This week, Microsoft Mix 06 was held in Las Vegas. The conference theme was “the next web now”. Under this banner, Microsoft pitched a very mixed audience with a variety of tools aimed at the next Windows desktop operating system, Vista. If I had been attending the conference solely as a Flash developer, author, and instructor, I would have been confused at just what Microsoft was trying to direct at me—As a conference presenter with some background on the technology, I thought the core message was unclear and that many of the sessions lacked context. I’m guessing that many attendees would benefit from more clarification which I’ll attempt to provide by sharing my post-conference notes and impressions.

 

As the VP of Multimedia Platforms Group for Schematic, I have to be on top of any significant emerging technology, especially from a software giant like Microsoft. When Microsoft asked me to demo some features of one of these tools, Expression Interactive Designer, I took it as an opportunity to get a guided crash course with this new tool. Although it has some potential, I don’t think the session was successful in clarifying how the tool might actually impact the interactive market. Brad Becker, the Senior Program Manager of Expression Interactive Designer, outlined a vision of what the tools could be used to create, but I think  the audience may have walked away wondering why they would make Expression Interactive Designer part of their real-world toolkit.

Here’s an overview of my thoughts on key questions that should have been answered during the WinFX and WPF sessions at Mix:

 

• Who was the target audience? This is a pretty simple question that most of us in the web design/development world have to address before any real world production begins, and one that I believe Microsoft failed to define at the conference. Unlike every other Microsoft convention (like a PDC), this conference wasn’t composed of tried and trued Microsoft banner-waving developers. A fair number of high-profile designers, from the Flash world and others, were at this conference. I don’t think Microsoft connected the dots for this broad audience. How could designers and developers working with non-Microsoft solutions transition their current work over to the tools shown at Mix 06? In fact, I think only one tool, Expression Web Designer, demonstrated by Lynda Weinman, was (or will be) commercially viable for work that web designers and developers need to provide for their clients today. Microsoft began every session as if they were talking to Microsoft users that typically attend their other (very techie) conferences. Microsoft should realize that most non-Microsoft folk don’t know what a CTP is.

 

• What is the current state of Windows Presentation Foundation (or WPF), WinFX applications, and XAML and what can we expect in the near future: Much of the conference was dedicated to talking about these buzzwords. WPF and WinFX is a new rich graphics layer that can run on Windows XP or Windows Vista. Presumably, WPF and WinFX will be part of Microsoft Vista, although I heard no one from Microsoft say this is 100% guaranteed. The WinFX beta can currently be downloaded from Microsoft’s site to run on Windows XP, but any application created by Expression Interactive Designer would require this separate download/install in order for XAML-based applications to run. For people who don’t upgrade to Vista (or buy a new computer with Vista), this 24MB+ download will be necessary to run XAML-based applications. And I have a feeling WinFX/WPF won’t be listed as a “critical download” for Windows XP users when they run Windows Update. Again, it would have been nice to be told by someone on stage just what we, as content producers on the web, can expect in the near future. Also, a timeline for WPF/E (or Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere or Embedded, not sure which one it is since Bill Gates said “Embedded” but others from Microsoft said “Everywhere”) wasn’t provided. WPF/E would potentially enable WinFX apps to run on a Macintosh, in a non-IE browser like Firefox, or on a mobile phone, each supporting a more limited range of capabilities than the WPF on Windows XP or Vista.

 

• Where are the market opportunities for web designers/developers: I don’t think Microsoft outlined a path for non-Microsoft developers/users to successfully use these tools to augment their existing tool sets. While Expression Interactive Designer has been dubbed a “Flash killer”, I don’t see the reality of any WinFX-based tool squashing the majority of Flash production work done today or within the next three years. I think it was a bad assumption that most Flash people in the audience build RIAs (or Rich Internet Applications) with Flash. I’d estimate that about half of the Flash designers/developers in the audience build hard-core RIAs with Flash, so the other half probably weren’t terribly impressed with building desktop applications. And let’s just be clear about that–Expression Interactive Designer, once released, will only be good for building next generation desktop applications for Windows Vista users. That’s it. As such, I’m surprised I didn’t see more of an effort from Windows developers at the conference to reach out to designers. If Windows developers have been so limited with creating awesome-looking interfaces for their desktop apps, why weren’t they talking more to the designers at the conference? Wouldn’t they have been psyched to start collaborating with designers?

 

Now, I think it’s only fair to provide my take on Adobe’s presence at the conference. That’s right. Adobe had several key members of the Flash product team at the conference. And why not? Adobe products run on Windows, and several of Adobe’s server products run in tandem with other Microsoft server products. But more importantly, they needed to see just how Microsoft was pitching the forthcoming Expression line of products. Fortunately for Adobe, I don’t think most of the high-profile Flash attendees were wooed by the technology. It definitely helped Adobe’s cause to hold Xbox 360 tournaments in a private suite, keeping the Flash folks occupied during session times.* However, I’m surprised that I didn’t see any Dreamweaver product team members. Maybe they were at the conference, but if I were a Dreamweaver product manager, I’d see Expression Web Designer as a much bigger competitor to Dreamweaver than Expression Interactive Designer will be for Flash. Expression Web Designer will be the only tool of the Expression suite that can appeal to web designers and developers using the Windows platform for authoring “standards-based” web sites. Meaning, the only tool that can be used for deployment of content for HTML-based work produced for paying clients today.

 

* Note: Several reliable authorities, internal and external to Adobe, told me after I made this post that Adobe was not hosting the tournaments during session times, and more importantly, that bringing Xbox’s to conferences (not just the Mix event) is somewhat routine and commonplace for the Adobe team.

 

It is also worth noting the exposure of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) at Mix 06. MCE, for those not in the “know”, is Microsoft’s version of a Personal Video Recorder (or PVR) like a Tivo unit. While I have a bias for MCE due to the volume of MCE work that Schematic produces for its clients, MCE development is clearly a niche market opportunity for those who want to get content into the hands of a media-savvy TV-watching audience. By the end of March 2006, over 10 million Media Center Edition units will have been sold. Mind you, not all MCE units have video tuners, and it’s not clear to me what percentage of units do have them pre-installed. (I’ve heard estimates as low as 30%.) The easiest way to create content for a MCE user is to build HTML pages with graphical assets, including Flash movies/user interfaces, and offer them for  consumption on Windows Marketplace. If you have a high-profile client that has presence in the media space (like a broadcast or cable TV network), you could also create partner content for the Online Spotlight section of MCE.

 

Overall, I think it was worth attending the Mix 06 to see what Microsoft has planned for the forthcoming Vista launch. Perhaps more importantly, if Microsoft wants to offer graphic/UI design tools, they need to start somewhere. I just wish the real-world uses and the overlap (or impact) on existing design tools seemed a little more planned out for an average web worker to follow.

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