Keynote

Microsoft is releasing a set of tools that will allow you to create Avalon files, 3d tool to manipulate avalon files and new HTML designer. The new HTML is 1000% better than frontpage and from what I’ve seen is going to blow dreamweaver away! Pretty damn cool.

They also showed off the new Sharepoint portal services and how cool Infopath is going to work with it. Again like my previous post, Office 12 is going to change the way we do things. 2003 was a good start with with server integration, but this version is amazing. It always takes Microsoft 2 to 3 times to get it right but when they do its great. Sharepoint is really going to be that awesome product I’ve wanted it to be. We use it now at work but when this is released its going to be used like it should be. I am really digging InfoPath as a tool.

C# 3.0

HOLY SHIT. Anders has been smoking the good stuff! The things he is coming up with are amazing for the language. He has invented a new query API for C# called Linq. You will be able to create queries to any datasource writing C# code. I can’t explain it right now but it looks and feels right. I’ve always hated doing object oriented programming and then having to do things differently when I connected to the database. They just did not feel right together. Now this is going to change!

Tons of other features to the language. The one thing is that it takes the power of scripting languages that have used late binding but make it work in a way that your actualy using early binding! The compiler will know what your talking about and do the error checking and validation that you would not get from a scripting language. And to makes things even better, intellisense works! It’s totally wacky but I see it being the future of programming! I got a white paper from them on this and I plan to play around with this a bit and post what I find.

OK I gotta run. More tomorrow!

Sorry for this being late. I had so much to see this day that I did not get much time to get onto a computer and post this.

They keynote was GREAT!

Couple of things:

1) Microsoft has been paying attention to what Apple has been up to. Since PDC 2003, when they first introduced Longhorn, the OS has gone through an other make over. Many things that were introduced in 10.3 and 10.4 of OS X are now in Vista. And they have now taken it to the next level. This is a good thing. It only makes the OS better for Microsoft and Apple. Now I can’t wait to see what Apple is going to do to leap frog Vista. We still have a year to go before they release this, so who knows!

2) Office 12 will be by far the best Office ever released. I’ve never been excited over an Office release, but this one is amazing! Menus are going away. Smart toolbars from the menu! Hard to explain but its going to change the way you use Office forever.

3) Avalon and Indigo are really going to make it! When they showed this stuff in 2003, I was blown away. It’s now 2 year later and its only gotten better and will have a future. Compared to what they showed us in 2001 (.net Services), I really had no faith back when I saw it because at the time it seemed to radical for Microsoft to pull off. However, 2 years was good because they figured out alot of the problems I saw back then and made it into a solild technology that I will now start learning.

4) The new Atlas components are awesome. It’s the new framework for creating AJAX applications. They even showed it working in Firefox and Safari!! Kudos to Microsoft for making sure it works with all browsers that support XMLHTTP!

3) I’m really excited about Microsoft again and they have restored my faith!