Web Devs: You can fight Vista, or you can work with it

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It's time to refresh the perspective of what Windows Vista means to the average web developer and designer of old. It's time to empower you all to blur the line between operating system level software and traditional client-side software. It's time to keep you connected and stop dancing around this idea that Windows Vista is going to fail, and somehow products like Apple OSX are this dark horse closing in behind it.

Ted from Adobe, made a post that sites like ShowUsYourWow.msn.com uses Flash, therefore its proof that Expression Suite in a sense, is bogus. That or the folks behind the Windows Vista Flash based launch, did what we all do, used the right tool for the right job at the right time. I get his initial point, but to be honest, I find it similar to the same rants you'd see 30 threads deep within some "M$ ownz j00 script0rz er33t kiddi3s" type posts.

I expect better from Adobe.

The reason I mention this and its not to stir the pot, is that while he's casting stones at the very idea that Microsoft would even go out of its way to use FLASH in the way it was intended, he has lost perspective on the simple fact that Adobe helped Windows Vista Launch. It was a part of the experience people are going to receive when they use Windows Vista. It did its job, to allow people to connect to the potential Windows Vista has, all via online (yay!).

Rather than celebrate it, he decided to fight it.

I'd rather personally companies like Adobe, start thinking of ways to motivate their developers to look into how they could use technologies like Flash inside Windows Vista. Example comes to mind, where JD mentioned that, if you the developer, wanted to go down that Gadgets path (Google, Yahoo, SideBar etc) and still wanted to maximize your distribution model, use FLASH.

Now here is a guy from Adobe that has my attention. As he's thinking in the right way, in that use Flash inside SideBar Gadgets it will make your life easier and it will make the Gadgets a little bit more interesting. You could also look at using WPF/E with SideBar Gadgets in the same way or whatever; the point is you can do a lot with a small piece of what Windows Vista has on offer (Just ask the folks at Wiliam (SYD), in how they have fused other pieces of technology into SideBar Gadgets)

Microsoft has undertaken an enormous investment in terms of capturing people's passion and ideas into making Window's Vista what it is today. I'm new, so I guess I am coming in at the right time, learning the history of Microsoft and comparing it to where it's heading today. It's heading in a direction that is in a sense, blurring the line on what makes a traditional operating system act and feel like one.

I had lunch today with two developers who are keen as mustard to get into .NET, not so much because they think it's the solution end to end, it's because they saw the potential of what Windows Vista means to the world from here on out.

They realized early in the piece, that there is potential and I will talk more on this after I get back from Seattle next month.

P.S

I got to say, I'm blown away by the hidden power that Office 2007, I sat in my MS101 – Business Intelligence session yesterday (internal training) and I was blown away by the compelling story of all of our products we have on offer. I mean, I'm still a MS-Newbie in most parts, and I was shocked at the size of it all.