mediajunk

I've seen the most interesting development to occur in web development so far this year and it's from ... gasp! ... Microsoft.

Before you choke on your sushi, check it out: Microsoft "Gadgets" on Start.com lets you slide rectangular containers of text (widgets, I'm told) around the screen, and snap them into new positions.

The site is a portal, a little like Google News or MyYahoo, but with the innovative interface as described -- which does not require Flash or any other plug-in. (It works in Firefox too.)

The technology Microsoft Gadgets employs is similar to AJAX -- the combination of JavaScript and dynamic server calls used by Google in many cool applications of late (Gmail, Google Maps, etc.). Apparently the new Windows will allow you to drag Gadgets from web pages and drop them onto your desktop, unless I've misunderstood the information on the Gadgets weblog.

The downside is that the web pages generated using Gadgets are neither accessible, standards-compliant nor search-engine friendly. But they look cool and the design is clean ... so Gadgets could have potential.

Then again, I thought the same about Flash back in 1998, and that has largely failed to deliver. Hopefully someone will come up with a better use for this drag-and-drop interface than the gimmicky stock-tickers and RSS headline displays.

I attended an intersting talk in Sligo yesterday given by Rob Burke of Microsoft. The subject was upcoming developments in MS .Net and Longhorn largely from a developer's perspective.

I'm not a developer, but as a designer I was nonetheless very interested to learn about Microsoft's "Avalon", which is the presentational component of Longhorn. In one way, Avalon could be regarded as a threat to Flash, yet it seems like a different beast.

Avalon has the potential to change the face of the web (as Flash originally threatened, but never did), and not just because it is an MS product. Avalon's use of XAML -- an XML-based markup language -- seemingly makes designing interactive 3D presentation layers a lot easier than, say, programming ActionScript in Flash. (Of course, that's only my very early view -- I haven't tinkered with any code yet.)

Have a look at this video preview of what Avalon can do -- but don't hold your breath: Avalon isn't due for release until 2006 at the earliest.