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Flash, Meet Sparkle
Robert writes "Microsoft finally released more information about their Sparkle product on a Channel 9 MSDN video. Sparkle is vector based XAML system for doing applications that may have traditionaly been done in flash. Ars Technica's Josh Meier has a few things to say about it, too."
Can you see I am serious!
Get out of my way, all of you!
This is no place for loafers.
Join me or die.
Can you do any less?
For lucky best wash, use Mr. Sparkle.
Now I'm gonna need SparkleBlock as well as FlashBlock. More browser plugin bloat.
XAML.
... "XAML is a declarative XML-based language optimized for describing graphically rich visual user interfaces, such as those created by Macromedia Flash" ... "This Microsoft Windows article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
"the user interface markup language for Windows Vista, the next version of Microsoft Windows."
Does this mean that we are going to see a huge rise in crappy Sparkle menus and animations on every web site?
Or maybe some sweet pop-over Sparkle ads? Microsoft just created their next enemy. Will the IE popup blocker block Sparkle ads? Or will that be a selling point?
The best thing that can possibly come of this is new games. That's the one thing I still enjoy about Flash on occasion.
Mr. Sparkle: A joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern
Are there any plans to include support for this technology into Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, Safari, etc.?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
When are the application makers going to start realizing that anything they develop on Microsoft's platform is eventually going to be copied and forced into the collective? Seriously, is there any piece of software running on Windows that Microsoft isn't in the process of making thier own version of?
The more you know, the less you understand.
Product Demonstration here
Yet, here it is, with a name that sounds exactly like it's directly competing with Flash. Along those lines, why Sparkle? Flash sounds cool, but Sparkle sounds...girly.
Otherwise, the concept actually sounds really cool, like the visual component of Visual Studio on steroids. Replacing the windowing interface with purely vector graphics sounds promising, though it also sounds a little too abuseable. Still, this might herald the beginning of an actually innovative M$, seeing that they now have Google and FOSS knocking on its doors.
I wonder if it'll make use of the GPU to do the rendering.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
If "Sparkle" isn't significantly more attractive as a creative tool than Flash, there really will not be any advantage for web developers and advertisers alike to use it. It just means another plug-in that people may or may not have, and advertisers and web developers can't aford this risk, given that IIS is not the dominant web server, and not everyone has IE. It's not going to be an easy road for MS.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Do you install Firefox Plugins ? because they have just as bad a security model (ie. none) as ActiveX
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. Think of it as a flash front-end to a full Win32 API and data-access. The fear I have is that Windows programs have always had a "consistant" look at feel. However, programs like Winamp back in the day changed the rules. These days more and more applications are starting to forego Microsoft UI guidelines for their own 3l33t designs which can be a pain to learn and a pain to script to. I hope it doesn't happen here but I would certainly, for example, expect a lot of Apple OSX-look knock off apps showing up once Sparkle gets out there.
Anyway, check out the picture gallery if you can't RTFA.
There seems to be a clamor for Flash-like functionality but without Macromedia's proprietary player and tools.
SVG is one alternative that a lot of people seem to like. Scalable Vector Graphics. Supposedly, Firefox/Mozilla will support it soon. Sounds like a great thing.
Then why doesn't Microsoft's Sparkle sound like a great thing too? The language is written in XML (this statement doesn't compute, but works), so it's not like you couldn't program your little game in something like vi or Notepad. Is it because it is Microsoft that everyone is down on it?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Well now, I suppose there isn't any point in the bleeping, if you can tell what the word is... I mean, generally I imagine that they did bleep out a swearword.
This could be the inkblot test for the next generation!
Tape plays: "Hey, *beeeeeep*"
What did you hear behind the beep?
a) "biatch" - You need help.
b) "stop censoring me!" - Your sense of humor is overdeveloped, and you need help.
c) "I love my mum!" - You're fine.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Remember there's an open source Flash player, called GplFlash,. It appeared a few months ago in another slashdot article. However, it's only available via CVS (yet).
Flash, Sparkle, what's next, Twinkle?
I remember in the late '80s / early '90s. I used to get my pr0n (600 baud - thank you)The executable would always say "waiting for sparkle". I do remember that the quality of the video (remember folks this was 286 territory) was very good. Actual video, not pixelated bitmaps.
I wonder...
No offense, sir, but you seem quite convinced that this will become a major security flaw in Windows Vista.
Does your opinion have any technical merit? Have you inspected the source code to the implementation of this technology? Can you provide clear examples of malicious uses?
Or is your opinion based solely upon the past actions of Microsoft, with regards to similar technology?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
yes.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
... about designing a quality, usable GUI. That's most likely because, like programming, designing a good GUI takes a lot of skill, experience and effort. So this may actually be quite beneficial, as it lets everyone specialize. Programmers write the complex algorithms necessary to power these applications, while the GUI designers can manipulate and form the GUI without needing much effort on behalf of the programmers. Everyone is more efficient this way.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
And then you can use this tool to convert the web based C#/XAML app back to Flash. http://www.xamlon.com/
.exe it has its limitations (disk access, etc -- which requires workarounds like embedding it inside another layer (ie. C# app) and passing messages back and forth).
Hopefully Macrobe will take this as a challenge and drop in some 3d support and copy a few other features into their next version.
Main differences here is Flash is focused on the web - while you can output an
Sparkle is for Desktop apps - and you can output for the web (but will limit your potential audience)
Watch the fscking video.
.NET for Avalon, Sparkle is a (even more than a) UI development tool for creating vector based interfaces. The beautiful thing is, everything you create is just a .NET object that can be manipulated by the developer.
You kids all want to bash on a new Microsoft product without having any idea what it is, what it can do, who it is for, etc.
Sparkle != Flash
Completely built on top of
What does this mean?
It means an artist can use an artist's toolset to create a beautiful fully functional front end, then pass it off to the developer to do the backend. No more mockups that can't be translated into a real application front end.
Version 2 is only in CVS, but releases of version 1 can be downloaded
Seriously folks, let's hope the world's web developers steer clear of this. Flash is cross-platform and it's one of the key tools that make the non-Microsoft desktop useful. I know, I know, as a techie you probably hate all those "punch the monkey!" ads, but think of that Linux box you may have set up for your Mom or something. Would she be happy with it if she couldn't play all of those silly cartoons that your aunt emailed to her? These things seem trite to us, but normal users demand them.
XAML is a Windows-only technology, designed to make the Web one step more proprietary to Microsoft. Don't let them do it. Keep the web based on cross-platform tools. Steer cleer of XAML.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
What?! No more Flash-based Microsoft Ads?
I mean I so enjoy seeing Microsoft advertise their development tools using Flash based ads on Slashdot!
It just makes me laugh everytime I see one!
Will they now be Sparkle-based?!
I've been working on flash apps for work. God the networking library sucks ass. Creating a connection returns true or false. True if it succeeds, false if it doesn't. There's absolutely no way to figure out why it didn't work!
Insane. I set policies first with my XMLSocket server, and then with an HTTP server. Doesn't seem to be it and it's driving me nuts. Every other networking library will tell you exactly why it failed. Not Actionscript!.
Fuck macromedia. And fuck Microsoft for killing client-side java!!!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've spent the last 2 days on the road talking with people at 53 companies. Dragged along an engineer as part of his training. I'll be out there again tomorrow, and I'm sure that it'll be the same.
Not one person said they liked using Windows. Not one! They hate Windows. They hate Microsofts Client Access Licensing schemes. They hate the viruses, the downtime, the forced upgrades, the patch hell, the crappy products - everything. And they also hate it when they go home. They want OUT!
This is not a slashdot "talking-out-of-my-ass" opinion - this is the reality in the corporate world today. Pissed off doesn't begin to describe it. They feel they've been raped.
Like I said, I've expended the shoe leather, gotten the face time, and this is the reality. Microsoft makes crap. Everyone knows it. Nobody likes it.
There's no need for a "coming together." The world and Microsoft are heading for a divorce.
"Flash, Meet Sparkle" and then linking to an article explaining how it has nothing to do with Flash at all.
Seriously, the "rich" user experience that we see in most Flash websites really isn't something we need more of. Notice how rich the GMail user experience is, without a drop of Flash? Wonder why Google chose to go the route they did? The vast majority of Flash sites I see only detract from the user experience. The supposedly "rich" user experiences just mean that there's a cool animation as each new content area opens... with a tiny font that I can't resize, with a poorly-contrasting color scheme that I can't override, with annoying non-standard scrollbars, and with form fields that can't I use my browser's auto-complete features on. How is that a richer user experience? Adding eye-candy at the expense of breaking basic usability -- never mind the fact that you're hiding your pages from the search engines -- is not a worth trade-off. Oh, but wait -- I forgot there's music playing in the background, and bloops and echoing clicks when I mouse over the mystery-meat controls. Seriously, there's a place for Flash online -- it's a nice way to add inline audio/video or animations, and there are online Flash-based games that are awesome... but I'm yet to see a single Flash-only website where the user experience was actually better because of Flash.
It was not actually homer simpson: Homer just happens to look exactly like the fish/lightbulb hybrid in the ad.
I am currently at the Microsoft PDC and I saw the product demoed.
This is a good thing and its tru the possiblity for abuse is great but the same thing can be said for the blink tag, marquees and fonts in the early days of the web.
The demo apps created for Vista are amazing. The power is now gives to user interface designers is (dare I say it again) amazing.
I watched a microsoft dev code up an application during a one hour session that took a basic UI and then refined it through out his session with XAML.
It was an eye opening experience.
Say what you want about Microsoft... say what you want about the Apple OS X vs Microsoft Vista. But I have seen it working. This is revolutionary for us developers. With very little code we are going to be able to create gorgeous applications with a terrific user experience.
Sure some people will go over board...some always seem to do this during a transitional period. But the best apps and UI will surface.
I am looking forward to the next few years and the new types of applications we will have.
Bet this
Seems microsoft is trying to tie web services to windows.
ie. Google threatens microsoft because many google applications run in a web browser that could be running on any platform.
Now if microsoft can get everyone using what is basically Windows GUI in all there web apps then those web apps will be tied to windows.
Yay for microsofts World Domination Department. good job guys, thanks for making life difficult.
...and that is all I have to say about that.
http://jessta.id.au
I'm a grad student studying interactive design, and I'm fairly intrigued about a software package seemingly being marketed toward "interactive designers."
Currently, interactive designers are few and far between. It's difficult to find a -good- graphic designer who understands human behavior and software development.
I know a ton of good developers who can produce ok interfaces (ok as in "ehh", not ok as in "good"); I know a slew of good designers who don't know a string from an array; and I know several HCI gurus who don't understand graphic design / visual communication from a hole in the ground.
So, here are my questions... is Sparkle evidence of Microsoft's foresight? Does Microsoft realize "interactive design" is an emerging discipline? Are they going to cater to new designers who are capable of communicating with developers and contributing toward in initial development. Or, is Sparkle just another attempt at offering staggered babelfish communication between designers and developers who really don't understand each other's jobs?
If it's the latter, I don't know how successful this product is going to be.
This sounds fairly rad, but I'm somewhat pessimistic. After seeing the UIs for Windows Vista(TM) and Word 12, I doubt Microsoft really understands interactive design. How can they understand interactive design if they're not hiring real interactive designers, or at the very least, not incorporating them properly into the development process? My complaints about OS X's Finder pale in comparison to my complaints about those gift wrapped turds.
Man... what I would give for one day in Redmond with executive management.
Personally, I think the next big wave in software development is going to come from interactivity
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
"They feel they've been raped."
So they
a) either have no f*cking idea what that's like
b) are prone to serious exaggeration
or
c)You're making it up and are one of those people that think 'George Lucas raped your childhood'.
Come on, calm down a tad... I use Windows and MS products as well as a lot of OS (Eclipse, Laszlo, PHP etc. etc. ) products every day and really.. I'm not fuming, I'm not frothing... I really am quite happily getting along with my work... and so are all my colleages... and those in the companies we do work in... and everyone else I know.
I agree with the licensing schemes, they are a load of absolute confusing and archaic crud... but the software (which is what we're talking about) is working fine for us all here thanks very much.
What's interesting about your experience is that I've experienced exactly the opposite myself. I suspect this is because I've mostly been around small to medium sized businesses, and you're talking about large corporations. Still...
I currently work for a manufacturer of restaurant equipment. Not counting the folks that actually build the machines, I'd guess we have roughly a hundred employees in the form of executives, engineers, etc. Total Microsoft shop. I am literally the only person with a non-Windows machine-a dual processor G5 Mac. Reportedly, when the head of IT heard that a Mac was going to be brought in, he slammed his fist on his desk and proclaimed that nobody was going to be hired just to maintain one Mac. The folks in the IT dept. then informed me that if anything happened to my machine, they would not help me.
Prior to this, I had worked in a small mom-and-pop advertising company. Roughly between four and eight employees depending on who had left at what time. One computer guy, and all machines were Windows. This guy had been a Mac person, but for some reason converted. It was practically pavlovian. If you mentioned either "Apple" or "Mac" at any time, he'd immediately say "Man, I hate the Mac!". Once he proclaimed that Windows was easier to use and just generally let it be known that the Mac was inferior to any Redmond product. He had no experience with *nix-based systems. We had people come and go for that one, but that's a different story.
While there's hardly and hard research any analysis going on here, my point is that Microsoft seems to have achieved a perfect two-pronged attack. On the one hand, they've won over the small-to-medium businesses who pay out little per business, but are more numerous, and they've locked in the larger corporations who are fewer in number, but pay much more. The corporations hate the lock-in, but are constrained by a number of factors, not the least of which is previously trained admins coming up from the smaller business ranks.
As I stated, no hard research and analysis, but if it were true, it'd be pretty damn impressive. From a business standpoint at least.
--Erik
1) Sparkle is not a technology. Sparkle is the codename for an application. Get it right.
2) The technology is Windows Presentation Foundation (formally codenamed Avalon).
3) It is not a flash killer. It is true that you can host Avalon applications in a web browser, and they will interact with the back and forward buttons of a web browser. It is true that Microsoft is touting this as a high-end replacement for HTML (as far as I can tell).
4) Although details are sketchy, Microsoft has announced a royalty free OPEN technology called Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere. This means that you can run these applications in ANY web browser on ANY platform.
The internet has grown and thrived thanks to open standards. Anyone (capable) person can write a mail reader or a web server and a lot of them have done just that. That's why I can write this words while sitting on a machine filled with free code implementing the standards. HTML, HTTP TCP/IP. All of them free and open.
/picz
Than FLASH came. A lot of sites started using it. FLASH is bad enough. Flash is a closed standard. There is a player for Windows, Mac OS and Linux x86. All other platforms are screwed. FLASH has degraded the open availability of the web for many people.
Now we have Sparkle. I'm sure it's brillant. But will we ever be able to write an open Sparkle player? Will MS release Sparkle player for Linux? I don't think so.
If people on the internet start to embrace closed standards and abandon the open one, the internet will not longer be free. All of us using Linux/BSD will soon be looking at empty boxes in our browsers saying "Missing plugin".
That's how corporations will steal the net from the people. By replacing openess with closed standards.
------- Look mum! I have posted another Slashdot comment! --------
Okay, enough of the mis-directed Flash-bashing. Is this just a nerd thing...the cool geeks on /. seem to hate Flash, so I hate it too!
a in-application for the sake of OOP.
I mean really, do you blame photoshop every time you see a bad image? Video cameras for bad commercials? Shit, lets blame guns for war and give politicians a break!
Flash is a powerful, relatively easy tool to use for developing everything from annoying ads to cool, slick, easy-to-use web applications and games. That, unfortunately, means that many clueless usability-impaired newbies can use Flash to create equally useless splash screens and seizure-inducing Ads. Maybe they should make Flash more like MIA or Lightwave, eh? Then only the smart, nerdy types could use it.
Oh, and from what I've read Sparkle doesn't 'describe' the objects in XML as far as the Forms/UI goes, it uses XML to position, size, and adjust an object's attributes. XML files like that are like 5-10K for most forms. It isn't just a big document of vector descriptions...(take a look at Macromedia Flex if you want to see what they are trying to do)...so settle down on the 'my god the files will be huge' melodrama. It'll suck just fine being a Microsoft product without all the misaligned conjecture and assumptions.
Oh, and since this is probably going to get modded into oblivion by some pissed off Flash-hater, I'll just add that OpenLazlo sucks...just what we need, learn yet another task-specific language to develop a code-embedded-in-design-godforsaken-mess-to-maint
There, done bitching, go on about your business.
There's obviously people who are very happy with the products. Or they wouldn't be where they are. But that doesn't mean there isn't a change in the industry.
I work in a large enterprise. We have people who are absolute Microsoft fanboys (and outright zealots in some cases). We have folks who are indifferent. We have folks who range from dislike to absolute hate of the company and anything it produces. The "dislike" column has been increasing over the years. In fact, it's become a rather popular notion.
So hey - if it's not felt in your neck of the woods, fair enough. Glad you're doing fine over there. It either means you're avoiding some hassle or missing out. Time will tell.
I don't actually know anyone who is "happy with the products." I know people who think that "all computers suck." I know people who look at it like going to the dentist. I don't think there actually are microsoft fanboys who are users. I know mac fanboys who are users. Then again, I don't know of *any* linux or bsd users who are just users...
"Microsoft makes crap. Everyone knows it. Nobody likes it."
*cough*bullshit*cough*
Sorry for your reality check (you must really be unlucky to meet so many disappointed customers), but i don't believe a word of it. Give people a tool and they will always find something wrong with it. And ofcourse they will mention that, before mentioning the good parts of it.
Yes, i use Windows too. Yes, i dislike things about it. Hate it? Not really. I can do so much more on Windows than i can on any other OS. Oh yeah, i'm using Linux too, but not for the desktop. Not even for server in some cases. Active Directory is a really nice thing that is well supported, documentated and has been in real-life production for quite some time now and i can't think of anything that i would replace it with.
I also honestly think that your reality is kind of tainted by your opinion about MS too. I mean, this sentence:
"They hate the viruses, the downtime, the forced upgrades, the patch hell, the crappy products - everything"
Let me go over this, word by word:
viruses: fault of a sys/net-admin. It's no big deal installing a good antivirus, even network-wide.
downtime: redundancy. really. have multiple servers do the same thing. Our network here is 100% windows and has close to 99% uptime. More downtime? Ah, hire a (better) admin!
forced upgrades: does somebody from Microsoft stands behind you with a baseballbat, threatening to smack you silly if you don't upgrade? Anyways, we have upgrades all the time. The only persons who complain (if you can call it that) are the sysadmins, but that's just a select few compared to the normal users who should not notice these upgrades.
the patch hell: what patch hell? Please explain. I've just patched a terminal server using windowsupdate. One reboot later and the server is back in production. Hell? Not more than applying a patch for any other OS.
everything: right.
So, again, i think you're personal vendetta against MS is in the way here. Come with me and i'll take you on a tour through the building. I'm sure that alot of people will complain, but that in the end it won't be as bad as the customers want you to think. People who use computers complain. It's always been this way, and it will never change.
"The world and Microsoft are heading for a divorce."
Don't get me wrong, i would love to see the day that our systems run 100% MS-free. But the reality is, that (most) MS products are well supported, documentated and in use for longer than its other-OS-alternative, and therefor make it a better product. I wouldn't like to implement an opensource product in the network, and then find out when i have a problem with it, that i can't go anywhere for support.
Anyhow, how is this post at all interesting. It is just another person claiming that everybody hates Microsoft, when Microsoft somehow still pulls a vast majority of market share. Does anybody in the world believe, that as Mr. Hudson says "Not one person said they liked using Windows". Just so you can stop using that line, I would like to say that I like using Windows.
Really, don't blame the system admins for something that is flawed by design and intent.
Wow, that's exactly what I don't want from a desktop application. More applications with inconsistent appearances and behaviours, hooray... I recently helped install a bunch of Windows software on a relative's computer ( after installing a DVD drive for them, much of it was bundled stuff ) and every single app I dealt with had its own custom interface ( varying in crappiness ) which bore very little resemblance to anything else. I've been using computers for a fair old while now and I still had trouble figuring out how to quit some of these apps.
What you're suggesting makes me feel glad I'm not a ( full time ) Windows user...
and Apple's is trying desperately to duplicate Visual Studio with XCode (but failing miserably)
As an Xcode and VS6/VS 2003 user, I can say I don't think Apple is trying to duplicate VS at all. They haven't really made all that many concessions to CodeWarrior users, and have stated many times that they aren't trying to emulate anything with Xcode, just trying to make a good IDE.
In any case, Interface Builder ( part of the Xcode suite ) is the best GUI layout app I have ever used, hands down. It knocks the GUI layout tools of VS-whatever ( including VB ) into a cocked hat. It is better by miles than every other GUI layout app I've used - aforementioned VS environments, REALbasic, Glade, Delphi, wxDesigner, Qt Designer etc.
If you're a Cocoa developer ( which I'm not ), Interface Builder also has a lot of tools for visually connecting UI components to objects, data sources etc.
Straying a bit, but I don't actually understand why people think VS is such a great IDE. I only really use it for C++. VS 6 had me tearing my hair out over a number of UI things which were so awkward compared to what I had been used to ( in CodeWarrior ). VS 2003 improved much of that, but added quirks of its own. The code completion is good, but I don't actually find myself using it all that much. The parameter hints can be useful, but don't always work when they could be handy. I don't find general editing tasks as flexible as I'm used to on the editors I use on the Mac. When I have a lot of code to write, I generally write it in Xcode, even if it's Windows only code, which is far from perfect but which I find myself more productive in. I still have to do a lot in various VS versions, so I think I've given them a fair chance.
One thing I do appreciate about VS is the VBA support which lets me write scripts to automate a bunch of stuff I often have to do. I also have scripts to give the same results in Xcode and CodeWarrior. I find VBA is more flexible ( for various reasons, not necessarily related to the language ) than Perl in Xcode and AppleScript for CodeWarrior.
Jo Meder
This has always been Microsoft's strategy, not some reaction to Google. They had to kill Netscape because they feared "browser based OS", i.e. all applications running inside a browser thus minimalizaing the importance of the OS. They've introduced numerous anti-standards (HTC for example) in HTML, so that most websites would only work in IE. ActiveX claimed to be about "a richer internet experience" but hide the curious side effect of making this richer experience only available to Windows users. XAML is really just a redux of ActiveX, but maybe will less potential spyware opportunities.