Before the presentation, John Bristowe told Donald and myself not to come to this presentation because it sucked.  How could I pass this up? 

I am in and out of this sucker pretty much every 5 minutes, so good luck getting me to follow along here!  ;)  For those of you who want a quick summary, I can share several quotes from John in this presentation:

"The web sucks." - John Bristowe
"Javascript sucks" - John Bristowe
"HTML sucks"
"The security model requirements suck."
"I suck"* - John Bristowe

Off to the washroom to find something to blow my nose with.  All full.   ARRRGH.

Upstairs washroom.  Why did *everyone on the planet* choose this point to relieve themselves?  BROTHA NEEDS SOME KLEENEX

I am back and John has started early.  Luckily, he seems to have calmed down from his beer bottle fight with the Igloo Coder 20 minutes ago.

Shirt rating - *.  John is not wearing a shirt; not in the Steven Rockarts "I have Ruby painted on my chest, come and see" way but more along the lines of the "It's cold in here so I am wearing 17 layers" way.  Just doesn't grab the eye!!  And I think, as a fashion magnate, that you need something that grabs the audience when you're presenting on someting as dynamic as live.com!

John is displaying Javascript he has written.  At *LAST* - after so many different Microsoft-themed AJAXy presentations, *someone* aside from Kyle Baley has actually dived into the DOM and Javascript!!  Perfect!!

"We've been making a lot of stuff that *looks* like namespaces, types and classes that we know and love in .NET; but they are *not*."

John gives the two other names for ASP.NET Atlas, both of which were pretty much the standard "Let's make a name that is made up of 35 different words".

"This is a normal page with the normal sort of syntax, braces, and various squigglies."  VARIOUS SQUIGGLIES JOHN!??!

Development tips for Live Gadgets:
1) Stop caching pages
2) Enable Script Debugging (admittedly, if you're doing ASP.NET development, you've probably already done this).
2a)  My nose is about to explode all over this table.  I'm just trying to...DAMN IT

I have returned to see that John has displayed a post-it note to himself to bug me about living in Edmonton vs. living in God's country.  Perfect timing.  I actually have a post-it note on my own widgets folder reminding me to tell him that Macintosh ripped this off from Konfabulator first.  ;)

I then ask John what the "Snack" widget is and we are witness to an animated gif of an apple being eaten.  For the first time in my conference history, I regret asking a question.  But don't worry!!  There is *also* a widget that shows you cats pooping in toilets!!  Somehow I know where Donald will be spending a great deal of his time...

Cannot use WPF to build gadgets.  John *hates* Javascript as a development platform!!  Man, why does everybody dog on this language?  I almost need to do my own presentation: "Javascript: Why it really doesn't suck as much as you think."

WHOA LOOK OUT THE JACKET IS OFF!!! And it's...plain gray.  John, buddy!!  Where is the flash?  Where is the panache?

Can you tell John is primarily a Windows guy? ;)

Nice!  John goes through the steps of the XMLHttpRequest object.  A lot of people try to either gloss over this or avoid it entirely.  Even if I'm already familiar with it, I really appreciate it when presenters on AJAX, etc. actually delve into Javascript and the DOM! 

The basic structure of the Windows Gadgets etc. is basically AJAX js/HTML. 

Gadgets must be zip-encoded and end in a .gadget extension.

Bonus:  Microsoft does actually make the API accessible for enterprising devs who want to write their own tools!!

John:  99% of your time making a gadget is making the UI nice.  1% is spent wiring things up!

ARRRGH MY NOSE PLEASE MAKE IT STOP

Whew, I am back just in time for John's "I hate Javascript" count to hit 20 or so.  ;) 

XAML apps in the sidebar sound nice - unfortunately it doesn't sound like it'll be available, mostly because they weren't sure that the .NET Framework 3.0 would be available for everyone.

Ah, the truth comes out.  John hates Javascript because John hates dynamic languages, and those we can assume that *John hates himself*.  John, my friend, is *this* why you missed Rockarts and my presentation?  Because of your self-loathing!?!  Open your mind, John!   Is it the roids, John?   All the extra testorone clouding your vision? 

That's it, John.

Now, I am inspired.

John Bristowe, my friend, my new quest is to convert you to the glory of dynamic languages and through this lead you to self-healing!  As God is my witness, you'll never hate js again!!!

* at Xbox