More Flash Brings More Light
The graphics portion of Silverlight is where Microsoft is making giant leaps forward. Dubbed "Expression" and using a variety of modules from Blend to Studio, Expression takes the power of Visual Studio programming and moves it toward a drag-and-drop application and user interface design. The company finally also understands what Adobe has for quite some time: Programmers and graphic designers want to share the same files so that the interface can be tightly bound to the application while still offering freedom of choice in graphical UI design.
Freedom of Expression
"Expression Studio has all the capabilities needed to create graphics and media assets, design interactivity, and produce experiences," Microsoft’s marketing presentations tout. "Expression Blend can generate XAML output, meaning that programmers who use Visual Studio and designers who use Expression Blend can share the same files."
Microsoft is pushing streaming equally hard, as it knows that video is one of the best ways to create a user experience with deep impact. To better serve those developers interested in pushing beyond the application to use video streaming, Microsoft is offering the free streaming and application hosting package called Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live. The company pitches the ability to author content in Microsoft Expression Encoder as well as other "third-party editing environments," in such a way that web designers have control of not just their applications but also the total delivery environment for up to 4GB worth of applications and streaming video content.
Realizing that it has to capture the hearts of content creators—a new market for Microsoft—as well as the programmers it traditionally caters to, the company has come out with a four-prong partner strategy: companies that create complementary tools, solution providers, content delivery networks, and interactive agencies.
Microsoft dubs the tool manufacturers as ISVs, or Integrated Solutions Vendors, a name often used in IT circles but seldom in video and broadcast systems parlance. The names include a who’s who of streaming and broadcast products from Anystream and Inlet Technologies to Rhozet to OmniBus. Its solutions providers include the bigger names like Narrowstep, upstarts like BuyDRM and Swarmcast, and a few stalwarts like Arcostream and Liquid Compass.
On the interactive agency partner front, Microsoft has signed up Razorfish, long an Adobe shop; Frog Design; McCann Worldgroup; Rezn8; and Vertigo. These companies are among a key few that continue to push the envelope of interactive work, which means Microsoft’s been doing its homework to help generate buzz about Silverlight in general and Expression Studio in particular.
Missing from the mix, though, of all the partners are the big consulting firms that use plenty of Microsoft product but have been slow to jump on the rich media wagon. Having worked on projects for almost a decade with several of the Big 5 firms, I expect that 2008 will finally be a breakthrough year as these firms realize the revenue potential of building RIAs that can be used in both the desktop environment and the web; the jury is still out, though, on whether they’ll extend their Microsoft alliances or embrace Flash/Flex as Adobe makes inroads into Microsoft’s traditional market segments.
Conclusion
Adobe and Microsoft have the potential for striking similarities in their approaches, even if they both start from opposite ends of the web/desktop programming continuum. The stated intent of both Flex/Flash/AIR and Silverlight is that applications created for one function can serve that same purpose regardless of location or device. In many ways, this shift requires programmers to rethink the way they do business and drop "artificial" barriers between the web and the desktop.
It’s a risky gamble for both companies, as current developer thinking revolves around an intentional disconnecting of web and desktop apps, based primarily on security and the web’s intermittent connectivity issues.
Yet in one key way the companies differ: Microsoft likes to own the IDE and the underlying programming tools—see what it did when it "embraced and extended" Java before a court case shed light that the Microsoft’s Java code played well on Windows but crippled playback compatibility on other platforms. Adobe, on the other hand, only really has scripting expertise that came along with the Macromedia acquisition; it knows that it doesn’t know everything about programming and this is a good perception to help it counter Microsoft’s domination of the desktop programming space.