“Update on the 5’s”

Microsoft’s MIX11conference is next week in Las Vegas. This is Microsoft’s conference dedicated to UX.  It has been at this conference where the various versions of Silverlight have be announce/released.  It was at this, last year, that they announced the Windows Phone 7 SDK. Prior to this year’s conference a message from Microsoft Developer Division VPs Walid Abu-Hadba, Scott Guthrie and Soma Somasegar provides new clarification of Microsoft’s position on Silverlight and HTML 5 has been posted on The Silverlight Team Blog.

The message that they are sending is choose the technology that bests fits your situation.  They are also saying the Microsoft is committed to advancing development tools for both technologies. Based on this article here are my predictions for announcements for MIX11:

• Emphasis on Silverlight 5 may pale in comparison to HTML5 and WP7.  By the mere fact that they sent this message out they are trying to prevent another storm they received by downplaying Silverlight at PDC10. Also by announcing the SL5 Beta prior to the conference they are taking away some of the thunder that they like to have at these conferences.  So where is the thunder…..
• Thunder #1 tooling for HTML5. Microsoft has already started to support tooling for HTML5.  Expression Web 4 SP1 now supports HTML5.  But where is the support for ASP.Net?  I think you will hear about the .Net Framework vNext (4.5 or 5.o).  So I am going to guess it is going to be a point release to 4.5.  They may not have a beta/CTP ready yet but one would soon follow.
• Thunder #2 a new/updated version of the WP7 SDK.  There are two major release of the Windows Phone operating system coming up, Mango in the fall and WP8(?) sometime next year (to coincide with Windows 8). Here is what I would expect to here around these updates
• Full IE 9 (already announced for the Mango release) but with full support for in browser Silverlight applications!
• Upgrading the OS to Silverlight 5. Right now it is a hybrid of SL3 and SL4 with some phone functionality thrown in.
• Enterprise support (most likely would be in the release after Mango) for deploying internal corporate applications.  Also support for enterprise IT organization to control phone functionality in order to more align with corporate IT policies.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of next week.  Like I said these are my predictions and I am sticking to them…..but since I don’t work for Microsoft I have no way of know what they are really going to do.  I wish that I was going to MIX11 because no matter what they announce it is going to be an exciting place to be. I guess I will just have to watch the Keynotes online!