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WVG : The New Scalable Vector Graphics
jafro_svg writes "While the press has discussed Microsoft's upcoming 'Sparkle' as a potential Flash-killer - the technology arena on which Microsoft's new technology is having the most impact is SVG. SVG (now a W3 standard for 3 yeras) was itself billed as a Flash-killer some years ago, and speculation about how it might be accepted into the mainstream for developers (i.e. incorporated into IE) now seems inevitable -- you see, Sparkle's real name is WVG and is 90% identical to SVG." Jafro_svg also points out this online SVG tutorial.
Looking at their overview, this looks a lot like their previous answer to SVG - VML.
VML tied into directx. They only mention that you cannot mix GDI and Avalon in the same window because WVG is hardware rendered through Avalon. Also sounds like directx.
The only major change was that in VML it always wanted a namespace defined for it to work - like IE didn't know what to do with a VML file. WVG seems like a different way to display for generic windows applications - not just web.
Looks like microsoft is innovating by repackaging an older product into a discription language that can be called by a standard win32 app. It would be interesting to see an open source toolkit that does the same thing as WVG, but uses open standards and remains cross platform.
Well, if you actually read anything about Longhorn, you would know that there is no difference between a native app and a web app in Longhorn. IE will support avalon rendering, so if you go to a website that uses MS's proprietary document/app format, you WILL see a Sparkle rendered page.
Read anything about it, does USING and developing on it count?
You are right that Web Applications will use also be able to use the rendering engine in Longhorn; however, you still don't get it.
You are taking about features of the distributed application model that allows web and client side applications to be synonymous to the OS.
The fact still remains that 'Sparkle' is the rendering engine of Longhorn, just as the GDI of Windows today uses a Bitmap based engine.
Using your analogy is ridiculous when you consider that Web pages of today are displayed in IE window on a Windows computer rendered as a Bitmap image. This is no different than it being rendered in the future as a vector image in Longhorn.
Using your messed up analogy you could also say that because the current Windows GDI uses DIB technology to display a Web Page in IE then Microsoft is trying to take over the JPEG and other Bitmap technologies. (Sound ridiculous yet?)
You are confusing the two concepts, and using that to establish that the Vector engine or Longhorn is designed to be a WEB standard.
Admittedly there is more to "Sparkle" than just the Vector engine of Longhorn by incorporating the UI in a XML style that is network friendly, but that does not mean it is designed to take over anything that already exists, it is simply just the evolution of display technology in Longhorn.
If you look hard enough, you will see that "Sparkle" has concepts from other networking GUI models as well, does XWindows ring a bell? Making an open light protocol interface for the Vector engine is a great idea, much better than shoving massive chunks of bitmaps over the network for remote applications.
- But again, this does not mean it is designed to replace the internet with a Windows only world - Microsoft is NOT that stupid, nor do they have that much control on the internet.