At Microsoft’s Mix08 conference for web designers and developers earlier in March, the firm showed off its developments and coming attractions, including a new focus on standards in Internet Explorer and an update to its Silverlight platform for browser-based applications.
“The internet is reshaping and transforming Microsoft’s existing products and services,” said Microsoft’s chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, speaking at the conference. However, this is nothing new; Microsoft founder Bill Gates expressed similar sentiments in 1995, in a now-famous memo titled The Internet Tidal Wave.
More than a decade later, making sense of the web remains Microsoft’s biggest challenge. Ozzie’s keynote was too vague to be truly compelling, but Mix08 was nevertheless the launch platform for some significant new elements in Microsoft’s internet efforts.
