Rob Relyea, a Lead PM on the Avalon team, posts some history of XAML as well as a description of how it’s compiled into BAML and then into code. He also talks about CAML, which is used today in the PDC bits, but going away in the future.

I love these kinds of posts (and these kinds of articles) because they provide insight into what the designers of a particular technology had in mind, making it so much easier to learn. Having spent years of my life reverse-engineering the intentions of the COM designers out of the header files (because the docs and marketing materials actually pointed us in the wrong direction), it’s great when the folks behind the technology spill their guts. Thanks Chris and Jeff and Rob (and Mike and Don and the rest of the MS bloggers).

Saturday, January 31, 2004

On a recent thread on my favorite mailing list ever, Jon Kale answers the question “what would you save if your house was on fire,” which triggered my own thoughts along this line.

Assuming I’ve already made sure that the humans and the pets were out of the house, I’d make sure to grab my Omega X-33 (purchased during the bubble, of course), but since I go almost nowhere without it, it’s not likely to be burned up w/o its owner.

Also assuming I had a set of back-up CDs/DVDs for the last year in my safety deposit box (which I don’t have right now… please excuse the pause while I purchase a DVD burner… OK, $155 got me a top-reviewed DVD+R/DVD+RW drive with 30 blank DVD+RW disks delivered), the thing I would most miss is my book collection. The computer books could be replaced on demand, but my collection of just-for-fun books has literally taken a lifetime to collect and cull down to just things that I really love (click on the picture to get a closer look).

Often, when I want something comfortable to read, I’ll scan the shelves ’til something pops out at me and re-read it. Also, when friends & family come to town, I often take them to Powell’s City of Books and we play the “Top 5 Books of All Time” game, purchasing what they point out for me and writing their name in the book so that when I read it, I can talk about it with the recommender (man, I’ve gotten some wacky books that way…). Losing those books, especially the ones I haven’t gotten to yet, would really hurt.

On the other hand, because you never know when you’re going to need to jam, my goal is to fit my entire set of positions on a memory hypercube (or whatever). But how do I back up the books when the atoms themselves are so satisfying? I mean, how can I recapture the feel of my leather-bound The Complete Frank Miller Batman, the back-pocket-worn The Silicon Mage, my copy of The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings signed by my mother when I received my Master’s Degree because she read them to me when I was 10 or the ancient copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes given to me by my father and to him by his father?

But even if I wanted a lossy digital backup of my books, how do I do it? I mean, I can scan all of my books and graphic novels, but only by destroying them. Why haven’t books, which are produced in digital form, made the transition to electronic availability? Are we waiting for the Tablet PC to get to a point of ubiquity?

So, in summary:

• How do I back up my favorite atoms?
• What would you save if your house was on fire (after humans and pets)?

The shell-meister himself, Dino Esposito, digs into the one of the most prominent of the new shell features in Longhorn — the Sidebar — by showing you how to add your own tile, including how to create the flyout and properties views and how to extend the context menu. Sample code included. Enjoy.

Just following up again on When In Doubt, Ignore Longhorn to point out an interesting survey of MS bloggers by David Weller. Apparently, out of 56 recent blog entries by Microsoft employees, 8 were related to Longhorn. That's about 14%, which is a little higher than the 10% that I argued for, but I bet if you took out the ones from me (whose job it is to talk about Longhorn), we'd be closer. : )

It's interesting to see an Internet-based company talk about using smart client technologies to provide their customers with a richer experience than they could provide over the web. I roamed the country for years talking to folks about Windows Forms and No-Touch Deployment for their internal stuff and they ate it up. When Whidbey ships and provides ClickOnce capabilities for Windows Forms apps, attaining Internet-reach with smart clients becomes feasible *much* sooner than Longhorn.

Friday, January 30th, 2004

In response to my post yesterday (When In Doubt, Ignore Longhorn), Shaun asked whether he should be targeting Longhorn-only right now:

[ed: the following has been edited to remove identifying remarks at Shaun’s request]

Thanks for all the great posts and community participation over the past year. Your recent ‘Ignore Longhorn’ post alarmed me a bit. I hope that was not born from some aspect of it being pushed past 2006.

Anyway, I know you are busy, so I will get to the point. We are mid-sized, established s/w company, and a Microsoft shop to the core (SQL Server, Analysis Services, VB, we embed VBA etc…). I am facing a huge decision regarding building our next gen app architecture. We need to ship in 1H 2006, and (IMO) we need to target rich and reach, so Longhorn is on my list of possible directions along with some ASP.NET 2.0 / ClickOnce combination.

I am enjoying working with Longhorn (XAML in particular), but I’m having a hard time shaking the feeling that I am taking too much of a gamble if I go Longhorn-Only, but some of the aspects are just so compelling. On the other hand, I’d hate to make a huge 2-3 year dev investment in ASP.NET only to ship something in 2006 that is not revolutionary/differentiated. I firmly believe our existing 3 million lines of solid COM code has plenty of life in it too.

Any insight or advice you might have would be greatly appreciated. I know it is probably difficult without understanding our company or market, but maybe some general advice to someone who is targeting a 2006 release. I guess my other worry surrounds the Longhorn adoption rate, but obviously none of us can predict that!

Here was my answer:

Shaun, if you think that Longhorn is going to help you build a differentiated product that’ll help you be more successful, then great! That’s why we’re building it.

On the other hand, if I were you, I wouldn’t put all my money into a single investment. Instead, I’d use some diversification strategies like you would with your financial portfolio. At this point, the ship date of Longhorn, along with the list of features it will support when it ships, is merely speculative. I won’t put more than 10% of my available investment time/money/staff into it, leaving the rest of my portfolio for getting the most I can from my existing and/or near future technologies.

Specifically, you ask about ASP.NET 2.0 and Windows Forms/ClickOnce. Both of those technologies rock. ASP.NET is going to be the way to build web sites and services for the next decade at least, even after Longhorn’s been out for years, since it has the reach across our existing OSes and competing OSes. Plus, ASP.NET 2.0 has a dizzying list of new features that people will spend years just taking full advantage of. For reach, you can’t make a better investment than ASP.NET.

For rich, on the other hand, Windows Forms + ClickOnce is a killer combo. The updated Windows Forms in Whidbey along provides some amazing new capabilities, not the least of which is the new GridView, which you can read about in Michael’s new Wonders of Windows Forms piece. Also, look for a “What’s New in Whidbey Windows Forms” piece in MSDN Magazine RSN. ClickOnce (which you can learn more about in Duncan’s ClickOnce piece and in Jamie’s ClickOnce talk) is the way to deploy rich clients in Whidbey and in Longhorn, so digging into that technology is a very good idea.

As time goes on and Longhorn becomes a more solid development investment, you should put more of your portfolio into it. If you’ve got plenty of time/money/staff, than 10% now could mean an entire pilot project in Longhorn, which would be a good thing. But if you’ve got limited amounts of time/money/staff that you really need to yield a dividend now, Longhorn is dangerous for you and should only be something you dabble with at this point.

For you specifically, a mid-sized company, you should carve off a chunk of your dev. staff to build a pilot in Longhorn. This lets you dabble while the rest of your staff is busy with existing and near future technologies. And as you dabble and notice things that don’t work at all as you expect or need, let us know! Operators are standing by to take your calls! We’re at a stage in our development process where we’re able to give much more attention to the fundamentals than we will be at beta, so the 10% you put into Longhorn now could yield large dividends in the future.

And as to your follow up comment, I’m happy that you enjoyed my response, but I’m pretty sure an autograph from Sting would be cooler. : )

I don't know what a "Meetup" is, but I signed up for a “Longhorn Meetup” in 97007 (and I wasn't the first). Will it hurt?

Robert Hess kicks off a series of Longhorn episodes on The .NET Show with a Longhorn overview, featuring some of the major movers and shakers behind the technology and then, of course, some shenanigans from none other than the poster children of coding for Longhorn, Don "Outofthe" Box and Chris "Mr." Anderson.