"Another interesting announcement here at PDC is that Microsoft is creating a subset of their cool, fancy pants UI layer (formerly code-named Avalon, now WPF) on other platforms, including the Mac! In fact, one of the demos involved showing vector graphics rendered in Safari using a Microsoft plug-in."
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I think that WPF/E is more intended to be used for web services that use Avalon and to be sure that those web services work on something else that IE. Its not used to build Avalon apps on mac.
OS X has anyway already everything to build high quality visual effects UIs and to do vector graphics. They really dont need microsoft....
Member since:2005-09-02
I agree. Avalon will open a whole new door for webservices for those Windows loving coders out there. Microsoft are simply allowing other platforms to access that.
I dont see it either to buid avalon apps on the mac. If MS were trying to compete with Apple on this front it would be a grave mistake especially since its a criple version of it and especially when the intel transition is complete! Also when 10.5 and 10.6 hits the selfs it will prob make Vista look like Windows 3.11.
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According to the slides of the session "Choosing the Right Presentation Technology: Windows Presentation Foundation ("Avalon"), Windows Forms, ASP.NET, IE, and More" (http://216.55.183.63/pdc2005/slides/PRS200_Wallent.ppt),
WPF/E seems indeed rather complete (it support video, too); it doesn't need compilation since it's XAML+JavaScript.
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Member since:2005-06-30
Windows users use QuickTime and iTunes. They do so because Apple ported their QuickTime Media Layer to Win32. Did Windows need this orthogonal media framework? No, not really; DirectShow provides a standard way to deal with codecs. Many Windows users even hate having to use the QuickTime player enough that they find other ways[1] to deal with the container format. So is Apple trying to "compete" with Microsoft by porting the infrastructure necessary for porting their software? Well in the more broader sense it enables them to compete with Microsoft by allowing them to more readily port their products to Windows, where those compete. But is the QuickTime framework itself competing with DirectShow et al? No, not so much.
Are users helped or harmed by this effort? How about the business involved? Well, since Windows users can easily-enough look at all of the neat trailers for movies on Apple's website, and play all sorts of neat songs that they buy from the iTMS, I would say that users benefit. Apple gets more users for their services, so they benefit. Thanks, portable software frameworks!
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.. but you can't read its specifications because they are distributing them in the Windows .exe format: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspecdwn.mspx
Member since:2005-08-26
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Embrace & Extend
Yes,for them unavoidable,sometimes i wonder if MS has more MBA's than developers running around.
I would rather not run MS code on my Linux box anyway thank you very much.
Neither will i,unless it's GPLed or otherwise open-sourced and the community itself has something to say about what they envision and not something which is solely layered upon them.
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"Has this move by microsoft effectively killed off linux?"
There is always one person who has to say the dangerous question, i bet its you everytime! 
No it has not killed Linux but it appears MS are trying to make strong allies with Apple and together kick out linux.. but i don't see Apple getting annoyed with Linux. It appears everytime Mr. G gets annoyed with Linux he tries to remove it anyway he can. The worse thing is, if both MS and Apple developers embrace avalon that would create something Linux does not or can have until MS extends it hands towards Linux. But as we will say, i doupt that will very much happen. Well here's waiting for 2006 for the biggest fight yet.
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Just like Asp.Net was supposed to create cross-platform html. Yes, that panned out really well.
Is Ms Management or just Microsoft programming hacks that can't get the job done? I used to think it was management, but, now I'm leaning toward Ms fanboys ignoring mgmt directives.
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Typical Microsoft ... let's get some crappy technological implemenation pushed onto developers and users, lock them in and the competition out. Why on earth would anyone want to use the proprietary Avalon crap for internet services in an open environment like the internet. Who needs Microsoft crappy technology anyway.
Member since:2005-08-26
Uhm... If you actually bothered to find out something about Avalon, you would know that it's not for Internet services. It's for presentation.
I'm guessing you were talking about Indigo, which makes little sense in a thread about Avalon.
If you don't like Microsoft products and technologies for some reason, you are free to not use them.
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"If you don't like Microsoft products and technologies for some reason, you are free to not use them"
False. Most people are "Locked in" to using Windows for work or other business purposes due to proprietary software only available for Windows.
Not to mention the whole world's exposure to the millions of spam relay and zombie infected Windows boxes while surfing the net.
This is not freedom from Windows.
Member since:2005-08-26
"False. Most people are "Locked in" to using Windows for work or other business purposes due to proprietary software only available for Windows."
You have the freedom to go work for someone that doesn't use Windows at all. Or why not start up a company that only runs non-Microsoft stuff.
Most people don't even CARE about what system they use, as long as they get the job done, and why should they care?
"Not to mention the whole world's exposure to the millions of spam relay and zombie infected Windows boxes while surfing the net."
You can easily avoid getting a single spam, and there is a LOT of stuff ISP's could do to curb these problems. Most people DON'T need to have certain affected ports open from the net.
For browser vulns, just stay the hell away from porn and warez sites and other places that are untrustworthy.
Btw... You don't even need to use a computer if you don't want to. Ever thought about that?
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A rather obvious move -
Microsoft is selling Office for Mac OS X and also providing MSN IM clients. Having the same graphics toolkit available as on Windows should allow them to share code between the platforms. Should there be a demand for more, they can still port the rest of .NET. Trust me, should OS X or Linux gain dominance over the desktop, Microsoft would release their software for that platform in a nanosecond.
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...when MS no longer needs it.
Only MS Office (often second rate on OSX) is currently well supported, while many other ports have been discontinued (IE, for example -- on Apple's OS as well as other Unix systems).
There's nothing in Microsoft's history that says they will be there for the long run...unless they need it specifically to ease porting MS Office.
Member since:2005-07-27
Only MS Office (often second rate on OSX) is currently well supported, while many other ports have been discontinued (IE, for example -- on Apple's OS as well as other Unix systems).
That's why when every Office:mac release comes out, it get rave reviews claiming it's better than its Windows counterparts? Like when Office 2004 was released? The only thing lacking is in terms of Entourage vs. Outlook, and the lack of Access (though I doubt Apple, with File Maker Pro, especially wants Excel) and Publisher, with other more minor Office apps.
One thing you and many others fail to realize is that Office is a bigger cash cow than Windows. Microsoft is not going to sacrifice profits from Office just to have marginal small increase in sales and profits from Windows. They have much more business sense than that. Ending Office for Mac wouldn't make Windows sales significantly higher, but would lower Microsoft's profits.
But neither is Microsoft going to waste money to port something to a platform that doesn't provide it revenue, rather loses both direct and indirect, all in the effort to help their competitors.
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Sorry, but Avalon blows SVG out of the water. Can SVG do 3D?
Yes, SVG can.
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.kevl...
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/svg-graphics-3d.html
http://www.mywebstuff.com/09_3dengine/
http://www.beatware.com/products/md.html
http://www.eclipse.org/tptp/platform/documents/design/ChartingServi...
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=13&url=http%3A//www.mir...
You need to use browser that supports SVG rendering or Adobe SVG editor.
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SVG will give us javascriptable vectors. There is a specification for something called "Canvas", which will be a javascriptable 2d imaging api, and theres plans for a spec for Canvas3d after the 2d implementation gets off the ground.
The way things stand in the open world, the standards based version of avalon will be a combination of XUL, SVG, and Canvas.
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Microsoft is putting this out just so that they can reap the benefits of saying that Avalon is cross-platform, and avoid the costs of having to maintain and optimize the damn thing. Look at Windows Media Player 9 for Mac--doesn't use native widgets or familiar keyboard shortcuts, and is orders of magnitude slower than mplayer or vlc. Now that Flip4Mac has a working QuickTime plugin for WMV3/WMV9 files, I should delete WMP.
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... about MS not being cross-platform and then when they do it you bitch they are:
a) it is crapy tech (w/o looking into it)
b) it wont' really be cross-platform
c) it is embrace and extended (wrong metaphor in this case)
d) it will be crippled
e) point to the wrong doc for the spec to prove a point
No matter what MS does, good or bad, you folks will just bitch.
Don't get me wrong, they have done plenty of stupid things ... but almost anything you can complain about for MS you can complain about for Apple. They are both companies interested in making money and getting people to use (stay) on their platforms/tech. A largely using Apple would be a very similar to what we say now (except MS does a better job with developers than Apple).
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"... but almost anything you can complain about for MS you can complain about for Apple."
that it is a purely ignorant statement.
try asking lotus, novell, netscape, wordperfect, the US DOJ and US The Department of Homeland Security.
ask them if they're "bitching and moaning".
Member since:2005-07-06
I think that you are identifying a typical defense mechanism.
Bion[1] deskribes a common group dysfuntion called basic assumption functioning. In theory a group from time to time breaks down and cease being a productive group and insted introduce a, false, basic assumption of the group purpose.
This particular instance is what he calls a fight-flight group.
[1] http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:2lrkWli0q6YJ:www.selfhelpmagazi...
(I used google cache to get around the annoying mime-type)
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Windows revenue is bread and butter for MS. Every strategy of MS has been to stop any errosion on that front by causing pain to users of other OS'es. So I suspect its got something to do with XAML. MS probably wants to make sure XAML enabled web-sites run perfectly on mac as well. So that they can lure web-site developers to make "rich applications" in XAML (instead of XUL maybe, firefox runs on windows, mac and linux). Effectively causing a pain to the users of Linux.
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Can you do everything in SVG that you can do with WPF/E?
Is SVG as simple to use and to handle?
I've seen a lot of talk about SVG through the years, and I still don't see it widely used.
SVG 1.0 from mid 2001 and SVG 1.1 from early 2003... If it is such a "big thing", why is it not already everywhere?
It kind of feels like the now pretty much extinct VRML, and other stuff that promised much and delivered nothing.
Member since:2005-08-20
Get ready for it. In the near future, IE will be the only major browser that doesn't support it inline with xhtml. It's going to start being used on the web whether microsoft ignores it or not.
I personally can't wait to start fooling around with it more seriously when the next version of gecko is complete.
Member since:2005-06-30
You mean like MathML is being used an the web (Mozilla supports it) whether Microsoft ignores it or not? That's why Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and various blog engines rely on rendered images and mediocre formatting? If "used" here simply means that there will exist a non-empty set of sites that make use of it on the entire Internet, well then I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't care about that.
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OK, so Microsoft ports avalon (or just extensions) to another platform, avalon is built to integrate with directx, which platform #2 doesn't have.. calls have to be re-written in opengl, which vista won't fully support, thus what do you end up with, a slightly crippled avalon on another platform that uses more cpu to emulate the directx calls. Microsoft wins by skewing the results because Joe Mac User installs this ' theme ' or whatever its going to be, and its performace is crippling to the system because of the extra overhead required to emulate the directx calls. End user experience is bad, Joe User uninstalls avalon.
Am I missing something?
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I'm not assuming anything, I'm reading it on OSNews
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11489
Lets just say Microsoft will put 90% of its resources in fine-tuning avalon into vista, and only 10% in porting it to other platforms.. that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Now, if I could figure out how to just install media center in my xp install...
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