At its upcoming Professional Developers Conference next month, Microsoft is set to shed more details on its developer-oriented graphics tool, code-named Sparkle. Sparkle will be one element of the upcoming Expression Studio suite of design and developer tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly known as Avalon. Expression Studio also is expected to be unveiled at the PDC, sources said.
I dont understand even why they want to do something like this. Understand that I am not much into web development so much as straight graphic design (mostly adobe), but this just kinda makes me scratch my head as to why. If it did go anywhere, wouldn’t this just make more work for web developers who are already familiar with Flash and the Macromedia suite? Im assuming that it would be locked into IE somehow, so it seems almost like as if there would have to be 2 versions of the same website. I’m probably way off, but it just sounds kinda wierd.
The why of course, is so that Microsoft can control and make money from it.
The first two were rather serious attempts to waste lots of money just to annoy other succesfull people. Then they came with the idea of a bittorrent replacement which was nothing but vapourware and I bet they are pulling the same stunt right now.
Pretty lame way of wasting your money I’d say. Why don’t they open source everything and retire and enjoy the money they got? I mean, this is such an uninspired way of doing bussiness. They got it all and what do they do with it? They bully other people.
“[insert product here] Killer” is starting to get on my nerves. They wore this term out waaaay to quickly. any product which is preceeded by this phrase is 90% market hype and probably warrants zero attention based on it’s own merits.
And the fact that this isn’t the first time Microsoft has tried to make a “Flash killer” product.
In a nutshell, it won’t get off the ground for the simple fact that those who do graphics, run Macs – no universal plugin (for Mac and Windows), no developers.
With that bein said, however, if it is simply being targeted as a Windows on feature, then I guess I can see the merit in it, but with that being said, if Flash isn’t ‘delivering’ what Microsoft want – why doesn’t Microsoft work WITH Adobe/Macromedia to advance Flash forward.
Actually, they sort of are. They had some flash guys do a presentation on Flash utilizing Avalon sometime earlier this year I believe.
“In a nutshell, it won’t get off the ground for the simple fact that those who do graphics, run Macs – no universal plugin (for Mac and Windows), no developers.”
I wouldn’t say that neccessarily. I am a windows developer. I use VS.net, Adobe CS2 Premium, and Macromedia Suite daily. Our entire graphics department runs windows with CS2 Prem. I have a linux, mac, and windows box in my office outfitted with the latest and greatest for each system. And yet I still use windows because of personal preference and because (although not for lack of trying) I am twice as productive on windows. Thats not a blanket statement about the utility of the other two, just a case of me using the appropriate tool for me to accomplish my purpose here.
I don’t see a need for such a product at the moment, but I’m not going to throw hate at Microsoft trying to add more functionality to VS. I think that most of the needs of the flash community are well served by flash and that this product will not be as sucessful as they think if it is only touted as a replacement for flash. There needs to be some other utility to it that flash does not deliver. My main argument is that the prevailing wind in the commercial software market seems to be to create a competition killer than to create an application that fills a genuine need in the community.
that stopped being true about 5 years ago
Graphic shops now use a mix, for a while apple was losing out hand over fist.
True enough. It’s worth noting, however, that Microsoft isn’t the one labeling all these technologies “X-killers”. Rather it’s the news media companies that are trying to hype it up so that it seems like some sort of all-out assault is imminate. When there’s nothing to report, make something up. 🙂
One thing this might result in is other operating systems not supporting a browser plugin which will at least for a while only be available for Windows. Linux has a flash plugin, Mac OS has support for it thought quicktime IIRC, but this new software from MS will come out at first with support only for Windows and if it uses Avalon it might be more difficult to implement on other operating systems.
Personally I think Macromedia has made a very nice product, they have essentially done all the thinking necessary for making such a product as it is known today. In order to make their own competing product MS will first have to copy all those ideas, something which is frowned upon when others do it to MS products but rarely goes the other way around.
Flash is a hack because we don’t have proper rich client browsers yet.
But you’ve got a 3 pronged attack from Microsoft. First, never concede a market, so go after Macromedia, second put out http://news.com.com/Microsoft+gets+hip+to+AJAX/2100-1007_3-5765197…. Microsoft Atlas
, and then thirdly Avalon/XAML (and not sure how that is going to be integrated into the browser, or if it is)
So Microsoft is going to give developers proper tools to do the job (like Atlas); something open source needs to learn.
But my question is has anybody ever done any Mozilla XUL development? I’ve heard its hard and it doesn’t get proper marketing, but that’s a crossplatform solution for the RIA(Rich Internet Application). Of course the problem is always the lack of tools and documentation.
We don’t need this propriatary garbage! We already have SVG, and Cairo which are open source and open standards. Vendor lock-in is bad, when will people learn this? Even if you like Microsoft, a pure Microsoft monopoly is not good because they will refuse to innovate when they are not threatened.
Although I am excited about these new developer tools Microsft is touting for RIA, they won’t be worth a dime if Microsoft doesn’t have a capable enought browser to deliver them. The whole RIA movement that MS is evangelizing hinges on whether or not IE will be robust enough to deliver them to clients faithfully and securely. From what I can see at this point IE7 will not be such a browser. Support of MS developed RIA will not take off unless there is a clear roadmap of improvement, features, and standards compliance for the foundation that these applications have to built upon, which for the moment is IE.
why can’t there be a standard “graphics rich” equivalent like flash– on an open source environment??
— we have gimp right. ??? just my 2 cents
Flash + .NET WebServices is my current favourite development environment (but I like ASP.NET WebForms too). If Microsoft is able to deliver a Flash-like experience with their usual improvements, I would be even happier.
However, I doubt that MS would introduce such new technology for Windows systems only. I think a cross-platform plug-in will be prepared, given that Flash has now an huge makert share to leverage.
A sign that MacroAdobe is going at war on this is the fact that, even if announced, a .NET version of Flex has never been released (yet).
oh look! its MSFT Sparkle! He cleans your dishes!
For lucky best wash, use MSFT Sparkle!
Maybe Macromedia will come up with a reasonably priced authoring tool instead of charging a thousand bucks for MX Studio. I got tired of playing tricks with my PC’s clock trying to extend those 30 day trial CDs that came with the “Learn Flash” books.
I thought Corel had a nice gimmick back in their glory days… they would always sell the previous version of their tool suite for about half price. It was also a good incentive for their developers to stay on the ball.
Paul G
I recently attended what’s called a “Windows Piss Party” where several hundred people got together, threw their Windows CDs into a giant pit, and gathered around to urinate on the pile while listening to Rolling Stones at high volume. That is my best memory of Windows.
Flash is it’s own killer. Look at what is flash used for these days on the web.
It is no wonder it has been voted the most hated product that hit the web.
On the other hand It does have (or it had) potential to become a full fledged animatin package not constrained to web development only.
This would mean more web pollution married to some bloated plugin that I won’t install with more web sites I will never see with a lot of flash and little content I won’t ever miss just like rockstar inxs’s MS dependent crap that is costing them so many fans.
This is so true if people at Macro(a)dobe(sounds like a fish) will play dumb games with their products.
For the price they have for their products :
It was always like that, i dont understand why those prices are so high. Its insane to pay 700€ just for Flash IDE that was always (since Flash 5 – this was the best so far) like crap. Its always full of stupid ass bugs, its not decent at all.
I put great hopes on Zorn and the new fp8 features.
But they should hire or buy software companys that do real software, working with as2 mx components is like placing a pile of heavey tanks on top of a needle head.
The best product is Flex imo but the price is spookie.
There is real RIA browser, its also done by them, its called Central, but again, management and licencing crapy decisions destroyed its real potential ( dumb ).
And then i think at mobile flash … you have to pay for the flash player if you want an application on your mobile phone ( damnnnn ).
Everything in this world is pay pay pay and if you can pay pay and pay more.
There is an old saying : “The dumb is not the one who sells but the one who buys”
So if they have clients that keep them alive … our word is like a mosiquito …