Change ends: Microsoft opening up to open source, Google opening up to DoJ?
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Business, Licensing, linux, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple on
Have Google and Microsoft swapped places? Are Microsoft and Adobe going to race each other to open source key technologies as Google gets bogged down by antitrust investigations over Google Books? Not really – but Google is in line for some antitrust grief.
Welcome as the open source announcements this week are, don’t read the wrong things into them. This isn’t religion.
Adobe doesn’t want to open source Flash; it’s a huge business for them. They want phone manufacturers to pay to put Flash on mobile; but Apple said no and Mozilla and Google said ‘video on HTML 5, in Android and Fennec’. Adobe’s response was the Open Screen Project, starting with getting the chip vendors to support Flash and offering a ‘pre-integrated’ version of the Flash run-time. Taking it down to the chip level isn’t just about the multimedia support; it means that none of the hardware guys will want to miss out on a feature their competitors are going to have.
Adobe is swapping licence revenues on phones for ubiquity on phones; as Adobe’s Zeke Koch puts it “now you can have it for free - in return you have to make it open.” That’s open as in ‘Adobe gets to check it’ rather than open as in source. And it means users don’t go off Flash because of shoddy implementation, Flash stays in demand and Adobe can make money on the Flash development tools – and get in a few digs at anyone who doesn’t support Flash as not being open.
And while releasing Linux drivers under the GPL is a good thing both for Hyper-V and anyone who is fed up with the religious debates over operating systems and licence philosophies and Microsoft deserves credit for working through the problems, it’s possible Microsoft didn’t originally plan to release its drivers under the GPL. Supporting Linux in enlightened mode on Hyper-V is crucial; without it VMware can boast better support for more server OS’s. But according to a blogger who calls himself Linux Network Plumber, in the first version “the driver had both open-source components which were under GPL, and statically linked to several binary parts. The GPL does not permit mixing of closed and open source parts, so this was an obvious violation of the license.”
And actually, the most credit here goes to the anonymous Plumber who, rather than “creating noise” (and you can imagine the noise if Microsoft had been accused of violating the GPL) contacted Novell to find the right person to approach at Microsoft. Result: less of a news story, more of an actual result, grown-up behaviour all round.
As for Google, the EU has a hearing on Google’s acquisition on publishing rights scheduled for September 7th (expect the estate of George Orwell to have an opinion); the House Judiciary Committee might meet sooner than that. Google brushes both off as ‘fact finding exercises’ but Christine Varney predicts “a repeat of Microsoft”. As the attorney who got Netscape’s case all the way to the anti-trust settlement, she should know.
-Mary
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Make Adobe Acrobat Pro deactivate
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Adobe on
You can have Adobe Acrobat Pro on two PCs with the same licence; handy for taking work home. But if you’re switching to another PC, you’ll want to deactivate Acrobat on the old PC. This is supposed to be ‘automatic and transparent’ says the help, though not so automatic that you can do it by uninstalling (as far as I can see). Instead you choose Help >Deactivate. Except Deactivate isn’t on my Help menu.
To make it appear, it seems you have to open the Acrobat Pro help file from the Help menu. When you go back to the Help menu, the Deactivate item will appear and you can run it. When it finishes, Acrobat Pro helpfully closes itself (because you can’t use it any more).
Rated: 20% (1 votes)
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The ColdFusion Renaissance
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Developer, Adobe, Internet on
Most years you’ll see an “is ColdFusion dead?” article. Like the infamous bad penny that keeps turning up it’s a meme that just won’t die. So if it’s a story we keep seeing, surely there must be a grain of truth in it?
Spend 30 minutes with Adobe’s Ben Forta, and you’ll know that’s not the case. Ben’s been working with ColdFusion since the Allaire days, and he knows the product (and its market) inside and out. Sure, there are fewer pages that show up with that tell tale .CFML extension these days, but that’s more because the underlying technologies of the web have changed.
Where we might have used a page markup language to dynamically generate page content, we now use AJAX - or even Flash. Today’s dynamic HTML pages talk directly to application servers and database engines, using REST and JSON to fire up their AJAX display components. It’s a much better architecture, separating business logic from display. That doesn’t mean those in-page dynamic content engines have gone away. They’re now in the background, handling database queries, managing and marshalling the new asynchronous connections between server and web browser.
That’s where you’ll find ColdFusion today. Sitting on top of Java, it simplifies the process of building and deploying web-facing Java applications. You don’t need to build complex new application server applications, wrapping Java classes in servlets - all you need are a few lines of hidden CFML to parse incoming XML and JSON, and to mediate the response from the server. Your browser (and the various site sniffers that people use to get the data for web technology surveys) won’t see the ColdFusion middleware layer - just the smooth Web 2.0 user experience we’ve come demand.
Cold Fusion’s also making quite a lot of inroads inside the firewall. Too often businesses and government lock up essential data in inefficient Access databases. Cold Fusion applications can take that data and make it available to any one on the network, with quick wins and rapid application development.
Adobe’s MAX event in Milan showed off a product codenamed “Bolt”, which will help developers work with ColdFusion in this new middleware world. It’s Adobe’s
Rated: 84.44% (9 votes)
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Enter the interaction architect
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, Developer, Adobe, Internet on
Adobe’s MAX event here in Milan has seen the European unveiling of its upcoming Catalyst web application design tool. It’s here that it’s also begun to discuss how it sees web application development workflows changing to improve the often fractious relationship between designer and developer.
The launch of Flex (developed by ASP co-architect Mark Anders) changed the way the development world looked at Flash. A tool for producing animations and the butt of a million “Skip Intro” jokes had become a new way of producing complex state-based user interfaces. Flex made Flash as much a part of Web 2.0 as AJAX. Even so, there were still problems. It was easy to tell a Flex site, as the limited skinning capabilities made Flex controls look the same wherever you went on the web. You could design your own controls from scratch, but then they became as much part of the code as a site’s business logic - which was exactly the thing it was trying to prevent.
Designers and developers don’t think the same way. That’s not a bad thing - the creative tension between the two ways of working can deliver amazing applications with intuitive ways of working. However, it also means that they don’t work well while sitting in each other’s pockets, working on each little piece of a page. What’s best is that architectural utopia, the complete seperation of design and code. Developers can work on business logic without affecting the design, and designers can do the opposite…
That’s the idea behind Catalyst (perhaps still best known by its codename “Thermo”). Designers can start work in familiar Illustrator and Photoshop, and then import their layers into Catalyst. Here they can map out buttons and dynamic content, marking them up and adding state information to a design. The resulting prototype can be converted into a new FXG format, and imported straight into Flex. Developers can start work on the code straightaway, adding the logic behind the buttons and the dynamic content. Meanwhile the designer team can concentrate on fine tuning the interactions, producing a user interface that’s clean and easy to use. The two versions can eventually be merged, ready for testing and delivery. It’s a simple, clear workflow that brings designers and developers closer together, concentrating on their strengths and avoiding the pitfalls of their weaknesses.
Of course this means we’ll need a new kind of designer, one who’s focussed on the user experience and on how it should be delivered. We’ve already got application architects putting together the backend, and information architects managing metadata (as well as database architects handling storage). So why not call this role the interaction architect? It’s definitely a senior role that defines the direction of the UI component of an application -
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In and out of the browser - how Microsoft and Google think differently
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Web browser, Privacy, Applications, People, Adobe, Firefox, Internet, Google, Security, Microsoft on
For years, I’ve been saying that Google would be mad to build its own operating system. It should leave the thankless task to Microsoft and Apple and Linux distributions; you can debate how good a job they do, turn and turn about, but the scale of what a desktop OS needs to do and the range of devices it needs to support (even on a netbook) is far broader than what you need to do in a browser or on a smartphone. I still don’t think Google has any plans to create its own desktop OS (whatever people do with Android), but it’s pushing beyond the browser as a development platform with Gears and App Engine and the like. Microsoft has a whole range of platforms in the browser, out of the browser and around the browser, from Windows and WPF to Silverlight to SharePoint to Office to SQL Server – to name just a few of the platforms Bill Gates touched on in his last ever keynote at Microsoft TechEd this morning.
Silverlight is a lot of things, from Microsoft’s answer to Flash to Microsoft’s answer to Web based applications. Leave aside the video plugin side of it; the fact that Silverlight 2 (beta 2 due at the end of this week) runs .NET and programs written in dynamic languages on Mac and Linux as well as Windows is the most interesting part. And it’s not just consumer Web apps; Facebook and Hotmail users aren’t happy with line of business apps in dreary basic grey when they get to work, and Silverlight is an easy way to spruce those up without slaving over a hot CSS schema for hours.
Adobe’s Air tackles much the same problem; how do you make powerful applications for the Web that work online and off, that look good and that work without installing anything (once you have the initial plugin or runtime). Air builds on Flex, so if you’re already writing Flash, you’ve got a head start. But there are a lot more .NET developers writing business apps, so although Microsoft demos consumer apps like the Crossfader social video sharing tool it talked about today, most Silverlight apps might show up at work, using Workflow Foundation and making data from SQL Server look good.
Silverlight is a subset of .NET and Windows Presentation Foundation, so developers are using familiar skills and Visual Studio plus Expression Blend for designers, who get to work on the live project, not in Photoshop mockups. The visual development tools also appeal to disenfranchised Visual Basic developers who’ve been wondering what Microsoft has done for them lately…. Microsoft VP Soma Somasegar said Crossfader is being built by six developers and two designers in three months, which is more like Internet time than standard Microsoft time scales.
If Silverlight’s so good, why would anyone be creating Windows applications at all? Bill Gates finished his Q&A trying to balance that question. “Yes, you’ll be able to do amazing things in Silverlight, but there will always be things that you can do in Windows Presentation Framework that you can’t do in Silverlight. Why is that so? Well, it’s so because with WPF we get to assume we have the full power of the PC; we’re not just running in a browser environment. So, take things like 3D type things, virtual world type things, take things like ink recognition or playing video back at arbitrary speeds. WPF will, because it can connect in to all of Windows, expose those services and let people do new things.
“We need to keep the Silverlight download to be fairly modest. So, if you think of what that will be versus the entire Windows environment, we have a much bigger runtime to call on. So, we’re not saying that those get absolutely merged, but we will have exactly the right relationship. And even as you’re in Visual Studio or in the Expression tools, you’ll be able to say I want to author for the Silverlight piece and to let you know that if you’re sticking to the things that work in that world.
“Silverlight will probably have almost everything WPF has today, but WPF will keep getting richer and richer as we go forward.”
That’s the Microsoft dream and it’s one direction things could go. Google is pushing in completely the other direction. Last week at Google IO, Chris Prince and Aaron Boodman (better known as the designer of the Greasemonkey FireFox extension) was explaining why they don’t want you to think of Gears as taking Google applications offline. Yes it does that, but actually Google wants it to give Web apps to have access to all the capabilities of your PC the way desktop apps do. Why shouldn’t the browser get the power of your 2GHz processor and your 300GB hard drive? Why shouldn’t they be able to send you notifications in another window or show a progress bar? Why can’t you access USB drives from inside Gears or use a GPS to tell the Web app where you are?
Google filed its name off Gears so that it has more chance of becoming a standard, either as part of HTML 5 or by becoming ubiquitous as a plugin in its own right. Personally, I’m not going to be installing it on any machine I use.
It’s not just because it has no way to limit the amount of disk space it’s going to take for its local database (used by MySpace to give you search across the whole site without having to take up space on their data centre for those pesky index files). It’s only partly because it’s going to be able to use your GPS or other tools to get your location and there is currently nothing to warn the user and no options for choosing if and when Gears can get your location. Google seems committed to harmonizing with whatever standards HTML 5 includes for the things that Gears does, and I’m not the one who will have to detail with duplicate APIs from Gears and HTML 5 to do the same thing – that’s a problem for Web developers to juggle. And the fact that Web sites like YouSendIt already have real progress bars without needing me to download a plugin is a quibble rather than a complaint.
Mainly, I won’t use it at this point because of how Chris Prince explains why he thinks Web apps are so good in the first place. “Everything in the browser is inherently safe,” he said at Google IO. “There is no cost to install a Web app, you’re not afraid to click a link, and you can navigate away with no fear it will take over your machine.” Compared to the near-paranoia that’s is Microsoft’s attitude to the Web, from the phishing filter to the way IE doesn’t get the same privileges as a desktop app to the security-first attitude that permeates the company, calling the browser ‘inherently safe’ seems a little laissez faire to me.
Adding binary data files to JavaScript will certainly make for more powerful apps. Some of them might be Trojans; if Gears gets everything Google talked about that would be able to scrape files off a USB stick, record you talking with the audio APIs, add in your physical location and do whatever you can think of with it all. If I’m not too busy playing with whatever features the Web app disguising the Trojan has I can navigate away from it – but if it’s using Gears to run offline, has it gone away?
The browser sandbox limits the features on my system that Web apps have access to. That’s a pain when you want to build a better app in the browser – but it’s a security measure if you want to build a better way of attacking my system. I asked Chris Wilson of the Internet Explorer dev team if I was being paranoid – he was the one who’d raised the issue about privacy with the GPS location in Gears at the end of the session. Maybe, he suggested - but with the number of security issues it raises, Gears isn’t going to be installed by default with IE any time soon…
-Mary
Rated: 60% (1 votes)
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The browser wars are over. HTML has lost.
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Enterprise, Web browser, Adobe, Internet, Microsoft on
With Firefox 3 around the corner, and IE 8 in beta, perhaps its time to call this round of browser wars over before they’ve begun. Adobe’s put a line in the sand today with the beta of Photoshop Express, and there’s no way a pure HTML/CSS/JavaScript browser can ever cross it - no matter how much of ACID3 it can render.
Why?
Microsoft and Adobe are pushing innovative web application development outside the browser into cross-platform runtimes that deliver everything that Java promised. HTML is obsolete, and all we really need is the <object> tag.
One of the big announcements at Microsoft’s web development conference Mix08 was the public beta of Silverlight 2. It’s another salvo in the developing rivalry between Microsoft and Adobe. Both companies are treading on the same path as they struggle to find direction in the developing software as a service world. Adobe’s made its latest step today, with a Flash-based in-browser version of Photoshop built using its Flex platform. Both companies are targeting developers with their rich internet applications strategies, offering platforms for next generation web applications that go beyond the limitations of HTML and web browsers.
Silverlight 2 is Microsoft’s first cut at a high-performance in-browser rich internet application platform. Flash may well perform well if you’re using the Flash 9 player, but noit everyone writes well-architected Flex applications, and the Flash/Flex designer/developer dichotomy is a tricky one to deal with. Not everyone can write an application like Photoshop Express, and the capabilities of Flash are being lost in a morass of advertising animations that mean a lot of influential users block Flash from their browsers completely…
Microsoft is watching Adobe carefully, and it’s trying not to make the same mistakes. While Silverlight is designed to be used by advertisers (and comes with plug-ins suitable for most analytics platforms), it’s also developer friendly. Install Silverlight 2 and the Silverlight 2 SDK and you’ve suddenly got a tool that lets you write C# code that runs at desktop speeds inside a browser - and on Macs as well as Windows boxes. There’s no point in codeing for a host of incompatible browsers if you can target a plug-in that’ll work across a sizeable set of your target userbase.
You’re going to need to write code if you’re planning on using Silverlight in anger. Deep Zoom, one of the Mix 08 Silverlight announcments, may only take a line of code to implement in your XAML - but you’ll need a lot more in the associated code to actually work with browser, mouse and keyboard to actually handle the zooming… Microsoft is a developer-focused business, and even though its attempting to redress this with its Expression family of tools, you’re going to need Visual Studio to get the most out of Silverlight.
Photoshop Express is a good idea - and a powerful tool. Could you build it in Silverlight as well as Flash/Flex? The answer’s quite simple: Yes. It’d probably run faster too, as Silverlight has a threading model that’s not there in the current generation of the Flash player. This time next year, well, who’s to say. Flash 10 will have probably changed the game yet again. One things certain: you couldn’t build it in HTML.
There’s something for everyone in the competing RIA platforms. That’s a good thing, as it’ll mean better user experiences for everyone - and a step back from the current round of browser wars. Meanwhile Microsoft and Adobe wil take competition outside the browser and into the development platform. The next step, well that’s most likely to happen where it’s needed most - server side.
–Simon
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Flash, aah ooh!
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Adobe on
I
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