Hot topics on Web design & usability from the Reactive Blog - Melbourne, Sydney, London: Web Technologies are boiling

Web Technologies are boiling

Monday, June 11, 2007

Over the past year there have been a barrage of new technology announcements, especially from the big four (Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo). You might’ve missed some announcements, or maybe you’re getting confused with all the names.

So to help you out we’ve made a quick list of some of the new web related technologies, with quick summaries. Some of the summaries are a bit controversial, don’t take it too seriously!

Expression Studio – Microsoft’s products for designers. Think Adobe Creative Suite.

Web – Used to create html and css for the web (competitor Dreamweaver).

Blend – Used to build create WPF and in version 2 create Silverlight content (competitor Flash/ Flex).

Design – Design tool which integrates with expression suite (Flash).

Media – Media manager which allows users to edit and encode various formats for use with the expression suite of products (competitor: Adobe Bridge?).

Silverlight – Microsoft’s competitor to Flash. Combines numerous technologies including Ajax, XAML, .NET, LINQ, and multimedia.

.NET 3.0 –(formerly named WinFX) .NET 3.0 isn’t a rewrite of .NET 2.0, it’s more like a expansion kit. You get a stack of additional powerful libraries in the form of (WPF, WWF, and WCF).

WPF – (Windows Presentation Foundation) This is the visual side of .NET 3.0. It’s built into Vista and can be used for local and connected applications.

WWF – (Windows Workflow Foundation) Libraries, Functions and Tools for developing any type of workflow/transaction in .NET.

WCF – (Windows Communication Foundation) Libraries, Functions and Tools for Data Exchange within Windows, or to/from Windows.

WPF/E – (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) Microsoft dumped that stupid name, and renamed this product Silverlight.

Vista – The latest version of Windows OS, it includes .NET 3.0. and IE 7.0.

IE 7.0 – The long delayed update to the highly popular, highly flawed IE 6.0 browser. Now supports Tabbed browsing, with many bugs fixed, but still has some issues.

Ajax.NET – Microsoft’s AJAX libraries. Previously named Atlas. Microsoft must stop renaming products.

Adobe CS3 – The new suite of integrated macromedia and adobe software.

Flex – A development environment for Adobe Flash. It provides a lot more structure for developing applications and doing server-side integration with databases.

Apollo – A client-side cross OS application environment for running desktop applications developed in Flash, Ajax, Flex, HTML.

SPRY framework – Used by Dreamweaver to provide AJAX functionality.

PopFly – An online application that uses Silverlight to allow users to easily create their own mash-ups (see yahoo pipes).

GoogleGears – A client-side cross OS tool which provides a database engine for online applications to sync and run offline.

Yahoo Pipes – An online application that allows users to easily create their own mash-ups (see PopFly).

Photosynth – A combination of fast image scaling technology and 3D environments constructed from images of a location.

What is the biggest battle?

From the web development perspective there is going to be an exciting battle between Flash/Flex/Apollo VERSUS Silverlight/WPF/.NET.

Who will win?

Well, we don’t have the crystal ball answer. The success of most technologies depends largely on the acceptance and use by the global community. Flash currently has the advantage due to the ubiquity of the player and it’s utilisation on some major sites such as YouTube, MySpace etc. However Microsoft’s automatic update functionality will help with speed to market and they are targeting the advertising and media industries to directly tackle Flash’s hold on the industry.

There are some clear patterns in the aims of most of these technologies: