02.14
Years ago, and I mean years ago, I started down the web design/development road by messing with various new technologies, one of which was Microsoft’s ActiveX. I joined my first ‘group’ in the Site Builder Network, the baby brother of the MSDN in the early days. One of the things that I got involved in was a competition to recreate Windows 95 in a browser using ActiveX controls… Sounds crazy now right? Back then it was great fun 
If I remember correctly (and I might not) I achieved the heady heights of SBN Level 2 membership. The details are very vague these days though. Coincidentally, the other month we were turning out an old cupboard at home and I found my SBN Rucksack! This was probably my first piece of web related schwag and I hold it dear even to this day! I’ve carefully put it to rest in a box of dotcom era t-shirts but I’ll dig it out this weekend maybe and grab a quick pic Anyway…
I was flicking through some of the WPF/E experiments the other week and came across something that made me chuckle. Basically, someone has recreated Windows Vista using WPF/E – check it out. I can’t say for sure, but I bet it took a considerably less amount of time to develop than when we did it all those years ago! (Let alone the fact that it works, and looks, a whole lot better than our efforts too!) Still, as they say, what goes around comes around.
Makes me wonder if we’ll see a similar sort of thing in another 10 years with the follow on to WPF/E