Microsoft offers development tools for Mac, Web

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present a continuum of technologies and highlight how they can be used together," Key said.

At the PDC this week, Microsoft executives played up the importance of presentation design in many ways. Since most companies have public Web sites, they'll increasingly need to differentiate themselves on "user experience" in software, executives said.

To that end, Microsoft introduced on Tuesday its Expression-branded family of design-related tools, which are expected to come out in late 2006. Those products are aimed at easing the process of building applications that incorporate animation and multimedia for Windows or Web browsers.

Part of the Expression line is Microsoft's Sparkle Interactive Designer tool, which uses XAML to create animations and other graphic-rich front ends. The tool is considered a competitor to Adobe's Flash format, which is widely used for Web graphics.

The importance of clean and effective design holds true for both public-facing Web sites and internal business applications, noted Greg DeMichillie, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft. For example, a poor sales application will discourage salespeople from inputting customer information until they absolutely have to, which prevents the employer from getting good information on incoming sales.

Web or Windows?
Meanwhile, Microsoft introduced initiatives this week geared specifically at building Web-only applications.

The company handed out an early version of Atlas, a "framework" that works in conjunction with Microsoft's flagship Visual Studio tool for building so-called AJAX-style applications. AJAX Web applications use modern standards such as Dynamic HTML to create interactive Web applications that can tap into server-side data.

In an Atlas demonstration Tuesday, company executives showed how an application written using the Atlas toolkit, which is built around JavaScript coding, can run unchanged on the Safari browser on Mac OS.

In other Web development-related initiatives, Microsoft introduced "gadgets," graphics-rich components that can run in the Windows Vista Sidebar window or SideShow, a secondary screen that can be attached, for example, to the lid of a laptop or to a keyboard.

For online Web applications, developers can create gadgets that run on Start.com, an MSN incubator site that allows users to combine information from many sources, notably including RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, in a customizable page. Start.com launched a developer center on Wednesday. Using the Atlas toolkit, developers can build gadgets that act as add-ons to Start.com.

The combination of front-end development options can be confusing for developers, said Paul Colton, CEO of Xamlon, which this week introduced its own front-end tools for building Web applications using Visual Studio.

"There's some conflict there--on the one hand, you have Atlas for doing cross-platform Windows applications. On the other, you have Windows Presentation Foundation to keep developers on the (Windows) platform," Colton said. "It's not clear for developers, but I think the market will drive it more than Microsoft."

Microsoft executives discount the idea that the company is conflicted regarding presentation technology. Windows Vista "smart client" applications that take full advantage of the three dimensions, vector graphics and animations will set themselves apart from even interactive Web applications, said Greg Sullivan, group product manager in charge of the Windows Vista client.

"We're investing in a wide range of models," Sullivan said. "The new kind of applications ISVs (independent software vendors) can make (with Windows Vista) will be dramatically different from what's possible with the Web application model. I think it's clearly differentiated."

[webgodjj]

yawn...

So it seems like a bunch of closed source products loosely based
off of open source ones? This sounds so exciting.

[t8]

Open vs Closed

More closed crap competing with superior open source.

[t8]

Open vs Closed

More closed crap trying to compete with superior open source.

Apple doesn't need Microsoft anything

Why ruin a perfectly good OS like OSX with crappy stuff from Microsoft?

OSX has it's own development tools and there's plenty more Open Source tools available.

indeed

Apple doesn't need any M$ developer tool - no-ones doing any serious Apple Development.

After 25 years in large enterprise organisations, I have yet to see anyone use Apple for ANYTHING, except comic relief.

Show me any organisation spending $100 million+ on development annually, that actually uses any Apple product, and I might then see a need for Apple Developer Tools.

How about improving whats out there?

How about first getting MS Office to work? Or Virtual PC to stop
crashing on Tiger? Or hey! Here's an idea, what about updating
that ANCIENT MSN Messenger app for folks that want to use that?

C'mon, MS is just looking for media attention, as usual. Yes, Troll-
ish, but true.

[bdkennedy1]

I agree...

If this new web suite works anything like Office, it's nothing to look
forward to. Word has to scan through my hundreds of fonts before
it opens. What's up with that?

[muntz]

'gadgets'

'gadgets'

jeez, they couldn't wait to steal this idea from Apple (yeah-yeah,
but before Konfabulator, Apple had desktop widgets which trump
Konfabulators modern looking widgets--at least Apple made them
useful by putting them in their own layer over the desktop). Can MS
do anything original at all? Seriously.

[bdkennedy1]

Ummmm...Wrong

As much as I hate Microsoft, "gadgets" aren't new to them. They've
been toying with them since the ill-fated Microsoft Bob from 1995.

[Earl Benser]

MS definitely has vision problems....

... it has a clear view of the road ahead and all the great and
wonderful things it could accomplish....

,,, while ignoring the trails of defective software, security breaches,
and just plain lousy program designs and programming that bob in
MS's wake....

So what's new?????

[bdkennedy1]

No IE but development tools?

I find it interesting that Microsoft dropped IE for the Mac but now
they're going to have a web suite for the Mac? Weird.

[Pixelslave]

Sparkle is not a Flash Killer

Do writer of technical news really understand what they are writing? Sparkle is NOT a Flash killer. For one, the chances that designers dumb Flash in favor of Sparkle is thinner than the winner of the Big Looser. Secondly, the main audience of Sparkle are the people who design "DESKTOP APPLICATION". Yes, those people who designs the interface of applications like PhotoShop, Office, Flash (insert your favorite or least favorite apps here.) A Sparkle project is part of a, say, a C# project. According to a video from Channel9, Sparkle itself is done by Sparkle. What does it have to do with a "Flash Killer"? I don't know -- I can only say that the reporters just don't get it, so they pick the only thing they can understand from Sparkle -- building interactive web graphics and call it a "Flash Killer".