It's going to be an interesting week ahead, with a number of events in the developer world. On Wednesday Feb 27th, Microsoft will begin the "Global Wave" of launch events around the world, starting with a large scale event in Los Angeles. At this event we will see Windows Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 officially launched.
One week later is the Microsoft MIX08 conference where it is anticipated that Microsoft will be showing Silverlight 2 and IE8 for the first time, as well as well as updates to Visual Studio and futures such as the MVC Framework. (Note that it's apparently "Silverlight 2" now and not Silverlight 2.0. ScottGu has given a few preview details on his blog) I get the feeling that there are a lot of other exciting announcements in the pipe that are being held back and will be made between or during these events. (There is also the TED conference that could preview some new things from Microsoft Research)
Not to be left out of the picture, It also sounds like Adobe will be fighting for attention next week as well as they are expected to release Flex 3 and AIR. We'll save the Flash vs Silverlight debate for another day, but the important fact is that competition in this space is really heating up.
There has been a lot of debate about the future of RIA (Rich Internet Applications or Rich Interactive Applications, or as I prefer to think of it, a way to get Rich on the Internet Again), and what the impact really will be. There are some camps that feel that HTML + JavaScript will be as far as mainstream development goes within the browsers. Personally while I do not think that in the near future every html based site will cease to exist and be replaced by a Silverlight or Flash applications, I do think that these technologies represent some major opportunities for existing sites to add some dramatic enhancements without completely replacing everything that is. My hope is not that we see more of the same, but get to experience some real innovations in user interfaces and the way that information is presented to us.
While some developers/admin users have claimed that they are not willing to install the runtimes for these environments, the reality is that most end users want more interactivity and will gladly click Next, Yes, Yes, Next at the prospect of doing something cool. If the download is quick, and relatively easy they will install it.Smart developers will use ways of gradually introducing enhanced features into their sites.