Disclaimer: I spent nine years (2000 – 2009) working on Flash and AIR at Macromedia/Adobe and I am no longer an employee. I like to say I bleed Flash red. I strongly believe in the Flash Platform and what Adobe has done and continues to do with it. I was given a free conference pass by some old friends at Microsoft so I could go enjoy the conference and learn more about what they have been doing. I feel obligated to blog about my experience. As you’ll see below, I think Microsoft is doing some really interesting things that will grow this industry. I also think they are making some mistakes (just like everyone else). I do not work for Microsoft nor have I been paid to say anything nice about them.

Last week I attended Microsoft’s third annual MIX conference in Las Vegas, NV. The event kicked off with a keynote by Microft Research’s Principal Researcher, Bill Buxton, and Scott Guthrie, GM of Microsoft’s .NET Developer Division. Buxton’s presentation on the importance design was interesting (he gives off a crazy-genius-in-a-good-way vibe) but I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little out-of-place. In fact, Buxton seemed out-of-place. I could picture his talk fitting in nicely at FiTC or SxSW but it seemed forced into the MIX schedule. Watch the video and tell me if you agree (though you kind of had to be there). I’ll admit that it might just be me – since I’ve always thought of Microsoft in a “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers…” sort of way.

I thought Guthrie’s (or “The Gu” as the Microsofties seem to take every opportunity to call him – I mean, man, that guy is worshipped like a nerd God up in Redmond) keynote was very well-executed. He seems to be getting much more comfortable with being on stage. His tone seemed less, “here’s what we want to do to take over this space” and more “we’re here, we’re confident, and here’s what we’re doing”. The main focus was on the upcoming release of Silverlight 3 and the tools supporting it.

Silverlight 3

The key takeaway for me was that Silverlight 3 is catching up to Flash Player 10’s most shiny features like support for pixel shaders, h.264 and 2.5D. The one feature that did stand out as innovative was an API that gives access to the audio and video data on the client. I’ve advocated for such a feature to be added to Flash Player since version 8 but the business team chose not to for reasons that I probably shouldn’t disclose publicly. Now that Silverlight has this feature I won’t be surprised if it shows up in a future version of the Flash Player. Microsoft also added a “Silverlight Out-of-Browser” feature that will allow a user to right-click on any Silverlight content and choose to make it a standalone app that runs in a sandbox. The gut reaction of many in the audience was likely that this new feature will compete directly with Adobe AIR. The fact, however, that these Silverlight apps will run in a sandbox with limited OS-level integration and access to the filesystem, as well as a lack of custom chrome and other AIR features, means that this makes Silverlight more competitive with products like Google Gears and Chrome.

A Microsoft developer relations rep, Scott Barnes, appeared to disagree via his twitter feed:

@mossyblog: heh just heard a funny remark – Adobe just lot its AIR when it comes to Out of Browser – #mix09 (sorry it was funny)

@mossyblog: smiling at @ryanstewart from Adobe’s Silverlight vs Adobe AIR post.. he has more to learn me thinks #mix09

Others on twitter had similar impressions:

@dboynton: Watching Silverlight 3 running outside the browser. Will this kill Adobe AIR? It’s looking pretty damn good. #mix09

@imhassan: It’s on! Siliverlight vs. Adobe ‘Memory Hog’ Air!! #MIX09

@jorden112: Silverlight 3 running out of browser. Big announcement! Been waiting a while for that. Adobe AIR who? #mix09

I think this is a big part of Microsoft’s strategy. It works to their benefit when developers, designers, press, pundits, analysts, etc, mistakenly compare Silverlight to Adobe AIR. Why? Because it takes the attention off of the fact that Silverlight is fighting an up hill battle against the most-distributed piece of software in the history of the Web, the Flash Player, which has 98% penetration. Instead of people talking about how Silverlight compares to Flash Player, they’re talking about how it compares to Adobe’s new and much less dominant rich client. It’s a smart move if you ask me.

Overall, I think Silverlight 3 looks pretty good. I’m most impressed by how much Microsoft seems to have accomplished in such a short time. However, as my former Adobe colleagues pointed out, they had a pretty good blueprint to follow. :)

For a very good overview of all of the new Silverlight details, check out Microsoft Evangelist Tim Heuer’s blog.

Web Platform Installer 2

One of the most interesting announcements in the keynote was the Web Platform Installer 2. I think this is freakin’ brilliant. I mean this single offering probably best-illustrates Microsoft’s biggest advantage in waging it’s war on it’s competition in the rich media space.

In one click you can have Visual Studio and Silverlight Tools installed, IIS7 configured, Smooth Streaming enabled, etc. That’s right – a single installer gives you everything from clients to tools to servers – including the configuration of all three. I don’t think I need to say much more. This is huge. Adobe, take note.

Microsoft’s Tim Heuer has a good overview of Web Platform Installer 2 as well.

Expression Tools

Microsoft also announced (and former Macromedia Evangelist turned Microsoft Evangelist Jon Harris demoed in the keynote) new versions of their Expression Blend and Expression Web aimed at designers. Harris showed Expression Blend 3 (formerly known as Sparkle, Expression Interactive Designer, and probably a few other names) and a new feature called SketchFlow which allows designers to rapidly sketch out application prototypes. The demo was very impressive but I have to say that I was confused by the presentation and thought SketchFlow was a seperate product. I later clarified with a Microsoft rep that it is actually a feature of Blend. A trojan horse, if you will. What do I mean? Well, if Microsoft wants to get more designers to give Blend a try (something I doubt they’re having much luck with already) why not build in a feature that makes UX designers drool? Very smart. Very smart indeed.

They showed some other features of Blend 3, none of which come to memory. Here is a summary done by InformationWeek that might fill in the gaps.

The other Expression tool on display was Expression Web – which is their HTML WYSIWYG authoring tool. It had a few cool features, all but one of which I have forgotten. They showed a feature they call “SuperPreview” which lets you easily overlay the same HTML page as viewed in multiple browsers (versions, platforms, etc) on top of one another so you can easily identify inconsistencies between renderings – and fix them. This was a cool feature that commanded “oohs” and “ahhhs” from the audience. It stuck out in my mind because I remember the Adobe Dreamweaver team showing off something just like this in the “Sneaks” session at the Adobe MAX conference last year. I’m not sure if it was the same feature, but it sure reminded me of it.

Which leads to my concluding remarks about the conference as a whole.

Take-aways

I couldn’t help but recall a particular episode of South Park several times throughout the conference: episode 7 from season 6, “The Simpsons Already Did It”. In the episode the supporting character “Butters” decides to rebel against the social group that ostracized him by plotting evil deeds. The only problem was that The Simpsons had already done all of these deeds in previous episodes. While watching the features of Silverlight 3, Blend 3, and Web 3, I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that most of them had already been done in the Flash world. Sure, there were several things shown that were new, innovative, and promising. But as a guy who has been laser-focused on Flash for nine years, the “catch up” features stood out to me.

But here’s the thing – who cares? Does it matter that most of the new Silverlight features have already been done in Flash Player? Only if you’re religious about either technology (which I am). If you’re someone who is looking to deliver a great rich media experience you now have more than one option. Silverlight doesn’t really need to be that much better than Flash Player. Microsoft won’t win this war by out innovating the Flash Player team. They’ll win it through developer tools, integration with servers and services, and most of all through their exceptional ability to partner with their customers. I have heard so many customers tell me how great it is to partner with Microsoft.

Now, is it working for Microsoft? Well, I eagerly awaited the Silverlight success stories to be marched out on stage one after the other. They’ve been at it for a few years after all. And it’s no secret that Microsoft has dumped a lot of money into getting some high profile Silverlight projects out on the market (as has Adobe done with AIR, although I’m pretty confident that it had nowhere near the budget). When it came time to bring out the big customers who did I see? Netflix. Again.

“Isn’t their CEO on the Microsoft Board of Directors?” said a friend of mine sitting next to me during the keynote. Yes, Microsoft trotted out the Netflix CEO again to remind us, again, that Netflix uses Silverlight. Only this time he said something that I don’t recall hearing him say in previous MIX keynotes. He told the audience that Netflix chose Silverlight because it was the only solution for securely streaming video to the Mac. That was true at the time that the deployed it. Flash Player has since implemented similar features in conjunction with the Flash Media Server. So, ok, that’s a good justification. Last year MLB.com took the stage at MIX and said something similar. Of course, since then they have switched back to Flash.

Ok, Netflix is a success story. Who else? I’m sitting there thinking to myself, “it can’t be the Olympics again…” And yes, it was.

And that was it.

Now, these are both very compelling use cases for Silverlight. Great success stories. But why weren’t there any new ones? I spent my last six months at Adobe doing nothing but finding great success stories for AIR and Flash Player 10 as part of the Lighthouse team. As a result we showcased applications from DirecTV, Fox News, eBay, FedEx, Mini, Mercedes, Atlantic Records, AOL, Nasdaq, Nick.com, NY Times (ShifD), SlideRocket, and many more. Where are the Silverlight success stories? Microsoft needs to get on top of this – and quick. That was a big let down for me.

So, in short, I think Microsoft has made a lot of progress. I think their developer story is awesome. I think their platform integration story is unmatched. I think their efforts to attract designers to their platform are failing. None of the sessions I attended gave me any inclination that Microsoft had made much progress on this front. The Bill Buxton keynote presentation came off to me like, “Hey! Hey designers! Microsoft gets you! We employ cool designers just like you! Look! We’ve hired like 700 of them over the last few years! We get you!” without much in the way of readily available solutions to make designers any more productive in the RIA production workflow than they are today – with the exception of SketchFlow.

I also walked away with a strong impression that Microsoft is definitely in it to win it. I was skeptical considering the lack of Silverlight adoption and my assumption that the Expression tools were not doing so well either. I’m still not sure if either of these two points has changed much but the tone of MIX was loud and clear – they are dedicated to providing a better solution for building rich media solutions. In the end, I think the entire industry will benefit from the “battle” between Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and everyone else. If Microsoft out-does Adobe, Adobe will work harder and build better software. The opposite is also true. We all win.

Learn more

• Watch the Day 1 keynote here and Day 2 keynote here (Requires Silverlight 2).
• Watch the humorous opening video introducing Scott Guthrie (Note the jab at Flash when “The Gu’s” handler yells “No Flash!” at the paparrazi)