If you want to know how software in the future is going to be created, you may want to take a close look at DesktopX.  This is speaking as a developer not as an end user.

One of the themes at this week's PDC has been about giving tools to developers that allow them to split work amongst team members based on their proficiency.  This is how DesktopX works today. And it means that there is a lot of room for DesktopX to grow as Vista gets closer.

Sparkle, Microsoft's new design environment for application development is vastly more rich than what DesktopX offers.  We're in love with it already!  And it provides us with a pathway for leveraging Sparkle to help take DesktopX to the next level.

For application developers, DesktopX allows graphics designers to create their own user interfaces visually with their own graphics using Photoshop or whatever.  Then, they hand over their work as a package (.dxpack) to the developer to connect it to code.  Whether that be a user interface or some visually interactive app.

Green Reaper is working on a virtual pet.  Or more specifically, the coding part.  Our game animators create the creature, his animations, etc. and send it over to GR as a .dxpack in which he connects it to script.

Now in the next generation DesktopX (which won't be out until Vista), .dxpacks will have XAML and C# / VB Script inside of them.  DesktopX's job will be to provide additional functionality and short-cuts for creating the kinds of things that people currently use DesktopX for (gadgets, widgets, and desktops). 

Sparkle, as cool as it is, is a very generalized app.  But the goal is the same -- creating content that is interoperable. Our upcoming challenge will be to see if we can use VSTA to get the visual studio editor and .NET languages into DesktopX.

The night life of PDC is quite enjoyable. Picture a bunch of tech nerds being able to get together and talk shop without any spouse or significant other around to give them the "Would you QUIT talking about that stuff?" look.  I have pictures which I'll put up on the photo album soon enough.

Nate & Ed from Betanews, Mary Jo Foley from Microsoft-Watch, Robert Scoble, Scott from Tom's hardware, myself, and a few others had a good time talking shop at the press party.  I missed the PDC Underground party and while I did finally snag an invite to the very posh "Influencer's" party, I was too tired after the press party to get over there.

According to Scoble, tomorrow morning something very interesting about Virtual Earth will be announced.  Something very "newsworthy".  My prediction: Virtual Earth will be able to pinpoint where all my lost socks are (or the socks of whoever is logged in on it).  We'll see.

One of the things that has made Object Desktop so popular over the years is that users knew, with certainty that many of the concepts found in it would likely one day end up in the OS.  That's why its tag-line is "It's like running the next version of Windows -- today."  Whether that be ObjectZIP which preceded Microsoft's Compressed folders to the much better known example of WindowBlinds in which Windows XP came with a similar, though more basic, implementation.

Today at PDC, Microsoft announced "Microsoft Gadgets" on the same day Stardock opened DesktopGadgets.com for the public (the official announcement isn't until September 20th).  People had asked us what was DesktopX's future with Yahoo buying Konfabulator. Now people have their answer.  Like gadgets created by DesktopX Pro, Microsoft's gadgets can be put into a bar.  DesktopX's gadgets can sit on the desktop or be placed into an ObjectBar bar.  Microsoft's gadgets go into the Microsoft SideBar on Windows Vista.  DesktopX gadgets will also be able to go into Microsoft's sidebar too in the final version.

From reading the flame war over on Microsoft's Gadget blog, Mac zealots claim that Microsoft stole the whole thing from Apple.  They apparently forget that Apple was almost certainly "inspired" by Konfabulator.  And DesktopX has had user-created mini apps on the desktop since late 1999.  Of course, Mac zealots will point towards desktop accessories as some sort of "see, Apple did it first".  But desktop accessories are so divorced from the modern widget/gadget concept as to be nonsensical.  What makes widgets (and gadgets) interesting is that they can be created by end users who have little to know programming knowledge.  My 8 year old son has a DesktopX widget he made on his home page.  It's pretty unlikely that 8 year olds were cranking out desktop accessories.

Of course, the real question isn't whether Microsoft "stole" the idea from Apple or whether they were inspired by DesktopX (they certainly know about both). The question is what is Microsoft's plans with it and how will it affect Stardock's gadget strategy?

The short answer is - not much.  Gadgets can't -by definition- compete against one another because they are stand-alone entities. They don't require the user to download some sort of run-time (ala Konfabulator, DesktopX standard, Kapsules, etc.). Dashboard widgets are still widgets in that the key code is not in the widget but resides as part of the OS (i.e. they bundled the run-time) but that's really just a semantically difference.  The point being, few end users care whether their program was compiled with a Microsoft compiler or a Borland one.  Similarly, they won't likely care whether their gadget was made with DesktopX Pro or Visual Studio 2005.  When Windows Vista ships, there will simply be gadgets and DesktopX Pro will be, we plan, the best way to create them.

The real winner in the announcement will be DesktopGadgets.com since it can be expanded to support Microsoft gadgets as well.  With Microsoft supporting the gadget concept, it really opens the door for more developers to get into gadget making.  How Microsoft's embrace of gadgets will affect Yahoo who recently acquired Konfabulator remains unknown.

It's so big.  That's my first impression.  And I know so little.  There's nothing like a developer's conference to make a developer realize how little they know. Holy cow.

So far, the two things I'm most excited by are Indigo and Avalon.  Indigo looks like it'll make working with databases and other applications much less painful. But my knowledge on C# is pretty scampy, I've been doing C++ for so long and I've not beein inclined to do much with C# because I don't like having to require users download 20+ megs in libraries.

But as I listend to the keynotes, it become pretty obvious how I only have a surface knowledge on all these things.  So I've loaded up on some pretty cool sounding sessions:

So we'll see how it turns out. Stay tuned.

I'm on my way to PDC.  This is the first time I've gone there. I'm only 34 and yet feel like a bit of an old-fogey in that I'm not as up on the latest .NET techniques as I probably should be.  I'm less a developer these days and more of a technologist.  I want to see what technologies Microsoft is working on and see what is going to be beneficial to our company and our customers and which parts we can take a pass on.

I'm on the plane looking through blogs that I've archived with Blog Navigator and I've enjoyed reading Scoble's in particular.  He works at Microsoft so his rallying up for Microsoft is understandable (just as I tend to be pretty jazzed about Stardock's latest stuff).  Half the "good stuff" apparently is after-hours.  The parties and such.  I'm known enough in the industry to be aware of most of the good parties but not important enough to be necessarily invited to some (such as the PDC "Influencers" party).  Going to a show like this is humbling. I feel like the Comic book guy who is king of his little comic book store but is powerless beyond its confines "I shall return to my store where I dispense insults rather than absorb them..."

Last PDC I sent our lead R&D developer there and he came back with a lot of useful feedback.  At the time, the Longhorn side-bar was a big thing but our developer said it was quite hacky in its implementation.  The side-bar disappeared for awhile and recently resurfaced. Perhaps it's better implemented now.

What I'm going to be interested in learning (and talking to those in the know) is just how far Microsoft intends to take "managed code".  The overall preferred Windows Vista API is called WinFX which is essentially the name of a group of managed code APIs.  Managed code lets traditional developers get a lot done very fast but makes it harder for developers who are doing things that the OS vendor didn't think of to actually do.  Desktop enhancement software requires techniques such as API hooking and message hooking and all kinds of ways to get into a process to extend the base OS feature set.  When a program like WindowBlinds works, it actually gets inside a given process and directs its paint calls to WindowBlinds to take care of it.  In this way, we can extend the feature set of the Windows drawing routines.  But managed code is a layer on top of all those APIs.  You can't really "hook" them.

I'm not so much worried about Microsoft breaking our stuff (Microsoft, nVidia, ATI, Nintendo, Alienware, Good Year, GE, Dell, and countless other large companies use our technologies).  What I want to make sure is that the new goodies in Windows Vista are going to be extensible. And by extensible I mean..actually extensible and not marketing extensible (i.e. marketing extensible is where some marketing guy at Microsoft says how extensible their system is but really what it means is that they allow developers to change the configuration to a number of pre-set definitions). 

For example, could I get into the Explorer process and make use of the new graphical capabilities to have different folders in explorer windows be different sized based on how much "stuff" is in them?  I'm not saying we want to do that, but it's a good litmus test.  On Windows Vista, there are so much more potential to do neat things than there was on Windows XP.  I am not looking for Microsoft to put in APIs that make it trivial to jump in and do things, I just want to make sure it's reasonably possible.  After all, Stardock essentially acts as a free R&D lab for Microsoft anyway (as any long-time user of Object Desktop can tell you).  We're willing to invest in trying cool new things with all the engines but we have to be able to do things that Microsoft hasn't necessarily thought of.  Hence, the need to jump in there and extend (and sometimes replace) painting routines, APIs, etc.

I'm heading there with my Windows XP Thinkpad equipped with the WindowBlinds 5 beta. Amongst its other capabilities, WindowBlinds can do semi-transparent window frames ala Aero -- but on Windows XP.  I know for certain that Microsoft never thought that was possible, especially at the speed we have it running (i.e. on a decent machine it shouldn't affect performance).  So one can imagine the kinds of things that could be possible to do with Windows Vista as long as Microsoft doesn't close the door.  API hooking and getting in process allow developers to gain the same benefits as a developer of an open source OS. 

I'm mirroring some images of Windows Vista over in my WinCustomize photo album and will be putting more pics up there shortly.

UXEvolutions.com has some early screenshots of the new build of Windows Vista that's being shown at PDC.

It looks like the side-bar is back.

There's so many technologies floating out of Microsoft these days that it's really difficult to fixate on what is and isn't important.  This series of guides is designed to provide you with a nuts and bolts overview of what developers should be paying attention to in Windows Vista.

Since 1994, Microsoft has been pushing a single overall API known as Win32.  Starting with Windows Vista, the new API is WinFX.  That doesn't mean Win32 is going away, it's still there. But WinFX is going to be the one that Microsoft is going to focus most of its attention on for most developers.

.NET

.NET is a rich sets of APIs Microsoft has been making available as a separate download for some time.  .NET 1.1 is the current official release but 2.0 is in beta.  While some will cringe at the comparison, .NET is kind of a much much better implementation of Microsoft's old MFC libraries.  The problem today with .NET is that it requires a separate download.  But in Windows Vista, it'll be part of the OS.  We've used .NET internally and it is very nice.  When used with C# or VB.net, you can create things much faster and much cleaner.  The main downside is that it's managed code which isn't really bad for most developers but if you want to get more low level, you still need Win32.  But very few people write code that wouldn't be better handled by .NET.  If you're a software developer, start learning more about .NET.

AVALON

This is officially called Windows Presentation Foundation.  It's the new graphics subsystem in Windows Vista.  In some ways, it is similar to the various GDI implementations but has a very rich API.  Its functions can be accessed from .NET languages such as C# but it also includes a mark-up language for making visual applications very easily called XAML.  If you plan to create programs that are visual in nature, learn about AVALON.

INDIGO

This is officially called the Windows Communication Foundation.  I can tell you from experience that writing network aware applications can be a real pain in the butt.  INDIGO makes it much easier to create network programs.  If you write code that talks to other computers (over a LAN or the Net) you'll want to learn about INDIGO.

These APIs put together are called WinFX.  The other technologies in Windows Vista are interesting but for most developers, these are the key 3 that you will want to keep an eye on. 

From a developer's point of view, Windows Vista is going to be nice because WinFX is part of the OS.  On Windows XP, we don't tend to make use of .NET, even though it is so nice, because we don't want to require our users to have to download extra "stuff".  Developers who know these technologies will have a significant productivity advantage in developing software for Vista over those who stick to Win32 for general application development.