Randy Troppmann

Google Maps is about 2 years old now, but it still doesn’t seem like old news to me. Google continues to amaze me with the work they are doing with this web application and their free desktop application Google Earth. Yesterday they launched a new feature on Maps called “Street View” which is available on select US cities. Panoramic images (such as Quicktime VR) have been around for a decade. Street View is again proof that old data given a geo-context takes on new meaning. My friend sent me this link to his apartment building in New York.

People around me know that I think AJAX is generally an abomination. With Street View, Google is overlaying Flash on top of AJAX in a way I have never seen before. Astounding!

There is a software project underway where I work and I was asked to be the GUI developer. The development team uses Microsoft technologies and they have specified WPF/E as the delivery platform for the client-side application which is web delivered. I have maintained an open mind and recently I spent some time exploring the landscape of this technology. I do not follow Microsoft technologies closely, so email me if I am missing something here.

A couple weeks ago Microsoft announced the offcial name of WPF/E as SilverLight. It is a browser plugin (works on pc and mc) that allows the delivery of rich content in the form of applications and/or video. Sounds like Flash to me. Microsoft is touting it as a superior platform for delivering video. The Flash forums are discussing whether this is a “Flash killer.” It has been difficult wading through all the FUD and hype to get the real goods.

I started my exploration by downloading the trial version of MS Expression Blend, which is advertised as a tool for building rich applications. It is a pretty slick application. I created a new project, placed a list box on the stage and databound it to a rss feed. The List box populated itself at develop-time. Nice. That is where the fun ended for me. I tried to connect it to a REST based webservice but I just could not find out how to add parameters that the webservice needed. I noticed when I created the project that I only had two options for “type of project”: application (.exe) and component. Where is the Silverlight option? Further reading led me download “Expression Blend May Preview Release”; aka “Expression Blend2″; aka “Expression Blend 1.1″. Confusing! So I fired up Blend2 and created a new project and there it was … Silverlight project option. The first thing I noticed when the project opened is that all the components disappeared from the toolbox. No more Combo box, List, buttons or other application control components. I could create boxes, draw lines and add type. I saw some recent tutorial videos on Channel9 that showed how to combine HTML controls with Silverlight content. Huh?

So this is my guess as to what is going on here. Years ago I saw a video showing MS developers using a new tool to develop applications using xaml and Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF). They said WPF (which is .net) was going to be the way Vista was going to render all applications. It was an impressive demo. For reasons I don’t know of, the Vista project was completely reset and instead of a complete rewrite using .Net, MS took Windows XP and started to retool it as the basis for Vista. This means that WPF is not the foundation of Vista. Although WPF applications will still work on .Net enabled Windows systems. Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere is Microsoft’s attempt to re-purpose WPF and it seems that SilverLight is light version of WPF. So really it should be called WPF Lite. And that is why the rich components are not available to SilverLite.

It is clear to me that Adobe is light years ahead of Microsoft in this arena. I really think this technology does not have a chance for so many reasons it’s not worth any more investigation on my behalf. I showed the results of my efforts to the project architect, and he is now considering Flex for the client-side application. Their only concern at this point is the availability of Flex developers should I not be available to continue the project.

UPDATE: There is a good debate about the GUI controls issue here

I connect to shared server drives all the time (command k). Often my development server duplicates the productions server and therefore the shares for, say, the Tomcat webapps directory, appear with the same name on the desktop share icons. This can make it easy to mistakenly copy files from production to dev when you intend the opposite. I wish OSX had a way to customize the share names.

I have added a search feature to RUNNINGMAP. Finally! Now you can search the over 10,000 stored routes by keyword. This feature is at a ver. 1 stage and we are working on making it better. Transparent to the user is a big upgrade to the database design which now promises to be much more scalable for the future. The analysis, design and implementation of the new database is what has been holding back the search feature. Bigger and better things to come!

The Adobe XD team developed the mother of all mashups: Amgen Tour of California Tour Tracker. I did not see it when it ran live so I do not know how successful or effective it was. It is an impressive achievement. Adobe presented it at the Wednesday keynote at the recent 360Flex conference. Now that I have had a closer look at the app I have two questions:

1. How did they get around the Yahoo! Maps EULA where any GPS data must be at least 6 hours old?
2. Was the design influenced by my runningmap site … in particular the transparent elevation chart overly? See the images below.

Tour Tracker elevation view:

Runningmap elevation view:

The Wednesday morning keynote started with a presentation from the XD team at Adobe. They are responsible for the Amben Tour of California site which is a mashup of live data (maps, location, video, commentary and other data) which is amazing. 3 people spent 6 weeks building this site using a concept of “Experience Design” where a “process of exploring means having an idea and testing it by building it”.

Ted Patrick also spoke at the keynote showing off some upcoming features of Flex 3 “Moxie”. It looks like Fireworks has found a home as a layout tool for Flex applications. Examples were shown: 1) ESRI map component for FLEX; 2) Farata Systems: FlexBI – flex business intelligence; 3) Flexlib; 4) Yahoo! as3 apis

Mike Chambers introduced Apollo in a session. Showed the basic api and built a Hello World app. Christian Cantrell talked more in depth about Apollo APIs. Ok I admit that I want to have his job. But he is far smarter than me … so how about a cubical beside him. Ely Greenfield gave what I thought was the best presentation of the conference with “Flex Custom Components”. Ely spent the session showing how he built a “cover flow” type graphic effect in Flex. He had the audience in the palm of his hand as he brought it all home with some stunning examples of a page flip concept at the end of the session.

Today was the first marathon day in San Jose for the 360Flex conference. The weather was very nice. I went to talks by Mark Anders (Adobe), Mike Downey (Adobe), Dan Patterson, Grant Skinner, and the Yahoo AS3 API team. They hinted that they are going to make an announcement tomorrow regarding Pipes and flash. In the evening there was a BBQ in the courtyard. eBay and Yahoo! made presentations regarding their recruitment needs. They are hiring Flash and Flex developers.

I have made a design change to the RUNNINGMAP site: the “banner” across the top. Last summer Michael Surtees told me I needed more colour. Then he said “you are going to ignore me aren’t you.” And I nodded my head more as a show of mock defiance than anything. I happened to agree (with his once again free advice) but there were so many other issues to deal with … I wanted to address it when I could do it right. So it took 8 months to add some green pixels. I also fussed over some other GUI details. Have a look:

I have just released a new version of RUNNINGMAP that has two new features: Print button and POI Marker button. The Point of Interest button is designed for people who want to add additional information for running courses. In the case of running events, these can be volunteer locations or water stations, for example.

Here is a link to the example shown below: http://www.runningmap.com/?id=9381

The reason I am showing this location in the example is because I am going to the 360Flex conference in two weeks and I am leaving the snow behind! Er … for a few days anyway.

CBC Radio interviews Randy about RUNNINGMAP