Microsoft Says No To WebKit For Internet Explorer; ActiveX Still Matters

March 19, 2009

Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft is not yet worried about the recent security breaches in IE8

Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft is not yet worried about the recent security breaches in IE8

After his keynote at the MIX09 conference, I chat with Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft about the future of Internet Explorer.

First off, Hachamovitch quickly brushed off the idea of adopting the WebKit engine – used in Apple Safari and Google Chrome – to replace the homegrown Trident engine.

The Microsoft executive also touched on the company’s Research Lab Gazelle engine “that is not a replacement for Internet Explorer’s engine but is actually using it.”

Second, despite pushing for smaller “add-ons” for its Accelerator, Web Slices or Visual Search suggestions, Microsoft is not abandoning ActiveX. “ActiveX is still going to be used for super rich applications,” confirms Hachamovitch.

On the latest security issue affecting IE8, Microsoft is still evaluating how the hackers breached the browser’s security and if the hackers made any “assumptions” for their brute force attacks. “I also want to remind you that all the browsers were taken down. It was not just IE8. But also Safari and Firefox,” adds Hachamovitch.


Adobe Brushes Off Microsoft Silverlight 3 Improvements

March 18, 2009

silverlight-vs-flashNot impressed. That’s how I’ll summarize Adobe’s response to Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 release today.

“We’ve been watching the announcements made from the MIX 09 conference and thus far we haven’t seen any real surprises. There doesn’t seem to be advancements on the capabilities that Adobe already provides Web developers,” confided to me an Adobe spokesperson.

With Silverlight, Microsoft duplicates Adobe (sounds familiar? Apple?)

“In fact, a large number of these product capabilities are duplicates, or near duplicates of features that we’ve already got in the market – in shipping software, while Microsoft is simply demoing these capabilities for upcoming releases.

Silverlight 3 “outside the browser” offline support is old news

“Given the success we’ve seen with AIR as well as how Adobe innovation appears to work its way into Microsoft products, it makes sense that Microsoft is also talking about offline support in Silverlight 3.

Originally, at MIX 2007 the focus for Silverlight offline support was on fully functional apps that were built using WPF – but those applications were Windows only.

At MIX 2009, they announced that in the future Silverlight applications can work offline, and the functionality seems to be that developers will be able to allow users to put a “bookmark” of an application on the desktop.”

Offline Silverlight is no match to Adobe AIR

“It appears Microsoft is attempting to claim the benefits of AIR without actually providing them, since AIR allows Web developers to build applications that are cross‐platform and have access to functionality that is available only outside of the browser, for example access to client‐side files or background processing of notifications.”


Microsoft Adds 3D, HD, GPU Support To Silverlight 3

March 18, 2009
Microsoft boosts graphics capabilities in Silverlight 3

Microsoft boosts graphics capabilities in Silverlight 3

In Silverlight 3 beta unveiled today at the Mix09 conference, Microsoft significantly improved its graphics capabilities and performance, bringing it on par with Adobe Flash.

The runtime gets hardware-based graphics acceleration, supports high-definition video playback in full-screen mode (720p and higher), 3-D, pixel shader effects, as well as new multimedia codecs like AAC audio and MPEG-4 based H.264; allowing for smoother and higher quality streaming videos.

And with new graphics APIs, developers can also develop and plug their own codecs.

Microsoft confirmed that there will be one more beta of Silverlight before it’s final release later this year.


Microsoft Silverlight Now Runs “Outside The Browser”; Just Like Adobe AIR

March 18, 2009

silverlight-oob1With Silverlight’s “outside the browser” capability, Microsoft’s Rich Internet Application (RIA) strategy looks more and more like Adobe’s, if not identical!

RIAs can now run directly on a Windows or a Mac desktop without requiring any additional software to install (like .NET or Windows Presentation Foundation), as long as you already have the Silverlight 3 runtime on your machine.

At Mix09, Microsoft showed a demo of Seattle-based KEXP radio that developed an impressive RIA application that runs on the desktop, with both online and offline capabilities.

To me, Microsoft and Adobe are now on par for RIAs running on desktops.

KEXP radio has developed an amazing Silverlight RIA running on the desktop

KEXP radio has developed an amazing Silverlight RIA running on the desktop


Microsoft Azure Cloud Service Embraces PHP; SLA Coming

March 18, 2009

Microsoft updated its cloud service features, but will it scale?

Microsoft updated its cloud service features, but will it scale?

At the Mix09 conference, Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative saw 3 important updates today.

  1. The latest iteration of the Azure Services Platfrom can now hosts PHP applications thanks to the addition of FastCGI support, as well as native .NET code. “You can surely use the Ruby implementation of FastCGI with Azure but it’s not as well supported than the PHP version,” explained to me Scott Guthrie, the Microsoft corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Platform.
  2. Developers can now host their data on two U.S.-based datacenters, giving them the ability to store their data in multiple locations, enhancing performance by reducing network latency.
  3. Azure now has relational database support through new SQL Data Services APIs

Guthrie said that Azure is on track for commercial release “later this year.” The Microsoft exec also confirmed to me that SLAs (service-level agreements) are in the works for the final release.


[MIX09] Day 1 Is All About Silverlight 3, Azure (video)

March 18, 2009

I’m in Las Vegas this week to cover Microsoft’s Web conference “Mix09, the Next Web.”

This morning keynote will be mostly about Silverlight 3, the Adobe Flash killer, and Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative, Azure.

More in a few minutes. I’ll be tweeting the keynote live here.

And Microsoft promises to have all the conference videos up on the Mix09 website here.


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