I’ve been particularly interested of late in the priciples behind rich client UI on the web serviced through lightweight data services (WCF Data Services etc). Rather than the majority of the developers time being spent in the server code (WebForms codebehind, MVC Controllers and Views) I’ve been watching with interest how the javascript frameworks are becoming more prevelant.
There’s no doubt the movements in this direction have been led primarily by Google’s focus on javascript and of course the now almost ubiquitous javascript library of choice for DOM manipulation jQuery. Microsoft however has been sending mixed message around this space for the last 12 months. A situtation that was only made worse with the mixup post PDC around the future of Silverlight.
Whilst Mix 2011 gave us a taster, the Build Conference now seems to be playing out as I hoped with a heavy developer focus on HTML 5 and the creation of rich web design. My first port of call in the new space will be with the release of a new sku of Expression Blend for HTML development.
I can’t help but become somewhat exasperated with the pace of technology today but I also can’t wait to get stuck into the new developer tooling so I guess I’m as much a part of the problem as the next dev. :)
Oh and before I go I’m extremely jealous of anyone attending Build as they all got their hands on a free Samsung tablet device running Windows 8 Preview. I guess I need to work harder on scoring some training budget!