Editing Methods in the ClassBrowser

Build 185 of Vista Smalltalk for Flash has been posted to the main site.

It contains two new features added to the ClassBrowser:

• An “Update” selection in the context menu for the text area causes the method to be compiled and added to the selected class, in the same manner as Smalltalk methods are updated in Squeak.
• A “Remove” selection in the context menus for instance and class methods allows the removal of existing methods.

Further capabilities to be added to the ClassBrowser are:

• the ability to create, modify, rename and delete classes
• on the desktop, the ability to “file in” or “file out” groups of classes to local files
• on both the desktop and in browsers, the ability to “import” or “export” classes to a PHP server
• the ability to select Lisp or Smalltalk syntax
• classic Smalltalk features such as inspecting message senders and implementers

With the ClassBrowser at least basically functional, I can now devote more of my time to the graphics and animation tools which will be used for the creation of online applications and games.

Things should start to get more interesting very soon.

Thoughts on Microsoft’s Silverlight

There has been a lot of buzz in the past few days about Microsoft’s renaming WPF/e to Silverlight.

Tim Sneath has indicated that there is a big surprise to be announced at MIX07 and the best guess that I have seen so far is that this will be server side Ruby support for Silverlight.

(The following information appears to be incorrect).

But what are the capabilities of Silverlight itself? I came across this blog entry of someone who has downloaded the SDK, read the documentation, and looked at the code:

WPF/E (Silverlight) HAS NO SUPPORT FOR BINDING TO MODELS, BINDING TO DATA, OR EVEN CONNECTING TO NETWORK RESOURCES TO OBTAIN DATA

So, I will summarize Microsoft’s efforts to date around Silverlight. They have created a declarative programming model that uses XAML as an instantiation language for rich 2D (not 3D) content and animations, as well as extended JavaScript to support this model. Using this model, you can create embedded mini-apps that have access to rich animations, graphics, audio, and video objects. However, these mini applications cannot communicate with the outside world, they cannot consume web services, and they cannot bind UI elements to data. In addition, this model doesn’t even have support for things that should be considered a stock part of any library such as buttons, checkboxes, list boxes, list views, grids, etc.

Microsoft seems to be waiting for the Orcas release cycle before adding data binding, controls, and .Net runtime support to Silverlight – and Orcas could be delayed until 2008.

At the moment, you can develop Rich Internet Applications (RIA’s) which run in IE7 on Windows Vista (or Windows XP with a 23MB WinFx download). Vista is now installed on about 20 million machines and there are perhaps a few million XP machines with WinFx installed. Considering that there are over 800 million machines connected to the Web, you can deploy a .Net RIA to about 2.5% of potential users. Or, you can deploy a Flash 9 RIA and reach 84.9% of potential users.

Perhaps the only real battle for the RIA marketplace is going to be between Ajax and Flash.

History sometimes repeats. In 1981, IBM gave away the microcomputer software market to Microsoft. In 2007, after billions of dollars and years of development to create .Net, Microsoft seems to be giving away the Internet software market to Adobe and others.

Microsoft may make a miracle announcement at MIX07. If they don’t, we have likely gone through a major turning point in the software industry.