JD on EP

The Expression approach's key uniqueularity: a single XML format across all tools, for all users. Key unanswered question: what happens when all instructions for a multi-contributor project are contained within a single XML file? The approach used in multimedia and WWW development is copy by reference, where a designer can change a PNG unendingly so long as the markup compositor knows the resource's final address. Expression seems to use a copy by value approach, where a single file holds all resources. There seems to be a need for very capable version-control abilities here, which I suppose would be handled by another Microsoft offering. Still, a single live file which can be modified by both designers and developers seems like it would also have unique strengths; I'll need to think on this a bit more before I get a clearer idea of the whole picture.

Speaking of "designers and developers", this theme made regular appearances during various presentations today. This was a key idea behind the Macromedia Designer & Developer Center, first named "desdev", later named "devnet", introduced toward Feb 2002. Microsoft has traditionally been focused on a straight developer audience, though, so this adaption does seem a natural and necessary progression.

Most of the demo was a "now I'll give this stroke a yellow brush, now I'll make it 2-point size, whoops, now I'll undo and resize this over here, next I'll choose this context menu and....." There was some apparent use of realtime 3D rendering for a spaceship, but I wondered why this rendering was done on the client instead of pre-rendered during authoring... probably reduces transfer costs from server to client, but increases computational demands on the client, limiting the audience. One nice thing was that they could then animate between any two states of the object (in this case, different views of a spaceship), but I'm not sure whether this decrease in bandwidth costs would outweigh the need for increased clientside computational cycles. Risk: designers will need some experience to determine when they overload the computational resources of their audience's machines... it's easy to say "hey i can render in realtime" but harder to predict "this is how much i can ask them to render before performance becomes unacceptable".

I think Gates may have a conflict here. The top-level line is about user experience, but the toolset itself focuses on "user experience for those who have a new PC and who run on hardware-accelerated Vista". Audiences are diverse... not everyone invests in their hardware and system as frequently as computer professionals... the change from fullsized computers to mobile communication makes this even more pronounced. "Whose user experience?" is one of the questions that keeps running in my head after this day of sessions.

One of the ideas that came up during the timeline segment was an emphasis on how Sparkle marks events by time, rather than by frames. This is true, and has been an animation issue for a dozen years now... MacroMind Three-D offered the first commercial parameter-based keyframing, and Specular's Infini-D made a big deal of how it could easily change the number of frames-per-second at render time rather than at the start of design, although keys were set when any parameter of the object changed (position, rotation, shading, etc) rather than different keys set when any parameter of that object changed. Macromedia Extreme 3D was the first commercial tool I recall to quickly interconvert between frame-based animation and time-based animation. Adobe Premiere used a strict time-based approach, later adopted by AfterEffects, which added MM3D's parameter-based keying. I'm not sure there's really a winner either way here. One advantage of a frame-based approach is that it maps easily into a state-based approach, the "one-frame movie" or "four-frame button" or current Flex "state" approach. I don't have a conclusion; still open to persuasion.

In the Q&A, the mic was vacant at first, so I got up and asked "What are we supposed to call this, Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer? Wasn't 'Sparkle' a bit more catchy? What do you want us to call it?" The answer was along the lines of "Yes, call it MEID" or something like that. We'll see... I'm guessing a more sustainable name will eventually emerge.

Another questioner asked "Who is the actual audience for this work?" and the reply was along the lines of "Well, most designers have at least one PC for testing", which seemed to me to confuse the audience they were selling into (designers/developers) and the actual people who would be using these interfaces (consumers).

Another question I noted down was about mobile development, multiple screen sizes and CPU capability, the whole Beyond The Computer approach. I don't have notes on the reply.

Branden Hall sat down near me towards this part -- he was one of the many web luminaries here whose attendence costs were paid for by Microsoft -- and he asked me when Sparkle would ship. I'm not sure... I think I remember hearing that, because it was built atop Longhorn that it would require Longhorn/Avalon/Vista to ship before they could lock it down and ship... I'd spend more time searching a reference but I'm not sure whether things would change again by actual delivery time.

My take: Same as before... Microsoft is doing something quite ambitious and commendable with its new operating system, and to guard this investment they'll need to make sure talented designers and developers can create dedicated content for it, so dedicated des/dev tools are a natural. Vectors and editability and micro-refreshes and declarative programming and all these other techniques are good techniques, so it's natural there would be overlap with what other des/dev tools have already been accomplishing. At the same time Microsoft needs to counter the "only in Microsoft" constraint, so some type of concession towards univerality needs to be made. It's a tough problem.

The next session in this room was about "Quartz", the codename for the new Frontpage HTML editor whose full formal name I don't recall, but I bailed for a session on Windows Presentation Framework, which I'll hit in the next report....