PDC look what's happens...

... when you get one day injection needle by Microsoft ;-))

Wow! What a first day!

Given the amount of hype prior to the PDC, it was almost inevitable that the conference itself would be something of a disappointment. Yet nobody I spoke to last night expressed anything but enthusiasm for the platform vision unveiled at the keynote sessions. There's a seismic shift about to take place in the way people build applications, and a qualitative change in the kinds of applications it will be possible to build.

Two things particularly struck me out of the first day's material.

1. The web browser is dead for anything apart from internet sites
...and even on the internet, its value will be reduced. Many people have been building intranet sites because of the ease with which they can be updated, deployed and manipulated. Avalon certainly seems to provide the best of both the Windows and web models and then some - highly graphical, media-rich applications that integrate into the shell but involve no more "deployment" than a web page does to load on a browser. In JimAll's keynote, amazon.com demonstrated an Avalon version of their website that really showed this off well - rich Windows controls like the carousel being used to browse the items on sale, and the metadata (i.e. properties) of items being integrated for easy searching and manipulation. I can quite imagine that in five years time when you go to a large commercial website, the HTML view will be a secondary option for broad reach, with an Avalon version becoming the default for most (Windows) users.

Tim Sneath is surely enthusiastic about his first day (and I share part of his feelings), but please just calm down. Windows is not the only OS in use in this world ;-)

Surely the web browser will evolve but dead.. no I don't think so ! It's still the best option for a multiplatform intranet, and yes it's not perfect.

I'd rather prefer this option than having to come back to the 'old' proprietary scheme with an Intranet developed as a window app, and some twisted trick to make it available for a Unix or a Macintosh user.