What's hot from day 2 at the PDC?
Ok, 10 more things to be aware of that were talked about today (again in no
particular order, and again these are just my personal views, take careful note
of the disclaimer at the end of the posting!)
And yes, I will be digging into these in more depth later. This is just a
high level skim to give you a feel for what's hot.
| Number | Headline | Feature | "Hot" Rating | Comment |
| 1 | Windows Workflow Foundation | New framework, exposed in .NET, that allows you to incorporate workflow into your applications. Not a server or an application, this is a framework you can use to build servers or applications that use workflow | On Fire! | You use workflow everywhere even if you don’t know it. This provides a fantastic framework and tools to help you develop and implement workflows |
| 2 | Quartz Web Designer | Powerful web design tool from the Expressions range | Sizzling | A really welcome product that provides high end web design capabilities |
| 3 | Sparkle Interactive Designer | The missing piece of the puzzle: Sparkle lets you design those compelling WPF interfaces without having to be an expert in XAML | On Fire! | No more need to develop your shiny new front end in XAMLPAD, fun though the idea was |
| 4 | VSTA | Visual Studio Tools for Applications - a way of providing extension capabilities for your applications | Sizzling | Great news for ISVs |
| 5 | InfoPath forms without InfoPath | Lets you use InfoPath forms without having InfoPath on the client | Sizzling | The feature everybody wanted - just use a browser to access your InfoPath forms |
| 6 | Excel on the server | Allows you to have Excel web parts that don't need Excel on the client | Sizzling | Uses clever HTML and script in the browser to present Excel spreadsheets, including things like pivot tables, in your sharepoint site |
| 7 | RSS feeds for any Sharepoint list | Allow your Sharepoint lists to be syndicated | Hot | Simple but useful: Turn your sharepoint lists into RSS feeds |
| 8 | Gantt charts for Sharepoint lists | Where applicable, your Sharepoint lists can be displayed as Gantt charts | Hot | If your lists hold task information, Sharepoint is able to represent them as Gantt charts |
| 9 | Sharepoint lists on mobile devices | Access your Sharepoint lists on your Pocket PC or SmartPhone | Hot | This is nice: as long as you authenticate you can get to those Sharepoint lists wherever you are |
| 10 | A new Access | Access gets a revamp including tighter integration with SharePoint | Hot | Access has millions of fans so this makes perfect sense. And being able to share data with Sharepoint, in real time, is a real boon |
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.