Web platform panel discussion

Instead of attending on of the seminars, I have decided to attend a moderated panel discussion on web platform. I think this would be very interesting to hear.
There are six participants in the discussion.
Lauren : Avalon : Program manager
Nikhil : ASP.NET architect: Atlas
Shanthi Niyogi: ASP.NET Program manager
Omar Khan: Program manager for Web tools
I did not get this person's name: IIS7 program manager

This was a discussion that included these guys and all participants. What is the support structure for supporting different browsers?
Using layered approach avoids this issue. And building on standards. All asp.net controls are to be standards compliant.
Tools will be extended to support the standards and to make it testable.
What is the right tech to use for the UI?
Avalon for rich client experience for really big things. Installation makes a difference. Otherwise, try atlas.
What about CSS2 support?
More support will be provided in IE7. Not all tools will support this.Interop between browsers is big for Atlas. So, they are working hard. There are many changes that are presented by both browser versions and the spec itself. Work is being done in world of VS.NET for better support as well.
Atlas support, it it strategic?
Stragically, MS thinks that there are many ways of presentation. So, Depending on the kind of need for users, you need to use Atlas or Avalon. "State of the avarage" as my friend Shimon says, is what matters and that is the reason Atlas/AJAX is more popular than before.
Atlas will be released almost every month based on the feedback.
Can we re-target based on ASP.NET minor version?
In IIS7.0, there is a way to retarget based on the version. But, it would be hard to target based on SP version. As general philosophy, there is a change to make sure that rolling forward is not done by default. But, some of the security issues can potentially still roll you forward in which case you will have to retest.
Making WPF application MSN searchable?
There is active work going on to figure this out to make it work.
Baking different UI based on the client?
THe challenge is that while there is possibility that you can do it (Infopath in Office 12 will do this), but the problem is that you need to figure out the interaction based on form factors.
Expression products and VS.NET are designed to make it easier for people to give a better experience. Designers are being worked on to make things to provide consistent user experience between rich client designs and web designs.
Difference between WPF and WPF/E?
Tools like Expression and Sparkle will work for WPF and WPF/E.
Will IIS7 be on Windows 2003?
No plans for this is currently in place.
Will authentication be provided for Atlas?
This can be done through ASP.NET 2.0 Membership system + cookie based authentication. Atlas supports authentication through javascript.
What is the migration for ActiveX controls?
There might not be any no ActiveX control migration for WPF/E. Because, it depends on XAML and javascript. It will be re-written. But, ActiveX is still the underlying technology. That will continue working in IE 7 as well.
Expression Designers and VS.NET will work closely enough that you can exchange the projects.
Tool support for Javascript
They are trying to get a way of providing intellisense, debugging etc. There will be community tools for developing scripts. Next version of VS.NET will have support script developers.
Will existing ASP.NET 2.0 controls support Atlas behaviors?
Controls will be updated to provide AJAX support. For now, ASP.NET 2.0, this will not be intergrated. Later on, say in ASP.NET 3.0, it will be more integrated.

What is the direction for Web platform?
Expectation is that web applications are going to be more based on Click-once technology. And use WPF/E when available. The deployment methods will improve in order to allow this.
What about plugging your own serializer to Atlas so I might be able to use Atlas client side library on JSP?
Atlas uses the JSON protocol to serialize not only data but object identity as well. That means Atlas will pick the right server side object to talk to when the data goes across the wire. Of course, it also means that it cannot be used easily with any other type systems other than .NET. We will see about that! :)