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Microsoft

Microsoft's Sparkle a Flash Killer? 468

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the preying-on-mixed-opinions-about-flash dept.
Charmless1 writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Microsoft has release new previews of their upcoming developer tools. Some have even dubbed these new tools as "Flash killers". From the article: "Microsoft's Expression Suite consists of the Expression Graphic Designer, Expression Interactive Designer and the Expression Web Designer. Microsoft has yet to release a CTP for the Web Designer, also known by its codename Quartz." Slashdot also covered some of the pre-release sentiments back in September.
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Microsoft's Sparkle a Flash Killer? More

Microsoft's Sparkle a Flash Killer?

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  • SVG? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MikeFM ( 12491 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @08:59PM (#14553399) Homepage Journal
    What does it do that I can't do with SVG, canvas, and other existing standards? I can see Flash as needing replaced but I can't see a benefit to replacing it with an even less open standard.

    • Re:SVG? (Score:2, Funny)

      by zaguar ( 881743 )
      Q: What does it do that I can't do with SVG, canvas, and other existing standards?

      A: Takes away your freedom.

    • Re:SVG? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tvon ( 169105 )
      It doesn't necessarily "do" anything differently, but unless someone whips up a suite of applications to support authoring dynamic and interactive content with SVG and canvas, it doesn't really matter what they do (not in the "widespread adoptance" sense anyways).

    • Re:SVG? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lerc ( 71477 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:35PM (#14553621)
      I think the answer to that question, is Everything. And that's why it'll suck (1). I don't want a solution for everything. I want something small and nice that does a particular job well. If I want a different job done then I want something else small and nice that does that well.

      I'm actually working on a web plugin for animated content. It's not aiming to be better than SVG or Canvas, the goal is to provide a number of solutions to things that those things don't do. That's not to say SVG is flawed, It is just saying that if you are wanting to do some non-scaled, non-vector graphics, perhapse something else can perfom the task in a more efficient manner.

      That's the long way of saying; I don't want to do eveything with one of these http://www.mediasalesltd.com/images/lg/10-15/multi tool-pic-1-p21.jpg [mediasalesltd.com]

      (1)I don't have any special knowledge to confirm that it'll suck, I just have faith in microsoft

    • who cares, more crappy xml format is probably... good... or something...

      We have broadband anyway, and deep integration of the XML wankfest in C#, and soon-to-be even more XML retardation embedded deep into java, that's Fuck Win you see

    • Re:SVG? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @10:02PM (#14553771)
      Hey, it's cool. This will never take off like Microsoft hopes. But if it did, Adobe owns Flash now, and they just might, you know, have to delay Photoshop CS3 for unforeseen "technical reasons." Let the companies squeeze each other by the balls; I don't care.

    • Re:SVG? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by briancnorton ( 586947 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @11:05PM (#14554036) Homepage
      Why? What's wrong with flash? It does what it does quite well, it's flexible and extensible. It's mature and has almost 100% market penetration. Why does it need replacing.

      If your answer involves "open source" then you can stop right there. Nobody (except about half the slashdot audience) gives a rat's ass about source code as long as the software works properly.

      • Re:SVG? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by lasindi ( 770329 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @02:57AM (#14555277) Homepage
        What's wrong with flash? It does what it does quite well, it's flexible and extensible. It's mature and has almost 100% market penetration. Why does it need replacing.

        Just today I experienced a considerable amount of frustration because of Flash. In my physics class at my university we have to turn in homework on the Internet, and the website we're using uses Flash for entering equations. Several of the problems required us to enter Greek symbols (like pi and omega). However, when I tried to enter these characters, half of the character would display and the cursor would remain in the same spot as before, so if you continued the equation, it would overwrite the Greek symbol. It's a weird bug and hard to describe (sorry if you don't understand what's going on), but the point is it prevented me from doing my homework. I ended up figuring out that when I tried doing it on Windows instead of Flash on Linux (the latest version still), it worked. So, clearly, the Linux version of Flash has some weird bug in it that Macromedia has failed to address. In the end, I was inconvenienced because I had to reboot into Windows to do my homework instead of on my normal operating system.

        This isn't the first time I've encountered bugs with the Linux version of Flash; take a look at this [hrwiki.org] (scroll down to glitches and then watch the cartoon for yourself on Linux). Obviously not getting to play a song on a cartoon website isn't going to scar me for life, but my point is that Macromedia (should I say Adobe?) isn't doing a very good of a job on the Linux version, probably because they feel that Linux doesn't have enough marketshare to significantly affect their profits.

        If your answer involves "open source" then you can stop right there. Nobody (except about half the slashdot audience) gives a rat's ass about source code as long as the software works properly.

        The reason that some people are concerned with open source is that it offers a way out of monopolies. The biggest problem isn't that the Flash player itself is proprietary (even though it would be nice if it weren't); it's that SWF is proprietary. This suppresses competition from would-be open source (or even other proprietary) Flash players that have to compete with Adobe/Macromedia. If SWF was open, an open source Flash player could be easily written that would eliminate such bugs.

        We can always debate whether or not proprietary or open source development models produce better quality code, but proprietary formats are never good. All they do is hurt competition, which helps no one but the authors. Now that Adobe owns Macromedia, hopefully the Flash people will take a hint from PDF: open formats work. If SWF is opened, great; there would be no need to replace the format, only potentially the player. But as long as SWF remains proprietary, it needs to be replaced by a format that everyone can use.

        • Shocking news (Score:5, Insightful)

          by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @09:19AM (#14556607)
          We can always debate whether or not proprietary or open source development models produce better quality code, but proprietary formats are never good. All they do is hurt competition, which helps no one but the authors. Now that Adobe owns Macromedia, hopefully the Flash people will take a hint from PDF: open formats work. If SWF is opened, great

          Shocking news: The SWF format IS open: Here you have a link [macromedia.com]. The license is quite similar to PDF. I think it's somewhat more restrictive to create tools which create SWFs or something but what the hell, stops saying that SWF is closed.

          Just because the open source community hasn't managed to write a decent implementation of the PDF format doesn't mean. Actually, people has tried to write implementations (way before that GNU thingy by the way): Google for libswf. There's even a gstreamer plugin which uses libswf to draw flash animations (and it works for simple flash files, I've used it). Dude, in my machine nautilus shows me thumbnails of some flash files. Also, macromedia has written a linux flash player plugin for mozilla-based browsers, I wish all companies would do that.

      • Re:SVG? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @04:04AM (#14555529)
        The reason I personally hate Flash is that it violates the principle of "the browser belongs to the user". You have to take what you're given, all or nothing. This isn't tangential to open source! Firefox has extensions that give you control of HTML, javascript, animations, etc because both the data spec and the rendering process are open. You may not need the source, but others do and you benefit by their work.

    • Re:SVG? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by typical ( 886006 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @01:03AM (#14554679) Journal
      For that matter, what does *Flash* do that people need?

      I've seen:

      * Indie animations, most of which are pretty bad.

      * Custom interfaces for webpages. These are, in my experience, much slower and more annoying to navigate than regular ol' HTML interfaces, are fixed at a size too small for my father to easily read, often (irritatingly) play sounds, usually have awful color schemes -- there's a *reason* that I have my foreground and background colors set to black and white, have sluggish reimplementations of scrollbars that don't look like scrollbars, and don't really IMHO do much for anyone other than the designer, who gets to play with a fun toy for a while.

      * Ads. Animated, computer-bogging-down ads. Ads with sounds. Horrible, awful things which make computers without Flashblock miserable to use. Probably the primary use of Flash today.

      * Small web games. While I have played these occasionally, the best of them don't come close to the best full-blown native games.

      * Splash screens, which many companies inexplicably stuff in front of their website's main page. I would assume that this is to drive the less-than-dedicated away.

      I mean, seriously, how does Flash make life better for the browser *user*? Okay, granted, perhaps in some very indirect way (advertisers will maybe pay more for Flash ads, that money goes to fund the production of websites that users want), but in general, Flash doesn't seem to be a net positive for my web browsing at all.

    • Re:SVG? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheNetAvenger ( 624455 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @04:32AM (#14555621)
      What does it do that I can't do with SVG, canvas, and other existing standards? I can see Flash as needing replaced but I can't see a benefit to replacing it with an even less open standard.

      Well it can do a lot, but that is NOT the point...

      This HAS nothing to do with SVG or killing Flash. These are the art side of the development tools for MS WPF technologies.

      It is used to create 'interfaces' for applications in Windows and eventually online for Windows Users.

      This is basically the art side of the MS new technologies that are not really in competition with anything but the Win32 GUI API drawing set. This is the replacement for Microsoft's internal rendering engine of Windows.

      What this does do that SVG and Flash don't is inherently handle many more types of graphical display concepts, blending, transisitions, 3D workspace, Viewpoints, and even collision detection for 3D UI objects, as well as provide these object and work with controls for applications.

      It is like Flash and SVG and Postscript on Crack with full 3D capabilities to CREATE A UI, either application or eventually Web 'pushed' application.

      If Flash or SVG or any other of the current technologies could do any of these features, MS wouldn't have had to create this new system.

      It does basics from drawing fonts to screen and printer, to making a 3D Cube spin in front of a building with clouds going by, and the 3D Cube has User Controls and Interface items on it.

      This is basically moving Application UIs for Windows to the next generation, what people have complained about with Windows, that there was no inherent 3D inteface unless you wrote in DirectX. (Although not many other OSes have inherent 3D model rendering engines as a part of their standard API interface, not even OSX.)

      So instead of having to drop to OpenGL or DirectX to do some really cool animations or 3D application interfaces, you can use this tool and the other new tools from Microsoft, and they work in the WPF, which calls DirectX for you. This is like making 3D simple application design and animations 'easy' for the casual programmer.

      The causal programmer will also get something they can't get with SVG or Flash technology for their Windows application as they will get the speed of DirectX, where Flash and SVG don't give you that, even if you create a 'fake' 3D interface in them.

      I wish people would take a look at these technologies and see where MS has done some really good work, that is beyond what others are doing. If not, all other OSes will be falling behind once again.

      And the cool thing is, if the Linux and OSX world didn't want to have to 'create' their own version of this technology, MS is giving the keys away to it for free.

      So you could create a WPF for OSX or Linux, drop it through to an accelerated OpenGL interface, and be able to use these technologies on ANY OS platform.

      Just because MS designed the technologies and even if they are not 100% perfect, they are above 99% of what is out there for simple application design, the specifications for them are open - wide open even, and you could be writing a great KDE or OSX application using this interface technology with no intention of ever running it on Windows or having anything to do with Microsoft.

  • So how will this kill flash (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rminsk ( 831757 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @08:59PM (#14553400)
    How will this kill flash if I can not run it under other operating systems besides windows?

  • ZOMG FIRST (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dragon of the Pants ( 913545 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:00PM (#14553405) Homepage
    The only kind of flash killer I need is the kind that keps those damn annoying ads out of my face.

  • I, for one (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chemisor ( 97276 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:01PM (#14553411)
    I, for one, welcome our new Flash killing overlords. After all, anything that promises to kill off flash must have been made by a most honorable and considerate person, who wishes nothing more than to spare us from the many, many pains of the hostile landscape of the web.

    • Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:19PM (#14553523)
      I can understand that you hate ads taking space and processing-time, but have you ever developed an APPLICATION using Flash? For me it's the language (ActionScript 2.0) and the player. Thats basically what flash is. With the Flash 8 player you can do some really cool things with actionscript. Check it out before you just "hate everything flash". Also, I would like to point you to http://www.osflash.org/ [osflash.org] for all your opensource Flash-needs. Flash / SWF / ActionScript isn't just a way to create ads. You can create whole applications with it... when there is an appropriate use for it of course. Making stupid banners and ads with Flash is just a very small part of Flash, though many use Flash to do it. Do you hate gifs, jpegs and pngs too? They dont have as many other uses, besides banners and ads, as Flash do.

      The component-architecture by Macromedia admittedly sucks badly, but open source projects are worked on as I write this, to change all that. You can now use Eclipse as a development environment for Flash, though I prefer either TextMate or XCode for my development needs. Especially Xcode, since I do alot of Cocoa/Objective-C development as well.

      You should check out ActionStep, which is a framework modeled after NextStep/Cocoa, for Flash. It's opensource, nearly at 1.0, and looking quite good. There is the open source compiler mtasc, which supports all the latest things of the Flash 8 Player, is faster than Macromedias own, does better type checking and works from the commandline on most OSes. Being a commandline compiler, means it can easily be integrated with your favorite editor / IDE. Do read up on these things before you call it a nuisance and ad-thingie. Thank you very much.

      • Re:I, for one (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nwbvt ( 768631 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @10:58PM (#14554009)
        "You can create whole applications with it... when there is an appropriate use for it of course. "

        You know what else can create "whole applications"? Java, C++, C#, C, Perl, Python, Javascript, Fortran, Cobol, Ada, Visual Basic, Smalltalk, Assembly, need I go on? The fact that you can create "whole applications" with it isn't really something to be proud of.

        Show me one instance where Flash truly is the best choice out there. Show me one instance where the negatives attributes of Flash (ie accessibility problems, requirements for third party proprietary software, an inability to interact with the operating system, etc.) are outweighed by the positive attribute (it makes it easy for third graders to make pretty webpages).

        • Re:I, for one (Score:3, Informative)

          by MidnightBrewer ( 97195 )
          Its positive attributes: fully compliant with Section 508 accessibility requirements, requires a plugin that currently ships with a majority of browsers and is otherwise free and easily accessible, and the fact that it's easy for even a third grader to make "whole applications." Why is making something accessible for people a sin? Macromedia decided it was a good idea, and I'm willing to bet that they are now a whole lot richer than anybody currently participating in this thread.

          I'm currently building a s
    • Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we've just lost the picture, but what we've seen speaks for itself. The desktop has apparently been taken over- 'conquered' if you will- by a master race of giant corporations. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive web browsers or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the Sparkle will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new Flash killing overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted /. person
    • NEWS BULLETIN: Sparkle Murders Flash and Becomes the Preferred Action Verb for Shiny Things
      By Tim Bright (AP)

      It happened at 2:04 am Sunday morning when Flash was simply minding its own business drinking a beer and watching 'Justice League' re-runs on cable TV. One witness heard a scream and a next-door neighbor said that all of a sudden, Flash's apartment "lit up like the sun and then went dark." All that was found at the scene was a sparkling pile of ashes.
      A hunt is now on the way to find the prim

  • Oooh, I know this one...pick me! pick me! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wait...wait....umm...yes?

    Er...no?

    It's "yes", right? Damn, I *knew* I should have studied for this one....

  • MS Sparkle! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:03PM (#14553426) Homepage
    I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!!?

  • Why can't we all just get along? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArkiMage ( 578981 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:04PM (#14553436)
    Why is it that any time anyone develops a product and is successful with it Microsoft vows to "kill" them (or it)? Sad... Their "killer" will of course be MS-only. PS. If it's multi-platform, watch out.. That will really get you in MS's sights.

  • Yeah, sure . . . (Score:2, Insightful)

    by lixee ( 863589 )
    In other news, pam is dead, 640Kb is enough for everybody, Gates is respected 'cause he gives money away, Ballmer never had any anger management issues, .NET is ubiquitous and Google's days are counted!

  • Will it catch on? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dwedit ( 232252 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:05PM (#14553443) Homepage
    Sparkle will never make it until it gets its own Newgrounds.com or Homestarrunner.com. A community of users, and large amount of created content is what really matters, otherwise games which use the Vitalize Plugin would be sweeping the internet.

    • Re:Will it catch on? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ClamIAm ( 926466 )
      The danger with an MS-made flash type plugin is that it will probably be included with Windows and IE by default. So the 80-90% of people who use Windows+IE won't even have to click a few boxes to view the content. On the other hand, there's no way in hell MS will release the specs under a suitable license for others to reimplement this tech for non-IE browsers or for other OSes (without nasty NDAs and huge licensing fees). So MS once again screws over its competition.

    • Re:Will it catch on? (Score:5, Informative)

      by amliebsch ( 724858 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @11:10PM (#14554060) Journal
      You and everyone else are missing the point. While Sparkle can be used to make apps that run in IE, it is primarily for developing apps. It is not an plugin for IE. It is not intended to sweep the internet. It is for Windows. Sparkle is the designer for the main presentation layer for all of Vista. Microsoft has not to my knowledge ever even called it a "flash killer." It is not really competing with flash.

  • New Virus Channel? (Score:5, Funny)

    by NatteringNabob ( 829042 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:09PM (#14553463)
    Afterall, if they don't make IE dependent on ActiveX, they are going to need some new improved method for virus writers to gain access to your system.

    • Not likely -- Sparkle is developed in C# (Score:5, Informative)

      by panaceaa ( 205396 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @11:19PM (#14554116) Homepage Journal
      Sparkle is developed in C#, and due to its compilation to .NET's CLR, it's unlikely that it will be a channel for virus writers to exploit. First off, Sparkle developers don't need to worry about buffer overruns, which have been the hole used in many previous exploits. Second, the CLR can block the use of unauthorized code, preventing the installation of spyware and other trojans. Admittedly, the CLR hasn't yet been as widely adopted as Internet Explorer, so there still may be bugs in the underlying technology. But generally Sparkle's developed using a much more secure architecture than previous Microsoft products and therefore it's unlikely to see the same issues as IIS, IE, and Outlook.
  • This is Acrylic [microsoft.com]

    The link he has labeled as acrylic is Sparkle, as best I can tell. Unless it gets fixed since my posting :)

  • Unless it comes with a custom Strongbad [homestarrunner.com] palette, I don't see it superseding Flash.

  • I can't believe this guy said that he's actually HOPING to transition to Windows.

    Quote:

    Added Howard: "Our design team currently uses Macintoshes and occasionally builds Flash applications. We're hoping, as is our design team, to transition to 100 percent Windows across design and development in the next 18 months. If Microsoft can execute with the Expression line of tools Microsoft will not only capture the hearts and minds of developers, but designers too."

  • No one remembers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:16PM (#14553501) Journal
    Back when the big thing in IT was Postscript, MS and Apple worked together to try to make a Postscript killer to break Adobe's control. It was called TrueImage. It failed badly.

    The only thing we still use from TrueImage today is TrueType fonts, which were the type of fonts that TrueImage used rather than Adobe's Type I fonts.

    Some of these recent moves by MS to replace common presentation formats with their own remind me a lot of the TrueImage story.

    Since Adobe owns Macromedia now, it's the same old clash, MS vs Adobe. Adobe has proven themselves to be very good at format wars. Because of TrueImage and other market pressures (like HP's PCL), Adobe opened up the Postscript and eventually PDF specifications and made implementation of them completely royalty free. This was a big long-term win for them.

    So now MS is going against Adobe on two fronts, their new MS XPS format to try to kill PDF, and this Sparkle up against Flash. Adobe would do well to learn from the past and continue to use open specifications to keep MS in their place.

  • How much is it going to cost? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <.ervin.kosch. .at. .gmail.com.> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:16PM (#14553502) Journal
    Getting past all the Micr$oft and Crapomedia comments that have been posted so far, I have to ask: How much will the design tools cost?

    If its freeware, Sparkle WILL kill Flash. If its cheapware($99 or less) it will hurt Flash in the short term, and could kill Flash in 5 years(because of the cost). If it cost ny more then that, and Micrsoft's product will just become a niche market like Real Media's SMIL format.
    • Hopefully it will just get Adobe to lower the price on their flash products. A little competition is always good and flash is expensive for a small time developer (like me) to buy. I hope Microsoft can make some inroads on this just to keep Adobe inspired and get their prices down.

    • SMIL... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Trejkaz ( 615352 )
      SMIL is actually a W3C standard. [w3.org]

    • Re:How much is it going to cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:36PM (#14553630)
      "If its freeware, Sparkle WILL kill Flash. If its cheapware($99 or less) it will hurt Flash..."

      The price of Flash, or Flash competitors, is all but irrelevant. Now that Macromedia is owned by Adobe, Flash and Dreamweaver, will be added into the Adobe Creative suite bundle. Since most designers end up buying the CS bundle for Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign anyway, they'll be getting Flash for free. The inclusion of Dreamweaver and Flash into the CS suite is going to make Adobe the king of the hill for graphic designers in print and web work, and trying to beat them on cost isn't going to work - only someone who can make a product so good it compels users to get out of the Adobeland is going to have a chance.

      And given Microsoft's recent history with design apps, they don't have a shot in hell.
    • Vowels are free, yet your post treats them like a niche market.

    • How much will the design tools cost? If its freeware, Sparkle WILL kill Flash. If its cheapware($99 or less) it will hurt Flash in the short term, and could kill Flash in 5 years(because of the cost).

      Really? Because the unwillingness of professional designers to pay for the tools they need to create content is what's been holding back Flash from becoming a near-ubiquitous medium for content delivery, is that right?

      You seem to be neglecting the fact that the Flash plugin is a remarkably low-footprint p

  • ... Microsoft to design and implement any restricted code execution environment that could run web hosted hostile code?

  • Try Flashblock (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:24PM (#14553557) Homepage
    I already have a flash killer. It's called Flashblock. [mozdev.org] Of course it only works in Firefox. If the truth must be told, advertising killed flash for me. Flashblock simple buries it. Though it's more like burying something alive. It's still there. You just don't have to look at it anymore.

  • one thing microsoft can do... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DeveloperAdvantage ( 923539 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:25PM (#14553567) Homepage
    ...is create good IDEs.

    When I first read the article, my first response to a tool meant to improve user experience, from Microsoft, is that they should change the acronym from WPF to WTF, since, as a user, that is what always goes through my head when Word or IE crash.

    But, with further reading, I actually think Microsoft may find success here. With Visual Studio they have a good track record and may succeed again.
  • It's not going to happen. If there's anything that Microsoft has taught us, it's that popularity matters more than technical superiority.

  • Last Time We Discussed This... (Score:5, Informative)

    by somethinghollow ( 530478 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:31PM (#14553598) Homepage Journal
    I liked how this guy said it [slashdot.org].

    "A lot of people have tried to label Sparkle as a Flash killer but it is not. Sparkle is a new way to deal with winforms that allows custom UI design without coders running into the traditional limitations of development platforms."

    This "Quartz" thing might be close. We'll see.

    Bill, Steve just called. He wants his silly name back.

  • This is not what Sparkle is about (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:32PM (#14553606)
    The Slashdot summary appears to completely misunderstand the point of Sparkle. It is not really a direct competitor to Flash. It's a tool for designing application interfaces. It's much more akin to Glade or QT Designer but for Avalon/XAML instead of GTK+ or QT.

    The big difference though, is that it's targeted towards designers rather than programmers and it lets you take advantage of all the animation/multimedia/typography/etc. features in Avalon. This means that UI specialists can actually design the UI in programs, rather than designing it and handing a spec off to a programmer to implement.

    Frankly, I think it's a really good idea. As a programmer, I hate writing GUI code and certainly won't miss it. As a user I look forward to quality and usability improvements from this.
  • If not, then the killer will never kill, considering a major portion of the flash contents are author or co-authored by the artist developers, a large number of whom are using Macs. Well, let's see whether it is wheel reventing stuff or a real innovation. At least, this is the time that M$ is not copying Apple, or Sun, or Borland. Hope it is not a new mimicing game.

  • You need VISTA to run it! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by javaxman ( 705658 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:39PM (#14553651) Journal
    From TFA :
    But for Sparkle to even get in the ring with Flash, Microsoft has to first convince us that we need to move from Windows XP to Windows Vista. This migration will take time, possibly as much as five years. In the meantime, Macromedia has just released Flash 8 and can anticipate over 250 million unique downloads between now and when Windows Vista begins to sell.

    Umm... yea. Flash is about as dead as BSD, I think.

    I mean, really, I'm no fan of Flash, but somehow I don't see some Vista-only Microsoft technology replacing it. Call me when Sparkle is a shipping, multi-platform, free-download product.

    Then tell me where the millions of Flash games and applications on the web today are going.

  • Mr. Sparkle!

  • Obligatory (Score:2, Funny)

    by gbobeck ( 926553 )
    Microsoft hasn't created tools which can be described as being 'flash killers'... Chuck Norris IS the only flash killer.
    • Chuck Norris IS the only flash killer.

      Great, another slashdot meme is born... let's complete the cycle, shall we?

      -- It is official; Netcraft confirms: Flash is dying
      -- Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Flash killers!
      -- 1. Kill Flash; 2. ??? 3. Profit!
      -- In Soviet Russia, Flash kills you!
      -- In Korea, Flash is only used by old people anyway
      -- CowboyNeal
  • From TFA:

    Known as "Cider", Microsoft's Visual Designer for the Windows Presentation Foundation is set to be part of Visual Studio "Orcas," the next major release of Microsoft's Visual Studio tool suite, which is expected to support Windows Vista development. Orcas is slated for release in 2007.

    Just what I always wanted. A web based animation tool into which I can embed OLE objects containing print jobs of ascii porn stored in an access database on my desktop and e-mail them to your grandmother. Because th

  • The real question. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by cinderful ( 586168 )
    Do completely misguided hyperbolic newspost titles generate fervent responses?

    Yes, they do.
  • Anyone remember Liquid Motion?

  • In all seriousness (Score:3, Interesting)

    by smart.id ( 264791 ) <jbd@jd8[ ]om ['7.c' in gap]> on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:48PM (#14553697) Homepage
    In all seriousness to the excellent gentlemen who insist on calling every new product "X's killer," has anything that has been labelled so ever amounted to anything? Have any of these purported "killers" actually killed? Seriously though, can someone provide a concrete example of this happening?

    I suggest we go after the real killers. And have some reforms in the use of the word "killer" in headlines.
    • In all seriousness to the excellent gentlemen who insist on calling every new product "X's killer," has anything that has been labelled so ever amounted to anything? Have any of these purported "killers" actually killed? Seriously though, can someone provide a concrete example of this happening?

      I'm just wondering when this iPod killer is going to come out. I think it's due around about the time Apple goes bankrupt.

  • Cue the (Score:2, Funny)

    by Council ( 514577 )
    Countdown to the first Sparkle Ad.
  • I don't remember the the name, but Microsoft tried to kill flash once before. It was about 6 years ago. They had a browser plug in that was very similar to flash. They ended up dropping support for it. Anyone remember the name?

  • Sparkle is not Flash (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ececheira ( 86172 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @09:54PM (#14553721)
    Sparkle is not supposed to be a Flash killer. It's designed to allow rich UI's to be created for Windows applications. The new Windows Presentation Layer, formally known as Avalon, needs a UI tool more geared to designers than developers (Visual Studio).

    With Sparkle, a graphic designer can easily work on the UI elements while a developer concentrates on the code.

  • This simply isn't going to happen.

    The biggest part of the appeal to flash is that it's a mature product, and is almost universally available.

    Paying a couple hundred bucks for an authoring program, although steep at first isn't so bad when you consider that the player is free and that macromedia/adobe doesn't charge for distribution rights.

    If you haven't noticed lately, a big trend has been for site-owners to encapulate audio and video into their sites using flash. I for one welcome this, because it's one l
  • Reasons why it won't unseat Flash:

    1. Flash has an absolutely massive installed base already
    2. Adobe can continue to integrate Flash tightly into workflows for Photoshop, Illustrator and... did they go with Dreamweaver or GoLive? whichever. And those tools are heavily entrenched in their own right
    3. Flash has a massive community and support system in place

    And besides, MS bashing aside, why on earth would I trust Microsoft to do a product like this correctly? They have no track record.

  • Noscript plugin for Firefox is what helped me to kill flash, and am I ever thankful for it. It lets you choose which sites can run javascript or flash, and makes browsing a lot faster and less annoying because you get to skip so many ads. I never minded the old school static banner ad too much, but as they've gotten animated and noisier, I got more motivated to find a way to rid myself of them.

    Sparkle... yeah sounds great. Thanks for another innovation, MS. I can't imagine ever having a reason to ins

  • This product DOES NOT compete with Flash (Score:3, Informative)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2006 @11:54PM (#14554330)
    Why is everyone rambling on about this being a "Flash Killer".... has anyone actually taken the time to follow the links to learn about the product?

    Aside from the web design app, the suite is heavily focused on application design, prototyping, and development. Tools like interactive designer are treading in new waters.

  • The summary (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Stan Vassilev ( 939229 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2006 @01:00AM (#14554666)
    As a long time Flash developer I've been following the entire Sparkle/Avalon story and this is how it sums up according to me:

    - Microsoft has awaken to "embrace" the web only until recently. Vista, however is a much older strategy to improve the desktop beyond what the web might deliver to keep the people locked in (on an OS level). As you know if Internet starts delivering multiplatform rich applications, the reasons to use Windows become less.

    - Technogies like Flash threaten Microsoft's "monopol" on rich GUI-s, and Flash works on all platforms.

    - Microsoft tries to convince the public that "Sparkle was never meant to compete with Flash, it's for apps and so on". While this is true, it's also false, because Flash is quickly heading into the applications arena, and Microsoft is quickly heading into the Internet rich GUI-s. Basically they meet in the middle and who survives isn't clear. But keep in mind both Adobe and (ex)Macromedia are totally aware that the Vista technologies are ALSO meant as Flash killer and don't fool yourself with what MS says.

    - It's not true Avalon/XAML will work only on Windows Vista. For starters, it'll also work on Windows XP and 2003. Also Microsoft prepares cross-platform version of the technology, with less features, JavaScript support and so on, which has been demonstrated to work on a Mac. The initiative is called WPF/E, or: Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere.

    - The Sparkle team has at least 4-5 ex. top (ex)Macromedia Flash employees, Flash gurus and alike. They all come in the team with their Flash habits and it shows in the interface of the program: it's simply MADE so Flash developers will dig it. And I dig it.

    - Quartz is for web pages, don't confuse it with Sparkle, the Avalon XAML designer program.

    - A weakness of Sparkle will be that it won't be suited for complex cartoons and animations like Flash is. Flash tried to move away from animations and cartoons as well in an attempt to look as a serious application platform, but later Macromedia regretted as they alienated their core audience, and the most creative artists out there. The latest version of Flash proves cartoons and animations ARE important after all, and a good share of the features are aided for artists.

    Bah that should be about all important... I leave the conclusions to you.

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