Microsoft Tuesday released new previews of its upcoming tools for designers. Microsoft Interactive Designer is a product for building Avalon (‘Windows Presentation Foundation’ or WPF) user interfaces. These tools have been dubbed a Flash killer by some industry watchers, as it is expected to compete head-to-head with the Macromedia Flash product that was acquired by Adobe Systems last year.
It’s pretty cool. Check it out.
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/demos.mspx?v=id_des…
No
Frankly to me it seems like SVG + JavaScript will be real Flash killers… or at lest competitors. I think the best part is that you can search SVG files with search engines and that you won’t need to d/l any special plugins. SVG is a free standard as is JavaScript (which is also used by Flash as Actionscript more-or-less). PhotoShop supports SVG and there are various OSS apps that do too! I think it’s only a matter off time before a quality IDE is released.
Oh, and I think SVG will also benefit from XSLT as you can dynamically generate graphs from XML data and then animate them.
I think this is much more exciting than Microsofts vision.
I agree; SVG + Javascript carries multimedia into the same mindset that made the web great.
“Sparkle” — ugh… The name alone will make me avoid it forever.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
The problem with that is Inkscape plus cross-browser Javascript is much more of a pain then Flash 8 plus Flash plugin.
Not to mention the little detail that SVG support in IE requires a plugin. And that the plugin apparently has a low install base. And could be killed by Adobe at any time.
I admit your concerns are valid I do not think they are realistic.
1) Firefox is available on every platform.
2) Adobe would not likely kill it off since it sells graphic products and popularising a powerful format like SVG would definitely increase sales.
3) I totally forgot that Adobe now owns Macromedia somewhat mitigating my point, but only slightly if they remain as seperate divisions.
4) I believe that using InkScape a powerful IDE could be built using the Rhino project from Mozilla. If some developers would just get the ball rolling it’d be huge. In fact it could become an OSS killer app…. but it’s still a pretty f–king big “if”.
1) Firefox is available on every platform.
Same with Opera. But that doesn’t mean people will use it. People want web apps to work with the browser they use already. And the Flash plugin has an install base of ~90%.
2) Adobe would not likely kill it off since it sells graphic products and popularizing a powerful format like SVG would definitely increase sales.
Supporting two vector formats would just weaken Adobe’s position in the face of XAML. I highly doubt that SVG is used widely enough that Adobe has seen any sales based on their plugin, or Save-As features.
3) I totally forgot that Adobe now owns Macromedia somewhat mitigating my point, but only slightly if they remain as seperate divisions.
The point of merging is to stop competing with each other. It’s likely that they only reason Adobe was previously flirting with SVG was because they wanted to compete with and diminish Macromedia.
4) …but it’s still a pretty f–king big “if”.
Indeed. Though I would certainly like that future to come to pass.
The problem with that is Inkscape plus cross-browser Javascript is much more of a pain then Flash 8 plus Flash plugin.
True, that is a problem for non-programmers. We programmers tend to like the idea of Javascript+SVG precisely *because* it requires no other programs. I’m thinking of things like rendering charts and graphs, 3D diagrams, etc…
Also, there is the new “canvas” element available in Firefox and Opera, which makes such things even easier.
Not to mention the little detail that SVG support in IE requires a plugin. And that the plugin apparently has a low install base. And could be killed by Adobe at any time.
True, but there’s nothing precluding other plugins from being created, especially as open-source efforts.
Also, IE already has support for vector graphics + Javascript with WML, which has been included since IE5. Thus, it might not be too much of a stretch for some sort of conversion script to make IE handle SVG as WML. There is already a similar example allowing IE to handle the canvas element:
http://me.eae.net/archive/2005/12/29/canvas-in-ie/
http://webfx.eae.net/dhtml/chart/demo.html
True, that is a problem for non-programmers.If you don’t consider cross-browser dynamic Javascript to be maintainence problem, you’re a better coder than I. Of course, each implementation of SVG will have its own quirks as well. Unless some sort of miracle happens.
We programmers tend to like the idea of Javascript+SVG precisely *because* it requires no other programs.
I agree that’s a plus in terms of freedom.
but there’s nothing precluding other plugins from being created, especially as open-source efforts.
But then you’ve still got the major problem of user adoption of the plugin. Thus you have developers thinking, “do I want to reach ~90% of my potential audience, or ~10%?”
In terms of hijacking WML, that looks quite interesting. However, that kind of solution seems like it would be limited to the features of whatever WML has. Perhaps XAML can by subverted in the same way?
IE needs a plugin so you’re back to why use SVG when the flash installed base is so high already. But if IE would ever support SVG natively then, I agree, it would open up lots of interesting opportunities.
It’s going to get used heavily, I’m convinced of that.
Does that make it a killer? No. But, it’s going to have a lot of Flash designers considering other options.
It’s from MSFT; who’s dumb enough to believe it will have either good security or good Mac and LINUX support?
It’s from MSFT; who’s dumb enough to believe it will have either good security or good Mac and LINUX support?
I think that more important than ‘linux’ support is ‘open standards’ support. As we’ve seen many times, ‘linux’ support from a windows centric software company usually amounts to stale rpms for redhat 9.x and some version of rhel. Obviously that’s going to be completely rejected by the general distro community which likes to package everything up it’s own way, usually by building from source, even if that means writing their own implementation. An open source implementation would also allow this to spread to other platforms that don’t receive as much attention as linux.
But I think that my previous paragraph is all pointless anyway, because I think flash is crap. 99% of what’s out there is only annoying advertisements and time wasting games (fun as they are). I keep it around for the few websites that have serious applications for it, like cbc.ca which has a nice tracker for the election that happened yesterday. Granted, I’d prefer they just do it with html/javascript/css, but flash experts have to be paid for something :-p. The moral of story is that I don’t care what happens, because I don’t want to see it
“I keep it around for the few websites that have serious applications for it, like cbc.ca which has a nice tracker for the election that happened yesterday”
Sorry about that election! We have troubles with the “Right” down here , too, you know.
If this were an open standard that was scalable and platform independent, we’d be all over it.
3D content is problematic on several fronts. For one, the chief obstacle has been copyright, not technology. Open standards usually mean unencrypted downloads of meshes which you may or may not have the right to distribute (human figures come to mind). Also, the kind of animation they’re demonstrating is primitive enough to make substituting prerendered movie clips a better solution. Note how blurry and ugly the resolution/shading gets when the spaceship is rotated in realtime. If it isn’t possible in WoW, there’s a reason for it.
The irony here is that Microsoft’s reaching for what Apple discarded in their repeated overextension of QuickTime during the 90s. A single multimedia standard encompassing everything and rendered by a giant framework so integrated with the OS as to make cross-platform mindshare impossible.
A media standard which in all likelihood will be so demanding on hardware that it runs with unprotected access to system hooks to optimize performance, and ripe for security exploits.
This isn’t flaming, this is history. Unless this thing runs in a sandbox tighter than a frog’s butt, it’s a ticking bomb.
I don’t think so if it is only available for windows.
I can’t wait for it to be released to the wild and for people to start using it. They’ll be in for a surprise at how nice it is.
But yeah, it does suck that it won’t (as far as we know) be cross-platform. Oh well, doesn’t mean it’s a complete waste. It’s still very cool.
Intelligence and good design practices would be a flash killer (not totally, just sick of sites written completely in flash, it has its place).
Because it’s used for advertisements and stupid, irrelevant cutsey bullshit. But take a look at some of the flex2 and flash 8.5 runtime stuff going on over at Macromedia. Or take a look at the open source projects over at osflash.org.
You just can’t ignore the 98% market penetration of Flash 6 and above.
Can it outhype AJAX ? Can it generate the buzz necessairy to force developers to relearn all their flash skills ?
Uhm, no.
It can be used to develop windows apps as well. So no, it won’t be forgotten.
Manuel Clement – Sparkle Beta Released (er, Expression Interactive Designer)
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=157843
This product isn’t meant to replace traditional web development (at least not yet). It’s a designer-focused tool to make constructing Windows applications easier for designers and allow for easier sharing of code and division of work between designers and developers.
Where it intersects with traditional web development, it will be initially most useful either in intranets where there are common client systems, or on the web as an enhanced version of a normal site, or a rich client addition to a normal website.
Later, when WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere) is released, it may then fill the role as an environment for reusing much of the code in rich client Windows applications and refocusing them towards the traditional web. However WPF/E works largely within the confines of the web, is limited (at least currently) to 2D graphics, documents, audio/video and will use a subset of XAML along with JavaScript, and (as the name implies) will be available to other platforms.