Infragistics previews tools for Microsoft apps
Infragistics on Monday is releasing previews of tools built for Microsoft's Windows Presentation (WPF) and ASP.Net AJAX as well as a new gauge to work with the Microsoft Silverlight platform for multimedia applications.
Context & Ripple Effects
The timing is not accidental: one day earlier, Microsoft publicly locked Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 into a November 2007 release commitment, giving independent software vendors a hard date around which to stage their own launches. Infragistics is using that window to put WPF, ASP.Net AJAX, and Silverlight tooling in front of developers before the framework itself ships.
The Silverlight gauge also rides a platform Microsoft has been seeding all year — its May 2007 launch of Popfly, the mashup creator built on Silverlight was an early consumer-facing proof of the runtime. Component vendors like Infragistics are now the layer making Silverlight practical for business-application developers.
First-order effects
- Developers targeting WPF, ASP.Net AJAX, or Silverlight get pre-release Infragistics components they can evaluate against .NET Framework 3.5 before Visual Studio 2008 reaches manufacturing this month.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft gains ready-made UI components for its newest presentation platforms at launch time, lowering the adoption barrier for WPF and Silverlight precisely when it needs developer traction most; competing component vendors face pressure to match with same-day previews of their own.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, ISV toolmakers will keep synchronizing product cycles to Microsoft's platform milestones rather than their own calendars, deepening dependence on the .NET ecosystem's roadmap — and tying component vendors' revenue directly to how widely Silverlight and WPF are actually adopted.
The trend: Third-party .NET toolmakers are shifting from independent release schedules to synchronized previews timed against Microsoft's framework and platform milestones.