Blend 3, the Silverlight development tooling, has also been released with a promise of the full Expression 3 family of Web development products shipping within 30 days.
You can hit the websites for Silverlight or the Expression family or the combination for much more detail, but Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie offers a succinct summary of what is new. My choices for the high points:
Silverlight 3 enables applications to run outside the browser and taken offline. Users can safely install web applications on their computers, and create persistent shortcuts to them on the desktop, start menu and taskbar (this is supported on both Windows and the Mac).
Silverlight 3 now supports hardware graphics acceleration and HD video. IIS Media Services is a free server product that complements Silverlight and provides the ability to efficiently stream media over HTTP. It enables both on-demand and live HD video to be delivered using “smooth streaming” - which is an adaptive streaming algorithm that can deliver video at bitrates optimized for a client’s network conditions and CPU capabilities.
Free download that enables Silverlight 3 development support for VS 2008 and the free Visual Web Developer 2008 Express.
The latter has the potential to really explode Silverlight adoption by placing the bar to entry very low. On the other hand, I found the IIS Media Services demo to be anything but smooth streaming.
Finally, per Scott Guthrie, "Expression Studio 3 will be included as part of the MSDN Premium and higher subscriptions (meaning MSDN Premium customers don’t have to pay anything extra to get all of the Expression Studio products). " This apparently ends the furor over whether developers with MSDN subscriptions should get access to "designer" tools as part of the subscription.
Overshadowed by the Microsoft Yahoo takeover soap opera last week, Microsoft released version 2 of its Expression Studio collection of Web tools:
Expression Encoder is new in version 2 of the Studio and among other new features, Silverlight support was added to all of the tools, and PHP and ASP.NET 3.5 support was added to Expression Web. The PHP support reflects broader aspirations than just covering the needs of captive Microsoft technology developers but it will be difficult to break the grip that Adobe Dreamweaver has on that market.
Less desirable is the perpetuation of the wacky dichotomy between Microsoft developer tools (Visual Studio) and design tools (Expression). Developers who subscribe to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) have been promised only a subset of the Expression tools and they will have to either ante up for a standalone copy or buy an Express Professional Subscription (which partially overlaps the MSDN subscription) to get the full set.
Microsoft’s MIX08 conference has come and gone, but despite the rumors of a massive Web apps push, the actuality was much more pedestrian:
While the last bullet isn’t a Web app, SQL Server Data Services is obviously a building block for constructing Web apps and could fill up some of the data centers that were also part of the rumors. The beta will be available in 3 to 4 weeks with a launch by the end of the year. Note that SSDS isn’t a full fledged hosted SQL Server or just a raw data store like Amazon’s S3. It fits in between as a simplified structured database service with the closest analog being Amazon’s simpleDB. It is early days yet, but one can’t help but wonder whether other major database vendors have the will (and the wherewithal) to join the party.
Finally, while they aren’t Web apps either, earlier last week Microsoft announced some more data center filler with the extension of their Microsoft Online Services offering of hosted versions of Exchange and SharePoint to small and mid-sized businesses.
Predictably, the press release is effusive in describing the opportunities for Microsoft partners, even those whose Exchange hosting services have been neatly undercut. The theory is that they can now sell Microsoft’s hosted service with a bunch of their own embellishments. Less happy are ISV’s who sell SharePoint add-ons that won’t appear in the Microsoft offering. There’s surely a pony in Microsoft hosting their own server applications, but it’s a low margin, capital intensive business compared to selling software.
You may recall the furor ([1], [2]) over Microsoft’s decision not to make the new Expression family of design tools available to members of the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) based on the not always obvious distinction between “designers” and “developers.” Today, S. Somasegar (Microsoft Developer Division Corporate VP) revealed that Microsoft has taken the adverse reaction to heart and that some of the Expression tools will now be made available to some MSDN subscribers:
Based on this feedback, I am pleased to say that we will be making Expression Web available starting today to all MSDN Premium subscribers. We will also make Expression Blend available to MSDN Premium subscribers shortly after the Expression Studio release later in Q2 2007. Expression Blend and Expression Web are intended to help creative professionals collaborate with developers to create rich user experiences for the Web, Windows Vista applications and beyond, which means we need to make sure both tools are readily available to our developer community.
The decision extends to all MSDN Premium subscribers, including those with Visual Studio Professional and Visual Studio Team Edition’s. For customers that have premium subscriptions to Visual Studio Team Suite, we will be making the entire Expression Studio available to them.
You may be asking, what about Expression Design and Expression Media? Expression Blend and Expression Web are both designed to help creative professionals and developers work together to create rich user experiences for the Web, Windows Vista applications and beyond. As Expression Design and Expression Media are not directly intended for application development, we feel they fall outside the current scope of MSDN Subscriptions. We will be watching usage and collecting feedback of these expression products to help make further decisions in the future.
If it’s not entirely clear which level of MSDN subscription gets what, Joe Wilcox provides a nice chart.
