Development tidbits, struggles, revelations, and still some Flash

Ok. I am a “Flash guy” so I’m jaded towards Flash, but I work at a company that is a Microsoft partner and I attended MIX today.   So here is my quick and dirty about Silverlight 2.0 while at MIX today.

From a feature/functionality point of view, I think Silverlight can provide nearly everything that Flash can.  I saw plenty of demos today that the average person wouldn’t know if it was Silverlight or Flash. Kudo’s to Microsoft for that. I also saw Silverlight demo’d on a Windows mobile device. They didn’t get into the details, but I assumed it was the same SL content that would run from the web. Kudos again. I know plenty of developers and companies would like 1 development suite to deliver to all mediums. Side note: adaptive streaming for Silverlight is a very nice feature. I didn’t see the implementation, but adjusting the stream content on the fly is something that Adobe should definitely look at for FMS. (I think FMS can intiatate a stream based on bandwidth now, but don’t think it can adjust on the fly — correct me if I’m wrong).

From a developers point of view, I know the developers at my company are super happy that they can work in C# regardless of what end product they are targeting. They can be inside of VS2008 and be very happy that they’ll enjoy all that VS2008 offers. Its a very good IDE so kudos again to Microsoft.

From a designers point of view, okay.. its not so pretty from where I sit.  I’ve been using Flash and the rest of the Adobe suite for ages, and I’ve started to work Flex into my work as well.   The first session I attended was Flash to Silverlight and to be very honest, it was horrible. Things we take for granted in the Flash world are just a pain in the a$$ with SL.  The entire session was done from Visual Studio 2008 and was meant to show how you could translate what you might do in Flash into the Silverlight world using all C#.  First off – a lot of design is done in Flash and not 100% code driven. There are subtleties that, in my opinion, can only be achieved via a timeline. VS2008 definitely doesn’t have a timeline, and Blend’s timeline needs some major work. Another problem however, is that no one really uses Blend. Every developer at my work only will use Blend to draw out a gradient then don’t like/trust its XAML generation. For me, Blend also lacks Intellisense for both XAML and has no code editor for C#. So you are forced to jump to Visual Studio.  I’m sure there are designers that will pick up on Blend/VS2008 and produce Silverlight content. I will probably at some point do the same. But to achieve the ease-of-use that Flash provides to begineers, is going to take some major work on Microsoft’s part to rethink their tools.   I can safely say that there is little chance that the non-developers at my work who use Flash to create training, animations, tutorials, interactive presenations, etc, will every use Blend or VS2008.

To follow up on my post from the other day, there was no mention of any Mac development tools for Silverlight. They talked plenty about being able to run it on Mac, and I saw quite a few Macs there (even one being used by a presenter), but those tools are non-existant for now.

Side note:Â I was glad to see IE8 to be finally on par w/ FireFox and Safari for speed and standards compatibility. I did find it a bit interesting/funny that in the Keynote they preached standards, and then went on to talk about how you can modify your web page to enable Activities and Web Slices.

MIX is this week and its in my backyard. I’m a long time Mac and Adobe user, but I work for a company that is heavily Microsoft influenced. At work, I’m using a Dell PC, but I jump on a Mac the moment I get home. I like both and can work well on both. But my question for Microsoft this week, on the eve of the Silverlight 2.0 beta release, is

“What tools are you going to make available to the Mac content creators out there?”

Sure – a Mac user can load up Blend in VMWare, Parallels or even go into Bootcamp and run it natively. But that is a poor solution. I lose my regular workflow, my fonts, and frankly, I’d rather be on my Mac at home, since that is the choice I made. I’m hoping this week at MIX, Microsoft will address this. If they provide a Mac player for SL, but no Mac tools or tools that aren’t up to par to what is available on Windows, then Microsoft is entering a losing battle against Flash, Flex, and AIR (assuming offline Silverlight is coming in the future).

Adobe knows cross platform tools. They’ve done it for years. I can work on a file on a PC at work, bring it home with me, and continue working on it. Or I can work at home learning new techniques and/or doing a test demo, I carry those files into work and use them in future project. I can share my files with anyone on any platform or share files from others on any platform. Adobe is even working on a Linux version of Flex Builder.

So, Microsoft, if you really want me and many others to embrace or even investigate Silverlight, then hopefully you are producing quality tools for the Mac users out there. If you’re not, or if you are going to produce sub-par tools for the Mac users, then don’t bother — I’ll stick to Flash and Flex and my CS3 suite.