On our blog here we spend a lot of time doing tutorials for Silverlight and Flex. Because of this I decided that it would be nice to hear from a couple people very close to these products, so I came up with some questions and sent them off to Brad Abrams at Microsoft and Mike Potter at Adobe. Hopefully this will be the first of many question and answer sessions here at Switch On The Code.



Brad Abrams - Product Group Manager, Microsoft

First we are going to hear from Brad Abrams, who is a Product Group Manager at Microsoft. His group is responsible for UI Framework and Services, which includes items such as Silverlight and Windows Forms. More can be found about Brad at his blog, here. Now on to the questions.

Switch on The Code (SOTC): Can you explain quickly what Silverlight is and how it is related to other technologies such as Flex?

Brad Abrams (BA): Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and .NET based rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows.

SOTC: How does dynamic languages fit in with the overall plan for Silverlight?

BA: Our customers tell us that language choice is a big deal for them.. Some customers love JavaScript, other customers like VB or C# code. As you mention there are some new hot languages such as Ruby and Python that are dynamically typed. This gives a lot of power and productivity to developers that are familiar with those languages. We support all these languages in Silverlight in a really first class way. The performance of the underlying execution engine makes dynamic languages a viable option for many solutions.

SOTC: What features of Silverlight set it apart from the other RIA technologies out there?

BA: Silverlight fits in seamlessly to the broad .NET ecosystem. Developers that already know the .NET Framework or languages such as VB or C# from doing ASP.NET or client development can easily move into the RIA space. The exact same framework, development environment, tools and languages are available to them. This greatly lowers the costs in moving to building RIA applications. Further, it enables customers to reuse design and business logic assists across many solutions.

1. In the media space, many of our customers have huge amounts of content in VC-1 format (such as WMV). Silverlight enables them to stream that content to the web with no additional costs. There is not costly server software to change the WMV content into a different format for putting on the web. This not only saves in IT costs, but it also saves server bandwidth.


2. In the RIA space, Silverlight offers a mature, full powered IDE for developers and a rich set of products for designers for building rich applications. There is a time tested native execution engine in the CLR and proven languages such as C# and VB that are very productive for developers.


3. Silverlight is a very open platform… The Xaml UI markup is basically a textual XML format that can be read and produced by many tools, can be indexed etc. We have implementations of Silverlight shipping today on Mac and Windows and we are working with partners for work on Linux.. We have had traction with major Ajax vendors such as Dojo to include support in for Silverlight in their open source Ajax framework because of the openness and power that Silverlight provides.

SOTC: If Silverlight is targeted at Rich Internet Applications then when can we (the developers) expect to start to see some user controls implemented into the technology?

BA:The Silverlight 1.1 release is targeted at RIAs and we expect to have a very rich set of controls from Microsoft around the timeframe Silverlight 1.1 RTMs! There are a huge number of 3rd party control vendors that have already started working on some controls for Silverlight… it is amazing to see this much industry momentum given the product is so new. Expect to see the growth in this area as Silverlight 1.1 gets closer to shipping…

Our Thoughts
Brad also provided a few places to find Silverlight controls because I know everyone is wondering where to get some.

• http://www.codeplex.com/SLToolKit
• http://www.telerik.com/products/silverlight/overview.aspx
• http://demo.softwarefx.com/Silverlight/Chart/Galleries/
• http://labs.componentone.com/Sapphire/

It is exciting to hear that we are soon going to get to see some real user controls for Silverlight. I personally know that we here at Switch On The Code have been stymied by the lack of available user controls, so we are very much looking forward to these. Another item that I think is going to help them out is the availability of dynamic language support. This is something they really need to press in the Ruby community, because I believe that they could really see a push to start using Silverlight if they can bring in just a portion of the Ruby & Python communities.

In the RIA space Silverlight has some catching up to do but the people at Microsoft have always been able to do this rather quickly. With new controls and expanding the Xaml support you can bet that it won’t be long until Silverlight will be a real force in the RIA industry.


Mike Potter - Flex Marketing Team, Adobe

The second interview of this piece is with Mike Potter, who works on the Flex marketing team at Adobe. He runs the RIApedia blog where he posts information and cool projects happening around Flex, and more information about him can be found there on his blog. Ok lets get it on.

SOTC: Can you explain what Flex is and how it relates to other technologies such as Silverlight?

Mike Potter (MP): Flex is a framework for building out rich Internet applications. The two main parts to Flex are the Flex SDK, which contains the ActionScript framework, components, compiler and debugger, and the Flex Builder IDE – an Eclipse based IDE that helps developers build Flex applications. Flex applications can interact with a number of backend solutions (Java, .NET, PHP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails etc…) either via XML (REST based webservices), JSON or AMF (Adobe Message Format). Flex applications can also interact with existing HTML and JavaScript pages through the Flex / Ajax bridge, which allows developers to call JavaScript from their Flex applications, and Flex functions from the JavaScript in their web pages. It competes with technologies like Silverlight and JavaFX – all are designed to build rich Internet applications, with various language and runtime differences. (Flex applications run inside the Flash Player 9, which is available on more than 95% of all Internet connected desktops, while Silverlight applications require the Silverlight player.)

SOTC:With Flex 3 moving along nicely what can we (the developers) expect for the final release of Flex 3?

MP:The final release of Flex 3 has a number of feature improvements over Flex 2. First of all, there’s a new lower price for Flex Builder - just $249 US (Flex Builder 2 is now available at that same price). Flex Builder 3 has integrated support for AIR applications, wizards for generating ASP.NET and PHP CRUD applications automatically, refactoring support, and web service introspection. A new Flex Builder version, Flex Builder Professional, includes the charting components along with some new features like Performance and Memory Profilers for finding where your code is slowing down.

SOTC:Is Adobe mainly concentrating on adding framework features or new components for Flex 4?

MP: We are just starting the process of determining what we’re going to do for Flex 4. Now that Flex is an open source project, developers can help determine the roadmap for Flex 4 by participating in the community – submitting feature requests and voting for bugs in the public bug database (http://bugs.adobe.com/flex) is one of the best ways to get involved in the project.

SOTC:With the ever increasing amount of competition in the Rich Internet Application space, what does Flex need to do to stay at the top? And what features are really going to differentiate it from the others?

MP: As you said, Flex is already the leading solution for companies that are building rich Internet applications - there’s a lot of interest in Flex development these days. To stay on top, we have to continue our push to be more open – finalizing the governance model for the open source project will be important to allow other developers to participate in the project. We’ll continue to listen to the community and customers on what features to add to Flex. We’ll continue to integrate Flex and the applications in Adobe Creative Suite. As developers and designers work more closely together, we need to make sure that the workflow between those people is as easy as possible. For example, Thermo, which we showed in a sneak peak at MAX this year, allows developers and designers to share their work, and to better involve designers in building rich Internet applications. I think the integration with Creative Suite products using Thermo, and the fact that Flex 4 applications will target Flash Player 9 (which is on 93% of desktops already) are the key features that will differentiate Flex 4 from the competition, and ensure that Flex remains the best solution for creating rich Internet applications.

Our Thoughts
I really like what Adobe has been doing lately with Flex and all their products. They are starting to grab more and more attention with their products. And with the recent improvements in Adobe AIR, Flex is becoming a powerful tool for desktop development as well.

With that said, Adobe needs to make sure they stay on the forefront of the RIA space by keeping up with the developers needs. I think buying Buzzword was a good move to let everyone know they truly believe in what can be done with the technology, but they do need to make sure they don’t get too far into the business of making Flex applications themselves. I think that this has the possibility of alienating their developers because you could never know what products Adobe is developing in house.

We would like to thank Brad Abrams and Mike Potter for answering our questions. Finally, I hope everyone enjoyed the interviews, if anyone has any comments please drop a line.