The Next Web Now – Information that matters from MIX 2010

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MIX 2010 has been concluded last week and it showed that Microsoft is the only company that has a developer environment that allows to use the same skills and tools to develop for Web, Phone, fat client, Surface and xBox.

Below a short overview of the key announcements being made:

Day 1 Keynote speakers: Scott Guthrie, Joe Belfiore

Silverlight 4 RC and Expression Blend 4 Beta

3 years after the launch of Silverlight 1 we’re about to launch yet another important milestone  with Silverlight 4. The importance of this release is that it brings Microsoft on-par with competitors like Adobe and even better and more feature rich in some areas.
One of the important new features is that we now also can run Silverlight out-of-the browser so that you can create off-line our rich experiences, like you can see in the eBay demo.

The Silverlight RC was announced at the event and the final version will be available NEXT MONTH. At the same time we also announced the tools to build Silverlight 4 experiences: Expression Blend 4. 

Windows Phone 7 Development Platform

Most important announcement was from Joe Belfiore, CVP of Windows Mobile Program Management, who introduced the Windows Phone 7 Development Platform. This is the same platform that the developers love and use today, so no ramp-up for existing developers.

For new users: THE TOOLS TO DEVELOP FOR PHONE WILL BE FREE OF CHARGE.

Must see: the keynote demos starting minute 77:00 and the UI and Design Language session for Windows Phone. If you would like to learn what is behind the “Metro” User Interface of the new Windows Phone 7 series this non-technical session gives you a fantastic insight on how the team built the interface.

Day 2 Keynote speakers: Dean Hachamovitch, Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy, Bill Buxton

Internet Explorer 9

Dean Hachamovitch previewed Internet Explorer 9 for the first time to a larger audience. IE9 has a new JavaScript engine and shows Microsoft’s commitment to Web standards with enhanced support for some new standards like HTML5 and CSS3, and also has innovation with using the Graphical Processor for rendering pages.

Developers and early enthusiasts can download and explore the IE 9 Platform Preview here: https://www.ietestdrive.com/. There will be a new cut every 8 weeks.

Last but not least all sessions recorded can be viewed at https://live.visitmix.com.