Over at MicrosoftGadgets.com, Mac zealots are giving new meaning to the term uninformed fanatic.  This week, Microsoft announced Microsoft Gadgets.  As has been discussed, gadgets are similar to widgets except they do not require the user to download a run-time in order to use them. They're stand-alone entities.

Microsoft's gadgets are designed to be used on Windows Vista (and on XP via Avalon) and can sit on the desktop, be placed on the Windows Side-bar and be put onto the web.

Mac zealots started foaming that Microsoft was ripping off Apple.  A pretty impressive display of chutzpah considering Apple ripped off the concept from Konfabulator.  Some Mac users tried to argue that no, that's not true, Apple's desktop accessories predate it all.  Balderdash. I knew Apple accessories.  Apple accessories were a friend of mine. Dashboard is no follow-on to desktop accesories.  It's interesting to note that Mac zealots only discovered the wonder of desktop accessories AFTER Dashboard had been announced.  In the 5 years DesktopX had existed, not once did a Mac user say "That's a copy of Desktop accessories".  Similarly, you'd be hard pressed to go onto the Konfabulator forums and see an early post from someone saying "Isn't this just like desktop accessories?"  In short, the desktop accessories comparison was manufactured by zealots to cover the fact that Apple got caught, again, ripping off its ISVs.

So it's rather ironic to hear them argue Microsoft was ripping off Apple.  If anyone should be mad, it should be Stardock.  After all, DesktopX was the first mini-application enabler that allowed end users to easily create them.  The DNA difference between DesktopX's widgets/gadgets, Konfabulator, Dashborad, Kapsules, etc. is relatively small compared to the difference between them and something like desktop accessories (or hypercard or Incan clay tablets for that matter). 

But you haven't heard Stardock complain about Microsoft's gadget strategy even though it's identical to Stardock's.  People all week have been asking us for our reaction to Microsoft's announcement.  Similarly, when Yahoo bought Konfabulator, we were asked for our reaction.  How would it affect DesktopX? We didn't really say much.  This week, users everywhere discovered the reason we've been so quiet.

I'm not the only one who finds the latest example of historical revisioning by Mac zealots galling.  Paul Boyer, who was created DesktopX objects back in 1999 (as in clocks, mp3 players, drive monitors, you get the idea) without knowing programming (he's a graphics designer) is appalled as well.  Check out the article below.

And stay tuned to more information on the Stardock/Microsoft gadget evolution. Exciting things are afoot.

Let me get this part out of the way - Windows Vista is the first Microsoft OS that I can say I'm genuinely excited for.  It's just a technological wonderland that is building for the future.

There's been a lot of screenshots of Vista on the net, I decided to take a closer look and see areas that Microsoft is still working on. Remember, this is a beta so warts are a normal part of it.

See the link below to see some more candid shots of Windows Vista..

Avalon aka Windows Presentation Foundation is one of the major focuses of Microsoft here.  In fact, Avalon is getting more emphasis at PDC than any other new technology in IMO.

Its Goal: Replace GDI (which is nearly 20 years old) with a new graphics system that takes advantage of the latest advances in graphics hardware.  But replacing GDI is a bit of an understatement.  It replaces GDI in the same way that spreadsheets replace counting on ones fingers.

It lets people create applications on the desktop that have the same kinds of graphical performance as a PC game.

What do developers have today? GDI, GDI+, DirectShow.  We've done quite a bit with these things (ObjectDock, DesktopX, WindowBlinds, etc.).  But they are still limited.

Future development should make use of Direct3D, Windows Media Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation (Avalon).

So how about Direct3D vs. Avalon?  Direct3D provides much finer control but also requires more work.  Avalon, by contrast, is designed to allow people to do visually exciting things with less effort but isn't nearly as low level. Incidentally, Direct3D 10 will only be available to Windows Vista users.

What's nice about Windows Vista's new display driver model is that the GPU is virtualized so multiple applications can share the processor cleanly (something that you can't do on Windows XP currently). 

Windows Media Foundation is a new set of APIs to handle audio and video playback  They are being set up to replace DirectShow and Windows Media SDK.  One of the benefits is WMF is that it provides better resilience for audio and video.

Menawhile, Avalon (Windows Presentation Foundation) is designed to encourage the use of resolution independent application development through the use of vector-based content.

Vista looks good but they still haven't gotten rid of the ugly icons in some places.  PLEASE change the icons throughout the system. 

An alternative way of doing Alt-Tab. It looks good but I didn't find it that practical.  The primary Alt-Tab method is fancier than the Windows XP alt-tab but noticeably slower.  I like slick but I don't want it to noticeably slow me down and I do a lot with Alt-Tab.

The sidebar and task preview (something we are working on for WindowFX too).  The sidebar now is merely a container for gadgets which is absolutely sweet in theory.  I like the concept a lot.  However, right now, the gadgets are apparently implemented in DHTML.  I relaly don't see that as a practical thing.  I'd like to see them switch to have gadgets be Avalon based with the noborders switch on.  I think gadgets would be a great way for Microsoft to get people to start using XAML. Note: This is not necessarily what the Sidebar is going to look like in the final version. This was a beta version that was shown at PDC.

Gadgets can be pealed off and live on the desktop as well.

New file save dialog. I like the design but if you look closely, Windows classic can still peer through so there's still some fit and finish to be done there.

And for fun, here's a screenshot of my Windows XP desktop running Object Desktop with the WindowBlinds 5 beta (public beta in a week or two):

WindowBlinds 5 on XP can do semi-transparent borders and Start bars and runs fast on fairly low end hardware.  On Windows Vista, WindowBlinds 5 will make use of the new Windows Vista compositer to allow for much more advanced skinning than we've seen previously.  Much of the next-gen skinning will be back ported to Windows XP (though users with install the Avalon libraries on XP will likely benefit). 

Overall, Vista's a really good experience.  But I do hope there's an overall fit and finish guy over there so that things like ancient icons and inconsistent fonts get fixed.  Some of these icons have managed to survive since Windows NT 3.1 (1994).

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.

Visual Studio for Applications is scheduled to debut in SDK form with Office 12.  It looks - to me - as the equivalent of Windows Scripting Host for previous versions of Windows. That is, developers will be able to make use of Microsoft's .NET languages in their apps.  This looks very nice as we use this sort of thing heavily.

Unfortunatley, it won't be available until late next year.

Any long time skinner knows the pain -- they can create great graphics but the coding/scripting is just too much.  Or on the flip side, the developer can make the skin but can't draw or design to save his or her life.  And hence we have the wonderful balance of ugly skins and pretty buggy skins.

The way most interfaces are designed these days is by a professional graphics designer creating cool looking stuff as a mockup and then the developer trying to recreate it as best they can.  

It's a problem that has plagued Windows for years.  Lots of ugly looking programs with bizarre interfaces that only a developer could love.  It's one reason why MacOS apps tend to look so much better -- designers and developers are able to work together much more seamlesly.

But Microsoft is hoping to put an end to that with the announcement of Microsoft Expression Suite. It's a suite of 3 programs -- Sparkle, Quartz, and Acrylic.  Acrylic allows the designer to create the visual content. Sparkle allows the designer to create interfaces visually without writing any code and Quartz does much the same thing for web pages (based on what I could tell -- mind you I never saw Quartz until today).

Sparkle reminds me a lot of the popular widget enabler, Samurize. It has an environment where designers can visually create their interfaces without having to write any code.  The two are very similar in concept.

The significance of being able to have designers create their interfaces directly as part of the project can't be discounted.  Stardock first began using DesktopX to enable its graphics designers to create the interfaces in its games with 2004's The Political Machine.  It is currently being used in Galactic Civilizations II.  Both games read in DesktopX packages (.dxpacks) and then uses them in the game (powered by Direct3D).  This way, if a designer wants to make a tweak, they can without having to write code or talk to a developer.

Sparkle does this on a much wider scale of course. Now all developers will be able to make use of this kind of thing which should translate into much nicer looking programs with interfaces and graphics done by designers rather than just developers.

Now pause here for a second and consider the ramifications for Windows customization / skinning.  If skinning software developers (ala Stardock) can develop programs that make use of these new technologies, it could bring in a whole new era of skinners.  Imagine having galleries that are designed for collaboration between developers and designers. 

Pretty exciting stuff!

Microsoft sprung a bit of a surprise to many of us today.  I knew a bit about Sparkle and and Acrylic. But today Microsoft announced the Expression Suite of development tools and from what I can see, they're killer.

Expression Suite is made up of three main applications:

Scoble mentioned to me that he thought Sparkle could be a Visual Studio killer.  I don't think he means it literally but what is special about Sparkle is that it takes a lot of the development effort away from Visual Studio and puts it into Sparkle in the form of the actual look and feel portions of the app (and apparently it can handle coding as well though I haven't played with it yet).

Microsoft says that Expression is designed to let designers and developers better work together. Designers can do their visual design of an application using tools of their choice and then developers, using Sparkle or Visual Studio, can work with those designs without spending hours cutting up bitmaps or trying to recreate a "mockup". 

This is actually very similar to how we use DesktopX at Stardock.  DesktopX creates .dxpacks (DX packages are just ZIP files with the XML and scripting in them - sound familiar?) that we then use in Visual Studio.net to create the interfaces in Galactic Civilizations II.   Sparkle, from what I could see, reminds me quite a bit of Samurize (one of the widget enabling programs).  It lets people dreate widgets in a design tool.  DesktopX doesn't have a devleopment app environment but rather turns the desktop into the app environment so it is quite different from Sparkle.

I was incredibly impressed with Sparkle along with where Microsoft seems to be going with it.  Microsoft is looking to turn XAML into a universal format for applications (or at least, that's how I took it).  I think that's a terrific idea and lets developers concentrate on making good content development tools.

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.

Microsoft has announced its intention to support gadgets in Windows Vista.  Windows Vista gadgets will be able to be incorporated into the Windows Vista side-bar (much as DesktopX gadgets can be incorporated into ObjectBar).

I've written an article that outlines the possible implications of Microsoft embracing gadgets (see below).