XAML Development Today, But Not From Microsoft

Paul Colton writes "My company, Xamlon, has just released its flagship product, also called Xamlon. It allows for XAML development on all supported Windows platform, from Win98 through Longhorn. We're also investigating Mono and Java as possible development targets. CNET recently wrote a story of our launch."

Comments

Promotions?

[mfh]

My company, Xamlon, has just released its flagship product, also called Xamlon.

Thank you for your nice advertisement. No seriously. Why post a story to Slashdot about your own product or service? That is what the millions of Slashdotters around the net are for. It's hard enough for one of us to get a story posted... now we have to compete with the source?

It allows for XAML development on all supported Windows platform, from Win98 through Longhorn.

That's an example of why you should allow journalists to do their job and report news. You forgot to pluralize platform. Your sentence should read, It allows for XAML development on supported Windows platforms.

Grammatically, you can't possibly list supported operating systems in the article by date without explaining yourself, so you should have linked to a page that would show the supported operating system. But even that page is scarce with info about supported operating systems and says: "The engine is .NET 1.1 compatible and runs on any .NET 1.1 platform (Windows 98 - Longhorn)", which is only specific if the reader knows which operating systems are included in the subset Windows 98 - Longhorn, and many do not. If you meant that you could support any operating system released since Windows 98, why didn't you just say that? It leads the reader to think that maybe there is an OS that is not supported somewhere in that subset, but you are not reporting it because of some business reasons.

Yes, I think your product seems quite wonderful. But you're going about promotion the wrong way. I happen to like the fact that you're competing with Microsoft based off their own specs!

FTA: Xamlon built the program from the published technical specifications of Microsoft's own user interface development software, which Microsoft itself doesn't plan to release until 2006.

Doesn't that open your company up for lawsuits? (IANAL)

Re:Promotions?

[flibuste]

You are right...Why is that allowed on Slashdot?

I have the awful idea that it's only because of the "Microsoft didn't do it before us" thing.

The post is probably yet another mean for happy ./oters to bark against Microsoft

Frankly, I do not appreciate this attitude from Slashdot. Posters should focus on technology and not who's selling what and when.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Just to ask a really stupid question

[codepunk]

Why on earth would anyone use XAML over XUL which runs everywhere on every platform?

Re:Just to ask a really stupid question

[ahdeoz]

cause XUL (which version? Mozilla) sucks. It's only benefit is that it can embed HTML. For menus and such, it's usually better to build the html+javascript serverside and then send it to the browser. Even if that means shipping a lightweight server with your client-only app. For any complex gui, you're still stuck with an applet or activex type object. For all the real work of an application, you're going to need access to files, sockets, databases, and other libraries, which bluntly, xpcom mostly can't do, and even the simple stuff, like reading a file, it does a piss-poor job of and makes it difficult and very non-performant. The reasoning is (no joking) that if you make accessing a file difficult and unproductive, then developers will be discouraged from doing so and hence the application will be more secure.

I've worked on projects that used XUL, where we had to ship Firefox (and have the client install it separately) for XUL, and then the entire app was run from a wscript file so that we could have activeX and ado do the work. We thought about using an applet to drive the application, but it turned out to be almost as much as a painful to access the system as XPCOM, though alot more was possible once you worked around the java security-through-difficulty design. And I wished we had a template language to dynamically generate our XUL, because it was tedius.

I'm much happier with the new design where we'll ship a webserver (jetty) and database (hsqldb) and use wscript (still -- to launch) but have servlets generate html guis and handle DB access.) As a bonus, the standalone app can become a distributed, hosted solution, just by shipping a new config file.

Does anyone know a good way to ship a cross platform apache+mysql+php+your_web_app all on the client with zero configuration?

Re:Deeper and Deeper

[Swamii]

No matter how good XAMLon is, I (and likely other /.'ers) are much less likely to even *look* at the web site/article now... /. effect or not.

Slashdotters won't look at the site, especially since it's slashdotted. I've got a conundrum for ya Trebek!

New Section

[quantaman]

How about a "Products" section where stories about fancy new program X can be posted and the people who are interested in them can read the slashvertisments to their heart's delight. Stories like this which are really just an advertisment for something there doesn't appear to be a lot of interest in don't belong on the front page.

Another spooky juxtaposition between story subject

[idontgno]

and in-page advertisement:

Entire story is (apparently) paid advocacy of product in support of Microsoft technology.

Banner ad is for Newsforge's "The Futility of Arguing with Paid Advocates" article.

Quoting:
Robin "Roblimo" Miller writes: I had exactly one question for Brown: "How much would it cost to have you stop putting our Microsoft party line and start advocating Linux instead?"

So I put that same question to the editors! How much did it cost to have you start putting out the Microsoft party line?

/me ducks incoming...

Re:correct me if i'm wrong

[ptlis]

I can't compare them on technical merits (I know ~0 about XAML) but XUL has the major advantage that it works now...

nifty bookmarklet

[Anonymous Coward]

javascript:url=window.location.href;regExp2=/http: \/\/.*\.slashdot\.org\/[a-z]+\/([0-9]+)\/([0-9]+)\ /([0-9]+)\/([0-9]+).shtml.*/gi;newurl=url.replace( regExp2, 'http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=$1/$2/$3 /$4');if(url!=newurl) {top.location.href=newurl;} else {regExp=/http:\/\/.*\.slashdot\./gi;newurl=url.rep lace(regExp,'http://linux.slashdot.');if(url!=newu rl) {top.location.href=newurl;}}

i prefer the look of linux.slashdot.org, but its pretty straightforward to change

Wow, the MONO of the XML programming world!!

[SuperKendall]

Great work furthering Microsoft guys! I'm sure your mothers must be very proud that you are helping giant corperations across the street like this, where they can then push you in front of a truck.

If you want to do the world a favor, try to spread Mozilla's XUL around. Develop a plugin that lets you run XUL apps in IE. Work on a dev environemnt for XUL.

Seems quite interseting

[jrexilius]

Let me know when it supports more than Winblows.

Would love to use something like this for my company but I need cross-platform capability.

Give me a version that outputs W3C spec compliant UI code and runs on either Linux, OSX, or Solaris and I will make the investment.

And your website sign-up form is broken, by the way. At least it doesnt work in Mozilla on Linux. Would like to sign-up, but can't.

This will upset Microsoft's plans

[Gary Destruction]

Microsoft is advertising XAMLON as being a key feature of Longhorn. With XAML available for Windows versions as early as 98, the upgrade cycle might be breaking. The outcome should be interesting.