More and more we are hearing about Microsoft’s new tools that are appearing on the horizon. With Vista coming out a few days ago I decided to have a look at the new tools.

My intention was to have a good look at WPF but I got side tracked by WPF/E after reading they had a “WPF/E” (codename) Community Technology Preview for Mac (Feb 2007). They really gotta work on those names!

I am sure that many will make the same mistake I made and not read the 2 installation instructions. You will need to restart your browser before it will work. I was really happy that I did not have to quit before I could download and install. This seems to be the way software is starting to work that totally drives me mad. The worst is when you have to download a download manager first that requires you to quit the browser and other seemingly random, unrelated applications – grrr. I think this is a much better work flow. They just need to inform the users, like myself, to restart to activate the WPF/E CTP.

You can have a look at some samples and find general information at the MSDN “WPF/E” (codename) Dev Center

The first question is – Will we be seeing more of this?

Instal WPF/E (codename) message

One thought comes to mind – Progressive enhancement. Will we be taking a step back in time and experiencing an Internet full of “You must install the current version of…” or will the new developers apply the knowledge that we have gained over the last few years?

The file size for the WPF/E runtime or player is 3.5MB for Mac and 1.1MB for Windows. I don’t think this is too bad and will be interested to see how it grows as more features are added. One of the videos I watched from the early days mentioned that the aim was 2MB for the final version. Looks like they have already gone over for Mac but most software seems to be larger for the Mac. I am not fussed over the file size as long as its not higher than 50MB. Users are used to downloading quite sizable updates with the OS updates and if they bundle this in the standard update of IE then people wont even know.

I know these were samples created in early versions but here are my thoughts on the samples available on the MSDN “WPF/E” (codename) Dev Center:

Loading needs a large amount of work… I am not sure if the developer did not add in loading progress bars or if loading bars are not available yet.

No Rollover hand. This is something that I personally expect as a user. It provides me with feedback informing me that I can click. I know that this is not actually standard to the OS and general applications but it is standard on the web.

They have a page flip as a sample. For anyone who has seen what a good Flash page flip looks like this is not an impressive demo. If you have not seen an example there are quite a few around. I know that Erik Natzke has a great one. The most well known is by the Hungarian chap (who’s name I can’t find on his site as its not in English) www.iparigrafika.hu/pageflip. You can even purchase a component from page-flip.com. So after viewing all these options I am not very impressed by the sample page-flip.

The sprawl game was cool. I did notice that text fields don’t have a flashing cursor to indicate that you can type.

I watched a few videos and was really impressed with how they ran. I decided to check on the format – Windows Media. I would be very happy if this is the new way of viewing Windows Media files as I can’t get them to work on my mac. (Flip4Mac did some odd things so I removed it – I might try again another time). The video I was watching was 17min long and the WMV file was 65.6MB. My connection speed was about – 490KB/sec. How would that run on a slower connection or low speck’ed machine? Not sure if the experience would be that good.

Richard Leggett posted a link to Windows Vista Emulated in WPF/E. This is far more advanced than any of the other samples that I have seen. Some of the elements that I have commented on above are included in this sample so I am inclined to think that the samples do not truly reflect the progress that has been made. The loading has been improved; there are cursor hands for links; there is a flashing cursor in a text field when you are able to type. I think the video is better but don’t think its quite at the same level as Flash video yet. A 3:49 WMV was 13.8MB. I did a check on youtube.com and a 3:57 FLV was 9.3MB. That is quite a size difference.

I would suggest that they possibly update the samples to reflect a more accurate state of WPF/E. I was a bit disappointed till Richard posted the link to the Vista emulation. That has shown that it really has come along way in the last year and if they keep working on it like they are… Its gonna be interesting!

Accessibility thoughts

No keyboard interaction. All the samples I have seen have been mouse driven only. I really hope this is only the developers leaving it out and not a sign of things to come. If this is not in then we are taking many steps back in the world of accessibility. If it is difficult to add in keyboard navigation then we all know that the average developer out there will not put it in. This means that WPF/E will become inaccessible to many people. This is a big problem and really needs to be addressed.

GW Micro – Window-Eyes does not acknowledge its existence. I had a look at the Windows Vista emulator with Window-Eyes running and all it gave me was an untitled top frame and the links in the bottom frame that were in HTML. Nothing else. With Flash you get at least told there there is an object that you can’t access this but to just ignore it! The user will think the page is empty. If Microsoft has decided to force the screen-reader users to use new technology in order to access new content – I just don’t know what to say. It is really expensive to purchase a screen-reader and to be forced to upgrade! How horrible for many users.

I can only hope that I am wrong in some way about this.

If this is the case and it does not get resolved before launch then Microsoft will get flamed by a large number of people. This is the one area where they could have been better than other applications. They are only on version 1 of the application and have been able to built accessibility in from the start. They did not have to rebuild and retrofit due to new knowledge and understanding of users like other existing software. The knowledge is there, the research has been done. They could have taken the market by storm. If they don’t fix this for launch then they have lost.