You may never had associated the title words with the Internet or web-based applications, but I predict that within 15 years thats exaclty the type of experience we will be getting used to on a day to day, site-to-site, basis. Web developers today can either get relevant or get lost.
With applications and technologies like Photosynth, Seadragon, Popfly, and Silverlight, that's exaclty where Microsoft is headed.
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ : "Newest and most exciting way to view photos on a computer. Takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next."
http://www.popfly.ms/Overview/ : "Popfly Creator is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups."
http://labs.live.com/Seadragon.aspx : "Aimed to change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network."
http://silverlight.net/Default.aspx & http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/ : "Enables rich interactive applications for the Web that incorporate video, animation, interactivity, and stunning user interfaces. Create richer, more compelling Web experiences that take greater advantage of the client for increased performance. Stunning vector-based graphics, media, text, animation, and overlays that enable seamless integration of graphics and effects into any existing Web application. Enhance existing standards/AJAX-based applications with richer graphics and media, and improve their performance and capabilities by using Silverlight."
Although king in its time, Flash has been around for '-ever', but has change very little. I can still remember learning the ins and outs of keyframe development, but it has never caught on because for many reasons; cost of the designer, limited scripting capabilities, and only web-bound support - just to name a few. Thats too bad in may respects, but like Netscape, they can only blame theirselves for growing complacent and stale.
Microsoft has, love em' or hate em', learned from many technologies mistakes (and made many of their own) in recent history. Picking up where Flash and similar techlogies have left off, Microsoft is again leading the pack into the next era of presence. Having the power of a first class programming language and world-class framework library is exactly where the Redmond camp is headed with Silverlight. Combined with the extraordinary capabilities of photosynth and seadragon, its only a matter of time before we start to be able navigate sites that way. And along comes Popfly - oh my-my see how far Frontpage has come (hehe)! Ok, its like apples and oranges, but still, Redmond has come along way with so much weight to carry.
Here's to the future of the Microsoft web, Cheers!
...now back to our scheduled broadcast...