Ok, Thanks for having me here, my name is Parimal Deshpande, I am the Senior product manager for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Visual Studio Cider. Windows presentation foundation is a WinFX technology and WinFX is a key component of Windows Vista. So as a product manager my job really is to do the marketing of Windows Presentation Foundation that includes a lot of proposition segmentation, really working with customers to find out how they think about their technology and then do some product planning as well.

That's right, I work in Redmond.

I am here as a part of the WinFX developer roadshow in EMEA. That includes about 9 countries, my and my colleagues are travelling to 9 countries in europe and myself doing about 4 countries of those 9. Where we show WinFX technology to a developer audience and show why it really solved their problems being Enterprises or ISVs, lots of demos, very few slides, which is exactly what developers like.

[Clapping] Its Me, Its Me, Its Me, Its Me! [laughs]

A couple of things, its never one. I wish it was one, that would make life so easy, right, Its just one thing. WinFX is part of Vista and so one thing we are trying to do right now is to figure out the go-to-market strategy launch of WinFX. Is when its going to be ready from a feature perspective, how do we take the message to both developers and designers, so thats something I am working on with my WinFX colleagues. The other thing I am working on is having some case studies on the business values of user experience, whole WinFX (Windows Presentation Foundation), WPF/E which we will talk about later on. The end goal is to really help ISV's and enterprises build software that delivers on the user experience promise, that end users have come to expect from consumer goods, such as BMW's, or Cars, or Gadgets right- Same thing. But then the perception we always hit upon is whats the business value of user experience does it matter? So thats one of the things I am working on to really show, so yes, it not just about a pretty UI; its business value, its productivity, its branding, its customer loyalty, its metrics, its more revenue etc.

Not its not True

Couple of point there, theres some rumours that WinFX is not on Vista. I think thats is because they are using the CTPs of Vista and WinFX and CTP's are not a complete product, its not a done. If it was a done we would be shipping it today right!. But yes, when this stuff ships it will be installed on Vista. The original plan was to really enable WinFX on Vista as a feature; its a feature of Vista. But then our customers gave us feedback saying this is something they need on XP as well and Windows 2003 as well because there are server scenarios. So obviously we are in the business of listening to our customers first and so we said ok, if you want it we will do it. So then WinFX will also work on XP SP2 and Windows 2003 SP1.

Very positive. right from Surprise to wow this is cool; 'hey we are in demand now' - sexy professionals now all of it is true. Now why are we doing it? We are doing it because much like consumer goods that are so popular with consumers, it is time software stops sucking - big time. Its just time we have had enough of the bad software everywhere we see software is just 'good enough' and does not take into account what the user wants to accomplish. theres no pride. Do you feel really passionate about the software - i just love the software - you ever feel that?. Right!

Exactly, theres always problems, except when it comes to cars you like this car; that shirt; the brand; the watch; the shoes. So we realise that software needs to have that user experience, so if user experience matters - design matters - Good Design which should be a fundamental goal. If design matters then designers matter because they are taught in that, they are trained in that field. If designers matter, we as a company should me making them first class citizens of the typical development process.

What does that mean? Give them the tools they they can realise their design potential and then give them some collaborations tool, by which they can work with developers and working together both can achieve and industrial strength application that also delivers user experience promise - thats the goal.

Wow, its like asking, whats the one thing you want in a job. Ok let me see i want very satisfying job, a great boss who doesn't micro manage me, and lots of money right, and after money; more money. [Laughs]

So it just cant be to me one thing. What WPF does well and does it really well is everything. So you want the one thing id does really well; its everything [Laughs]

Seriously, what we have today is a problem; which is content, UI, Media, documents, 2D/3D are Siloed today. You as a developer if you want to create this application if you want to incorporate documents you have to incorporate either Word API's or Acrobat API's. When you have some UI you use windows forms for example then you have media, there is not really anything out there that is 3D then you have to go the 3D route. You have to learn there multiple technologies and what happens. What happens when you blend in applications? its a stitched together experience, so graphically is not good. What WPF does is unify UI, Media and Documents, UI meaning data mining all the controls, in media we have 2D/3D graphics, Audio/Video, Speech API's, Animation and in documents we have really good support for different fonts, rich typography, all the good reading experiences that people need today, support for that stuff. Thats what it does.

The other thing it does really well is through XAML really bring in designers to work with developers. That tops the list for me.

Yes, you've done your homework! [laughs]

Let me tell you a funny thing about this. Its Psychic logic. WPF a good platform for user experience, the tool for WPF that the designers use; it has two tools. Microsoft tools, one is Visual Studio as it has always been for developers. Second one is Microsoft Expression - Interactive Designer (which was code named sparkle) and that tool is for designers, creative professionals. That tool is a WPF application itself. So we believe in the platform so much that we are actually betting on a tool that works on the platform. Its like saying was Flash built on Flash - if not, why not. In this case thats the platform. We know the platform is rock solid so lets build a tool and actually make revenue off it. The other part of that is, our product designers, for the designers who design interactive designers user interactive designer to design interactive designer. [laughs]

yeah absolutely.

Let me tell you why we are doing it. WPF as a part of WinFX is a full featured absolute best experience you can get on Windows. But the world as we see it in the office has cell phones, smart phones, PDA's and are spending increasing amount of time on the web in fact some study I read, said end users are spending around 90% of their PC time on three things, Browsing, Chatting and Emailing. Thats the extent of their web usage.

[Laughs] My wife too, unfortunately she keeps shopping all the time, spending all the money. [laughs] Anyway so the trend is people are moving on the web and what is the web? Either Windows or Mac as an OS and a variety of browsers and then its some devices too. So WPF got a really good response because it does this user experience thing really well and then customers said "well, you are doing this incredible stuff with WPF and we are investing in it, the assets of our whole innovation of our application, we dont want to throw it away, we dont want to recreate the same thing for a reach scenario. You've got the rich stuff, How can we reuse some of that purpose built assets for the reach?" Hence WPF/E, its a codename, it stands for Windows Presentation Foundation - Everywhere. Everywhere meaning its about cross platform; Windows and Mac, cross Browsers; IE, Netscape, Safari, all those browsers, and then devices; sometime later, Windows devices. That way developers and designers who are building WPF applications can re-purpose those assets to target those reach scenarios and get more bang for the buck and why not.

We will have the first CTP for WPF/E, I believe, late this year and then the first half of next year the runtime will RTM, not the tools just the runtime and then devices will be the second half of next year.

Great, Thank you very much, really enjoyed it.