John Montgomery lays out a high level roadmap for Avalon in a recent blog post. I'm glad to see a bit of official clarification around this. This information has been available for a while in a variety of forums, but there was still confusion so it is nice to have it all in one spot and official.

There are a couple of things in this post that are of additional interest, IMHO.

1. Avalon is a mid-2006 release. It will be interesting to see how this maps to Longhorn's release cycle. The initial impression (and that is all it was really) was that the Avalon work would be delivered prior to Longhorn. With Longhorn also slated for 2006, it looks like Longhorn is going to be a late 2006 release. Can anyone say Windows 2007???
2. VS.Next is clearly post-Avalon based on John's post. This is no big surprise since it has always been loosely associated with being a Longhorn timed release. Given the timing from #1, it seems clear that there will be a nice time gap between Avalon and VS.Next. And since tools releases have traditionally occurred well after the associated OS release, it could be some time before we see VS.Next. Bummer, but not unexpected. If VS.Next and Longhorn end up being tied together from a release date perspective, I think you are all but assured a 2007 release time frame. I will be interested to see what kind of tool support will be available for Avalon in the interim. We will not see rapid adoption if its just Visual Notepad.
3. John covers this in his comments section, but the end user adoption of the Avalon update will be interesting. John says he does not think it will be a big deal since 100+ million downloads of the .NET Framework have happened. However, there is still a perception that getting the Framework out is difficult and it is not ubiquitous. This was a roadblock to using WinForms over the Internet for a supplier application at a customer of mine recently. I would be very interested to see the mix of Framework installs on Win 9x, NT, 2000, and XP and then some extrapolation on the Avalon's potential installed base on a much smaller XP footprint. I imagine there is still a lot of Win2000 and older stuff out there that cool new Avalon web apps would not be able to talk to. Perhaps not...

Disclaimer: Once again, this is all my personal musings. I am, once again, a mushroom and totally in the dark. Ok, maybe not completely but this is all conjecture on my part. None of this should be construed as an "Official Microsoft Statement".

Official Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Check out John's blog post on what lies ahead for folks looking at using Avalon.

You can read my thoughts here.

This article on InfoWorld announces a future web cast by Sun at Microsoft sometime later this year or early next. Anyone want to lay odds on whether or not there will be real info and products this time? Your guess is as good as mine since I haven't been paying too much attention to this.

Interesting read by Sean Gallagher over at eWeek. Definately of interest to the Java community, but the ripple effects will certainly be felt in the .NET world. Worth keeping an eye on IMHO.

Pretty good article on SQL Server 2005 and how the CLR is integrated and some info on where/when you should use managed code in the database.

I am not really into case mod-ing or any of the games that tend to drive such behavior, but I thought this particular effort was pretty cool. The creativity of computer people will never cease to amaze me.

As many of you have already seen, IE is continuing to lose browser share (see here, here, and here). Typically, the non-Microsoft crowd cheers this as a great thing since they typically view diversity in the browser space as a good thing. And from a competition standpoint it usually is since it drives standards compliance, quality, innovation, etc. Or so the story goes.

However, the market in many ways behaves contrary to this dynamic. Product standardization is what is often required to drive critical mass. The de facto "standardization" of Windows in the PC industry was driven in large part to the virtuous cycle of potential revenues for ISVs on a large installed base driving more customers to Windows to take advantage of ISV Windows products. What does this have to do with the wild and wooly world of Internet browsing? Well, I by no means intend to imply that the de facto standardization of the Internet on IE in some way drove the explosion of web sites, ecommerce and the like. Users would have flocked to those offerings regardless as rich browsers from any software maker entered the market.

However, how much did content and application providers benefit from this de facto standardization? I would argue tremendously. We hear all the time from the "support Internet standards" crowd (and I don't mean that disingenuously but only put it in quotes to differentiate them from those folks that really don't care about standards - which is a huge percentage of the typical Internet user community) how a large percentage of sites are not standards-compliant but really only IE-compliant and do not play well with true standards-based browsers. Clearly, content and application providers have benefited by having to only worry about working with the de facto IE browser and don't really care about being truly standards-compliant. A smaller test matrix, more time to focus on other areas of the application, etc. all make having a single browser standard a good thing and has to some small part made it easier to fuel the growth of the Internet. Why, for example, do you think corporate enterprises mandate standard browsers on their intranets. It makes development and support much easier.

So how does that lead us to a fragmented browser market being a good thing? Clearly, based on the preceding arguments, I should be sitting here as a Microsoft employee decrying the fragmentation of the browser market and telling everyone how great IE standardization is for users and developers alike. Well, my stalwart reader, I think Microsoft doesn't care if the browser market starts to fragment. Why? Because I think Avalon and/or Longhorn (remains to be seen how WinFX and Avalon play out on non-Longhorn platforms) actually benefits from a fragmented browser market. How? Well, if I am a content developer or app designer and I have a choice between a massive installed base of Avalon/Longhorn and a fragmented browser market, which way am I gonna lean. Sure, I will probably provide some level of "least common denominator" functionality via the simple HTML 4.0 browser experience, but all of the really cool stuff I will want in as "standardized" an environment as possible. And that very well could be Longhorn/Avalon. Take the Windows ISV model of the early 90s and now apply it to cool Windows applications that can be easily deployed and managed across the Internet. Its essentially the browser experience but with a ton more functionality and "standardization".

Now the Internet standard crowd will point to being able to do a lot of the same things Longhorn/Avalon can do using advanced CSS, SVG, XUL, etc. True enough. But again, end users don't care about that stuff. And if ISVs can tap the massive Windows market with one dev model for both smart client and "Internet deployable" applications, that is pretty compelling. Not to mention that a browser, even the newest ones, are only one stepped removed from dumb clients, and really can't exploit the host machines capabilities (3D acceleration, local storage, etc.) the way an Avalon/Longhorn app will. None of this is a done deal of course and it is all just a theory that popped into my head this morning on the drive into work (light traffic on the pre-holiday drive so I could think more rather than curse other drivers). I haven't thought it through all the way and I am sure there are holes in the logic, not the least of which will be penetration of Avalon on non-Longhorn Windows OSes. But hey, that is what slick thoughts are all about!

Personal Disclaimer: This is all just Jeff Brand thinking out loud. It in no way reflects anything Microsoft is thinking, written, or plans on. I have no inside knowledge, I

Per this CNET article, looks like IE's market share has dipped below 90%. I am not sure how many months IE share has been on a decline, but this is certainly an interesting trend line to keep an eye on. I haven't felt a lot of panic or uncertainity inside the corporate walls, so I am not sure how much this is viewed as a bad thing vs. we have too much Longhorn stuff going on to really pay attention. At the end of the day, I wonder if Microsoft should really care what browser is being used as long as its being used on Windows? How different that would be from the browser jihad of the late '90s.

In December, New Horizons and Microsoft will be providing free .NET Training to anyone that would like to sign up. The VS.NET Intro is full already, but there is still room in the Enterprise Web Solutions and the Secure .NET Development sessions.

The Spring Framework from our friends in the Java world seems to have made its way over to .Net. I haven't had a chance to check this out and am not quite sure of the app types that it really provides value, but might be worth looking at.