Microsoft has been busy pushing the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) and there is many interesting developments from C# 3.0 to IronPython and now Microsoft released IronRuby public alpha.

Will these languages be treated like J# and JScript.NET? We shall see.

If they perform better than their counterparts it might make python and ruby coders able to take on more platforms and capabilities.

It is still only pre-alpha and missing much but like mono.net, it can have an impact when platforms and languages merge.

Earlier this year, Microsoft assured developers that it would be continuing to build languages on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). Considering that IronPython had been a success in terms of implementation, the company decided that it would make an attempt at bringing Ruby into the world of .NET. With the help of Ruby expert John Lam, today the company announced that a pre-alpha build of IronRuby is now available. You heard it right, this release is pre-alpha—many Ruby features and libraries have not yet been implemented.

One very interesting aspect of all these DLR languages is that Silverlight Alpha 1.1 supports IronPython. Will it support IronRuby? Silverlight is very fun to code in C# and can be coded in Python as well. This over just AS3 in Flash. However, AS3 is very fun and is based very closely to the Javascript2 spec. Javascript can be argued that it is the most dynamic language and functional language there is that is so widespread in, Javascript 2 could be a big thing. Languages seem to be converging on this point.

For IronRuby fun ScottGu has a great blog post on getting started with IronRuby.

Bubblemark has added a JavaFX version of his bubble animation test that spans now all of the RIA technologies out there. Bubblemark is a great site and has been a great site for comparing animation in the browser. Alexey Gavrilov has kept the site up to date on all versions of Silverlight since when it was WPF/E and it is a nice quick baseline test to check FPS performance across these new vector toolkits and scripting.

My results are very similar to Bubblemarks tests:

JavaFX — 14 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (JavaScript) — 56 fps
Firefox + Flex — 62 fps
Adobe AIR — 62 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (CLR) — 99 fps

Silverlight is not final and is quite light compared to Flex (I wonder if a vanilla Flash9/AS3 export has been done or if it would perform any different), but if Silverlight has a lead on FPS, where FPS is really success of any kit in RIA or vector, then it could be a rough battle. Flash/Flex is really far far ahead due to the browser penetration and the development community but the better performance is always a good indicator of possible success. Plus, Microsoft controls the desktop market and any “benefits” it might give their own kit which includes distribution and performance in preloading or caching.

There is no Flash or Java support on the iPhone. This had leaked earlier but now that it is out this is verified and it pretty much sucks.

This limits the type of gaming market the iphone could become, or the type of shiny chrome apps that could be built with Flash. I guess games can be built with HTML5 and javascript (um thanks Jobs).

I was at least hoping for FLV support which would open up many clip sites for mobile, but then again this would compete with iTunes and QuickTime.

Current knowns about the iPhone dev platform:

• there’s no Flash or Java support
• there is PDF support
• Quicktime is used for encoding and displaying video and audio
• said video is encoded via H.264
• with Safari on the iPhone, links can be embedded in web pages to allow phone calls from a click; this would be insanely useful for corporate directories and such
• web pages are limited to 10 MB (!), Javascripts can only run for five seconds (maybe no games at all )
  
• the iPhone’s browser user agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A538a Safari/419.3

Also more info from here:

• HTML5
• 10MB max html size for web page
• Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time
• Javascript allocations limited to 10MB
• 8 documents maximum loaded on the iPhone due to page view limitations
• Quicktime used for audio and video
• stylesheet device width:480px
• there are no scroll bars or resize knobs. the iphone will automatically expand the content
• new telephone links allows you to integrate phone calls directly from your webpage. remember this is only on safari.
• built in google maps client for integrated mapping from your website
• iPhone screen size 480×320
• encode movie size 480×360
• Links to movies on a web page will take users directly to video full screen playback

They are really controlling the experience early on, something I was hoping they wouldn’t do. Controlled markets is the current problem with mobile platforms in the US. I am sure better specs and flash might pop up in later versions of the iPhone in Apple fashion of increasing the hype on each version. Advancements such as 3G, more than 8GB storage, flash maybe, just not sure about this one due to the competition of Quicktime and iTunes. This severely limits the RIA web on the iPhone, at least this version of it.

UPDATE: Jesse Warden has links to using Flash content inside of Quicktime. This coud be a gaming option after all. It still limits the web browsing but in terms of interactives and games this could be good.

Flash on the iPhone via Quicktime: Part Deux

Apparently the “enabling” of Flash is as simple as clicking a button, correcting my original coverage.

Check out I2Fly’s coverage of iGiki.com’s iPhone Flash Games. Also, some of Gary’s ported Flash games worked.

Be sure to check out this out regarding a mobile web with no Flash.

In case you haven’t heard the SWFObject creator Geoff Stearns and the UFO creator have teamed up to create a new Flash Embed kit for HTML/XHTML called SWFFix that is more DOM compliant yet works.  Its always been a battle on this front of DOM standards vs Javascript when it comes to Flash embedding.

This teamwork to make a common kit will help to consolidate all issues with this and hopefully provide a really solid platform for embedding flash that takes into account all browser and satisfies standards but also works all the time. Making it harder to vote against when it comes time to decide what technology to use.

Of course there have been libraries like SWFAddress (for deep linking in flash and back button support easily) that have been built on top of SWFObject that will have to be switched over that have large user bases and following.

Check out SWFfix (of course this project has been very quiet and is not public since Feb 6-7th) hrm.

This is a great site that developed a pretty simple animation in the top vector packages and tested it on all browsers.  Testing WPF/E, Flex/Flash9 and Javascript/DHTML

Widgets are here!

Widget libraries for the desktop are beginning to be more prevalent with OSX, Vista and many widget toolkits such as Yahoo Widgets (previously Konfabulator). 

Here’s a great blog post(on yahoo so its slightly biased) but its pretty even handed on comparing the widget libraries from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Apple.

Desktop Widgets, Cross Platform please… 

However, if you are trying to create a desktop widget (flash or AJAX based) that is for the desktop that is cross platform (in terms of Windows and MAC) the list quickly filters to the following types of tools:

• Yahoo! Widget Library or other widget library
• A Flash Desktop App Creator such as MDM ZINC (Embedded Flash in an application, ZINC is the best in my opinion)
• Adobe Apollo (RC Alpha, this has been in development and usable for developers for a couple of years but should launch by Q3/4 2007)
• Microsoft WPF/E(Not out for a while, now called “Silverlight”)

Widgets that are too platform specific 

Essentially the Vista and MAC OSX widgets are cool, but unusable if we are only developing one codebase for all platforms. 

Google Desktop Widgets (http://desktop.google.com/plugins/) don’t work on a MAC, Windows Gadgets (http://microsoftgadgets.com/) do not work on a MAC and MAC OSX Widgets to not work on Windows Vista.  If we are only considering cross platform widget libraries these are all nixed.

So that leaves us with essentially three choices from before.

Pros and Cons

1) Yahoo! Widget Library
PROS:

• Good user base already (Konfabulator has been around since 2002-2003)
• Familiar name (for download support)
• Easy to use
• Fairly easy to develop/design (have to learn the XML/DHTML lib of Yahoo Widgets which can be limiting)

CONS:

• NO VIDEO SUPPORT (videos would have to be linked to)

2) A Flash Desktop App Creator such as MDM ZINC
PROS:

• Allows Flash to be wrapped with a flexible skinnable application.
• Develop in Flash Actionscript and minimal integration calls
• Supports playing Flash Video FLV

CONS:

• Each user would need to download the application.
• Would only work when downloading from a trusted site.

3) Adobe Apollo
PROS:

• Allows cross platform support for one file type .air.
• Develop in Flash Actionscript and minimal integration calls.
• Excellent toolkits and development power.
• Supports playing Flash Video FLV.

CONS:

• Each user would need to download the Apollo runtime.
• Not out fully yet.

4) Microsoft WPF/E
PROS:

• Develop in .NET C# or other .NET languages
• Excellent toolkits and development power.

CONS:

• Each user would need to download the WPF/E runtime.
• Not out fully yet.
• Lack of support for FLV video which has become the Internet standard essentially.

Conclusion…

If you had to build an application that would run on the user’s desktop and this application woudl need to support FLV video and be cross platform in terms of Windows and MAC, the choice is down to Adobe Apollo and A Flash Desktop App Creator such as MDM ZINC simply because WPF/E is too large a download currently for the runtime.  

Apollo is more of a risk in the interim due to the lack of the Apollo runtime not being propogated but a very large technology company is behind Apollo (Adobe) and in a short time it will be prevalent.  Using MDM ZINC the user will still have to download the program to run and does not provide the tools for the desktop as good as Apollo. 

My opinion, Apollo might be better for cross platform simple apps that can be widget like or bigger.  A smart development might be developing the widget in Flash and then putting it into BOTH Apollo and MDM ZINC to offer users both ways to download only supporting one codebase in the main core application/widget.