“It’s Microsoft’s game to lose. With a hammerlock on the Web
browser and PC operating system markets, if Microsoft loses sway
with developers it has only itself to blame.
Executives at the Redmond, Washington-based software maker admit
that in order to maintain Windows’ appeal as a development
platform, the company needs to make Web application development on
Windows as simple as writing a Windows-only program. … To
stem the flow of developers away from the fold, the company needs a
development tool that does for Web development what its Visual
Basic tool did to revolutionize Windows development back in
1991.”
” ‘It’s not easy to [build server-side applications], especially
in a Microsoft environment, because there’s been no cohesive tool
that combines all of their technology,’ said Craig Roth, an analyst
at the Meta Group. ‘You still have to pretty much do all the coding
yourself. Visual InterDev is a lower level tool for Web page design
and scripting. But there has been no equivalent of Visual Basic–a
very easy to use, visually oriented tool that ties all of the
services together.’
Roth cites tools from SilverStream and Elemental Software as
good examples of what Microsoft should emulate. ‘They need a more
cohesive vision of how to do Web development in the Microsoft
environment,’ Roth said. ‘So that means adding a series of missing
features: state and session management and a tool that ties all of
[their] technologies together.’ Roth said a number of Java
application server makers already offer such features.”