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Microsoft's Sparkle a Flash Killer?
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.
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.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
How will this kill flash if I can not run it under other operating systems besides windows?
Because of Mr. Sparkle. They need to rename it for it to have a chance.
The only kind of flash killer I need is the kind that keps those damn annoying ads out of my face.
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.
there's a couple of Channel9 videos showing off Sparkle if y'all is interested
Micro$oft and their PR crew have been labeling every new product a _Insert_Opposing_Company_Here_ for years. Are we ever going to see these products or is it more "Wait and ours will be better" talk?
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Er...no?
It's "yes", right? Damn, I *knew* I should have studied for this one....
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!!?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The Makers of Luna should never be allowed to set foot into any sort of visual design space of any sort... this just disturbs me far too much. Oh well hopefully this will piss off Adobe good enough to include CoreImage support in the next version of Photoshop.
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.
Happy time fun Sparkle will banish flash to the land of wind and ghosts!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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!
Res publica non dominetur
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.
Did someone say Quartz? http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/quartzextreme /
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.
This is Acrylic
:)
The link he has labeled as acrylic is Sparkle, as best I can tell. Unless it gets fixed since my posting
Sites that make you scroll left and right to read the text like the "upcoming developer tools" link are horrid, I can't/won't read them.
more like a fizzle than a spark.
.. looks like thanks to their employees openness Microsoft is perking up and trying to reform. I definitely appreciate that all their top developers have blogs and they have a decent beta program. Microsoft has thousands of bloggers.
.. yet many of their product ideas come from feedback of apple fans or watchers. Heck Jobs is now merging Pixar with Disney. And you know how friendly Disney has been about copyrights etc.
.. maybe you guys know a few? Is there an Apple blogs site like Google, Sun or Microsoft have? Why does Apple have to be so secretive? They also won't open up Fairplay or support an open DRM format. I hate DRM as much as the next guy .. but Apple really should at least make Fairplay an open standard so you don't have to sell your music via Itunes if you want to sell DRM'd music that users can load into their ipod without stripping the DRM.
That said Sparkle is cool technology.
Actually with upcoming Vista and what they are doing with Visual Studio, MS Office and IE7
offtopic rant:
Compare this to Apple. Jobs doesnt like Apple revealing anything
How many Apple bloggers are there? I cant think of any
Unless it comes with a custom Strongbad palette, I don't see it superseding Flash.
Lessee, we've got Flash, which works on multiple platforms, or this, which (because making applications Windows-only is the only way Microsoft keeps a lot of people on their shitty platform) will only work on Windows.
Oh, yeah, no contest. Flash's days are numbered. <rolleyes>
On the other hand, it might be nice if it did win. As a Mac user, I wouldn't be annoyed by stupid Flash-based ads anymore, just empty boxes with the 'broken/missing plugin' icon.
"Are we ever going to see these products or is it more "Wait and ours will be better" talk?"
2001..2..3..4..5..6, will be the year of desktop Linux. Just you watch.
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."
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
I'll bet it won't be displaying annoying ads on my Linux desktop. :)
... Microsoft to design and implement any restricted code execution environment that could run web hosted hostile code?
...when we've already got XUL?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Microsoft Sparkle.
I already have a flash killer. It's called Flashblock. 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.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
...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.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
Wow. 99% all websites that have Flash components on them, use them improperly. Now we will have a new standard to be misused.
I say, great. I hope it stays a closed format, on the Windows platform, and everyone moves over to it that currently uses Flash the wrong way.
Then, browsing the internet on a platform other than Windows will be a totally awesome experience.
The sad thing is, properly used; the way it was made to be used as a UI with scripting language, Flash can be totally awesome. Unfortunately, there are probably only a dozen websites on the entire internet that understand how Flash is supposed to be used.
Flash is crap. Macromedia's components are bloated pieces of crap. Flash ActionScript doesn't do 1/2 what it should. The newer versions don't address the older problems they just add more candy for trendwhore designer kiddies. Given the option between using Adobe's version of Flash or using Microsoft's alternative, I will opt for Microsoft. Adobe will just slow it down to the point where you can go have a coffee/smoke/sleep/holiday while waiting for the plugins to load.
It's not going to happen. If there's anything that Microsoft has taught us, it's that popularity matters more than technical superiority.
I liked how this guy said it.
"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.
SMIL is actually a W3C standard.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
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.
Twinkle!
Glitter!
Fuzzy!
& c.
What happened to manly, all caps, yet equally nonsensical names, like:
GIMP!
LAME!
PHP!
NSIS!
GAIM!
Or at least make up your own words that mean little to nothing!
Azureus!
Shareaza!
Audacity!
Fink!
Heck, pick a real word and make up some explanation!
Python!
Asterisk!
eMule!
Gallery!
But please, please, give us some better names!
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams
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.
If this was an Open Source project it would be called SPACKLE or The CRIPPLE.
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!
Guess how many people know the basics of flash? not as many people as html for sure, but a helluva lot. this is about as far as MS new product could go, is animation - Actionscript is macromedia/flash territory, go there, and one: macromedia/adobe will probly sue for trying to make a product way too similiar to be sold for less than the flash app, and two: a lot of people who really kick ass with flash and actionscript will find their call to defend the mighty macromedia, and spurn out loads of ass kicking flash sites - not just a whole bunch of crappy ones, but a whole bunch of insanely awesome sites, likely each with super-unique designs and navigation.
Microsoft hasn't created tools which can be described as being 'flash killers'... Chuck Norris IS the only flash killer.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
All of this junk is supposed to generate XAML for .NET apps to build their UI's with. In true MS fashion, XAML syntax is such an unmanagable mess that of course it needs graphical tools to generate the markup. XAML has less separation of content and presentation than HTML 3.2 (!). Come on, it's not 1997 any more, everyone with a brain doing markup-based UI design knows that color, margin, font family, and border are all style properties, not tag attributes.
Because of this, I consider XAML the undeniable proof that no one at MS truly understands what style is for, how a DOM is supposed to work, or what extensible means.
The only way this can possibly be a Flash killer is if all these are true:
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 that sort of design philosophy has worked so well these past 15 years.
Do completely misguided hyperbolic newspost titles generate fervent responses?
Yes, they do.
Anyone remember Liquid Motion?
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
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.
blog & fiction: jd87
As usual, they copy stuff that Apple has done and change it or add something so it looks like they've come up with it on their own. But their changes and additions are always so stupid!
They tried to improve on Aqua by making their icons actually show the first page of the document. But really, who's going to look through a folder full of documents by trying to read what each icon says? Nobody! And it's especially pointless when it's part of the same OS that's trying to use search capabilites to eliminate the need to organize files in folders or even the need to give them meaningful names.
Now, we've got them proudly demoing oversized radio buttons that get bigger and somersault for joy when you click on them. Whoop de doo. I realize it's a demo, but come on! Almost five years since XP came out, and all they've got to show for the work done in that time is stuff ganked from Tiger and acrobatic radio buttons? Puhleeeze.
Countdown to the first Sparkle Ad.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
and lots of choices for it? Supporting only one platform in house? Progaming on the platform most of your customers are using (and seeing OS specific quirks first hand w/o rolling over to a test machine)? Macs are nice and all, but they're kind of a square peg in a round hole, and I say this as a Linux user.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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 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.
I bet that in the beginning, it will run on many platforms. So there is no excuse for not using it. Then, when they have killed Flash, there will come a new version that only runs on a Microsoft platform because of some feature. Of course the inner workings will be closed due to some DRM thing or whatever so no you can't make a 100% compatible open source version.
At least that is how the normally do it, so why shouldn't they do it with Mr. Sparkle?
Tinkle.
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 prime suspect - Sparkle. Police are checking several leads, but no new light has been shed on the situation. No further information is available, but keep checking your local news for updates.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Macrobe - because the Internet needs more Flash and PDFs.
(Macromedia and Adobe, in case you can't tell)
Seriously, I have Adblock, PDFdownload (can choose to view in tab or window, or dl), and NoScript because I hate and find Flash and PDFs useless 95% of the time.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
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 less extraneous codec or plug-in I've got to install. It's attractive because everybody has it. It's also a piece of cake to develop for, and content-authors love it because they can match the media player's controls to their site with minimal effort.
Sure, I'd like to see an open standard step in and replace flash, but until we get something out there that's as friendly to content authors and users, I just think that more competing standards are going to hurt things.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
No it's not a Flashkiller.
Flash is the most widespread VM ever.
It offered cool grafics when everything else on the web looked like crap and now that real world CSS is finally up to the job it's grown into an impressive rich client plattform and a proper PL, rivaling Java in the client side web. It's got Players/Plugins/VMs for all three major Workstation plattforms (Windows, OS X and Linux), has a large OSS community (osflash.org), has an increasing number of OSS developement tools including an open source AS2/Flash7 compiler that's even better than the original from macromedia/adobe, an eclipse based IDE for flash/AS, a handfull of FOSS enterprise class serverside RIA generators, an impressive remoting solution for the most popular SSI Language (amfphp) and a GNU project for building a free Player/VM that recently has become a top priority for the GNU people.
It has exactly zero firewall, zero plattform and zero browser problems when deploying enterprise RIAs and it integrates with any browser DOM like peanutbutter with chocolate. Every idiot and his brother knows it and every other idiot can build flash stuff. Or at least thinks he can.
Installing the VM (Player/Plugin) is gods prototype of a no-brainer and Java/Classpath/wxPython/XUL Technology-mix uglyness bounce off it like a wrench hitting a patio door.
After Flash comes a looong empty space in RIA Web, then comes Java with XUL quite close behind. Maybe somewhere inbetween there is Curl of some other exotic thing, but the rest you see is just dead bodies of the last 6 years of 'flash killers', including Director.
Bottom line:
Whatever Sparkle is or is intended to be, it is not a Flash killer. And if Adobe doesn't do a major screwup there won't be a flash killer for a very long time.
I'd know how to attempt one with MS type money, but I kinda doupt MS would support a VM that outperforms Flash in every aspect, including price for an offical IDE, and runs flawlessly on x86 Linux and OS X.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
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 install it, and if I ever do, I sure hope I have a friendly neighborhood plugin to make sure it doesn't take over my browsing experience.
I took a look at the video of the designer demonstrating Sparkle at Microsoft on Channel 9 a while ago. The guy, to be honest, was really pathetic. He came up with a demo interface that was truly awful, was far too excited at the tool to be comprehensible and to the point. It was left to a project manager to actually demonstrate a usable interface.
.Net projects, and, if Microsoft gets its way, it will make all these wonderful XAML rich internet applications that run in or out of the browser. Microsoft even made noises about making a plug-in to run xaml apps on Mac OSX.
That demonstration was very, very good. Microsoft certainly have an excellent tool in their hands. It makes designing a GUI as easy as using Flash or Illustrator these days. It is NOT an animation tool, although it can do animations to be used in GUIs. In that sense, no one is giong to use it to make flash cartoons on the web. They're going to use to make GUIs for Visual Studio
In other words, Microsoft really, badly, wants this to succede, and they need it badly, because the whole Web 2.0 hype, even though it is vastly overated, is making the use of Microsoft OS's and apps truly optional. There is a real threat that enterprise application development, where Microsoft makes most of its money, drops native clients almost totally in favour of web (2.0) based internet ones. From an enterprise point of view it makes huge sense to do away with platform dependencies.
That scares the living shit out of Microsoft, and that is why they are pushing Sparkle and Acrylic. They want enterprises to develop only on Windows only for Windows with a bit of token use (just like Microsoft's absolutely shitty WMPlayer for MacOSX) for MacOSX in the form of a plug-in that will NOT support the entire library or toolset. That is Microsoft's subtle way of trying to nudge Mac users into moving to Windows.
I think it will only be partly a success. It will probably be wildly popular for native Windows client development (and is guaranteed to produce as many shitty GUIs as there are today, because successful UI design is not some creative with Photoshop and Flash). But I think it will be an almost total flop for browser based rich clients. Ajax got there first and companies are in no way going to develop Microsoft only websites anymore. Those days are dead.
In other words, it'll be a nice tool for Win GUI development and that'll be it.
Where I will laugh my ass off is when the fat freak runs around the stage screaming "Designers, designers, designers" at the top of his lungs.
I'm the developer of Scriptio, an open source solution that has some Flash features for animation and presentations. It is written in JavaScript and uses AJAX techniques, and also interfaces with Ogg Vorbis, QuickTime, and Flash audio tracks.
:^)
There are examples on the web site that show it in action, and the package can be downloaded at SourceForge.
Web site: http://www.scriptio.us/
Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/scriptio
The package was just released this month, and I'm not sure how to spread the word. Maybe the SlashDot editors will mod me up to get some exposure.
Matthew Clark
>>Come on, it's not 1997 any more, everyone with a brain doing markup-based UI design knows that color, margin, font family, and border are all style properties, not tag attributes.
You can set all those properties with a style using XAML. Just because it uses different syntax than you would like doesn't make it wrong.
companies and just about ripoff their names?
First Avalanche - Torrent
now Sparkle - Flash
you gotta be kidding me
PS Microsoft
The australian company
Vista Windows Curtains and Blinds will be pissed when you use the trademarked term Vista to sell Windows
it doesnt matter one is IT and One is sells home products and services.
they are both selling windows under the name Vista
Links to the downloads (since the links in the article are dead):2 &p=3&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId= &u=%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails.aspx%3FFamilyID%3Ded9f5f b2-4cfc-4d2c-9af8-580d644e3d1d%26DisplayLang%3Den2 &p=4&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId= &u=%2Fdownloads%2Fdetails.aspx%3FFamilyID%3Decd88d 39-b9fc-4816-8dae-60444b7c81e7%26DisplayLang%3Den
For Sparkle: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=2
For Acrylic: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=2
I looked at Acrylic a couple months back and was very underwhelmed. Perhaps it's better in this version or I should have bought a tablet to interact with it properly. Anyway, download the apps for yourself and come to your own conclusions.
As a snide aside, when is MS gonna roll out their KB URL scheme across their entire site? 'Cause those are some damn ugly addresses if I do say so myself.
If it can render text properly, it will be competitive. Flash text rendering is atrocious.
flash is already the un-dead.
besides, everything microsoft makes really sucks. come on, you know it.
... as long as Sparkle is destroyed as well. You know, sort of like a matter/antimatter reaction.
Oh wait, that be the end of Weebl and Bob [1]. Damn! OK, OK. I guess web animation actually has a purpose after all.
[1] - Try these: "pie", "riot", "art", and "Magical Trevor"
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Hopefully Flash has enough energy to strike a lethal blow to Sparkle as it breathes its dying breath. Kindof like one of those dramatic movies where there's an intense fight and both people kill each other.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
Does microsoft ever release software that isnt meant to be an existing-product killer?
While Microsoft has a poor track record and no one really expects much from them, never forget that Microsoft has the great enabler, money. They have absolutely no barriers whatsoever to creating the most innovative, amazing software that everyone will be clamoring to use; it's just a matter of hiring the right programmers and some intelligent project leads and good market analysis.
Not that Microsoft has yet DONE anything universally acclaimed with their great potential, but it could happen.
I'm one of the freaks who runs solaris on sparc as my desktop box (home and work) and I've been pleased that my minority platform has a flash player. Actually, I havent found many minority platforms that DONT have a flash player (os2?).
Somehow, I'm skeptical that MS will give me a client to view thier new "rich" "active" content that is going to run on any non-x86 non-vista system. They can lock down the development platform (as adobe/macromedia has) but if they dont give me a player, then to $UNDERWORLD with them.
The demo on Mac, was a bit painful to watch, honestly speaking. I think WPF (or Avalon) is dandy, but only porting a subset to the Mac is as good as nothing. No one will use it. It is merely a half hearted attempt on Microsoft's part to do some of the classic embracing and extending.
I don't blame them. That's the way Microsoft does business. It's just that WPF will be a success, but only on Windows and not in the browser. The only place it might get used in the browser is in Microsoft only shops, and those are not as ubiquitous as they used to be.
can't be half bad.
Come on M$ can do some things right too you know.
Am I the only one still running Bob?
MS makes no money out of dev tools and only use it as a power lever.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
if not, its not a flash killer.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Microsoft Expresion Interactive Designer will be the tool of choice for Windows Presentation Foundation (previously known as "Avalon").
http://brandonbloom.name
but seriously, the responses so far to this article only enforce my belief that the /. crowd is totally out of touch with reality. MSFT are the folks that have already produced the best integrated development environment, the folks who defined the notion of an IDE, are authoring a new suite of design tools. regardless of your opinion about MSFT, you'd be an idiot to immediately write this off.
How about just actually kill Flash instead? So many sites use Flash to accomplish what HTML, Javascript, image maps, and animated pics could do without requiring me load a freakin' plug-in. I long for the days before broadband use was so widespread.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
I think folks completley miss what makes Flash great. It's a designer's tool that allows the creation of rich and usable interfaces. Flash and HTML have helped to usher in some of the most usable interfaces in computer software history. Why? Because for the first time desginers can actually design and implement something for themselves! After all, usability wasn't a known word until more designers got involved in creating an application's interface and building new and inovative designs.
As Adobe's Flex or MS' Sparkle grows it could truly offer a model that leaves usability and the interface to the designers and let developers do what they do best: develop. After all, most open source and stand alone applications have some of the worse interfaces ever. I'm more than open to anything that allows designers to take some of these concepts and truly apply them to my apps.
there go my dreams of a M$ Vista-only replacement for flash so that i, as an unsupported Mac user, would never have to look at an annoyingly blinky banner ad again. that in itself might be worth losing access to sites that were purely written for this new magical thing. oh well....
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.
my blog
...performing dull little tasks. Here's the problem. The Mac OS, and in fact the entire Apple experience, is intuitive for a certain kind of person. Artists, fashion mavens, scientists, and other creative personalities can sit down with a MacBook Pro running the latest dot-update of Tiger and comprehend its sensitive, tasteful aesthetic. It's a rare instinct, this appreciation for beauty and truth; unimaginative, dogma-bound drones haven't a prayer.
In summary, unattractive squares should stick to Linux and Windows.
Macs are for different thinkers.
I turned off Flash once it became the next cookie monster. I was amazed Macromedia allowed it. Until I am sure firefox kills Flash's stored data when I exit the browser it will not get turned on. As for MS ... I turn as much of that stuff off as I can.
Fromthe comments posted, the state of /. seems quite sad. It seems the word "Microsoft" nowadays brings out all the crazys wihout a single idea of what they are talking about.
/. now full of 13 year old, that run their mouth before their brain has had time to catch up. Once poster mentioned that Vista isn't even in Alpha yet! Funny, I am running "Beta 2" (Build 5270) on my machine right now!
/.
Can one of these pundits describe what Sparkle has to do with Flash at all? MS is trying to come up with a new way to design Windows apps. It used to be called Avalon, now it's called Windows Presentation Foundation. Just as ASP.NET uses a code file and a HTML-ish file, the new WPF architecture uses a code file and a XAML file. Just as you can use a HTML designer for the HTML-ish code, you can use Sparkle to create XAML in design mode! Simple as that!
Is
Get a life people. Bring back some useful/knowledgable discussion to
I know this apeal all in vain...but had to try.
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.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Macs are for different thinkers.
I think they prefer to be called "special thinkers." They have feelings too, you insensitive clod.
The one thing the Apple had to make up for it's ugly GUI was it's specialized chipset that bucked every industry standard. This "feature" meant difficulty in programming, lack of third party support, and questionable performance compared even when compared to cheaper Intel chips.
Of course, I'm sure many people can see the "beauty" in beating a perfecftly good copy of Unix with an ugly stick until all the buttons are round. As for "unattractive squares should stick to Linux and Windows" - there is a an elegant simplicity in the power and speed of the command prompt, you can navigate all of Windows with a keyboard (I challenge anyone to show me where you cannot), and you can even make your Windows OS look like a freakin' Mac if you wanted.
Artists, fashion mavens, scientists, and other creative personalities can sit down with a MacBook Pro running the latest dot-update of Tiger and comprehend its sensitive, tasteful aesthetic
Ooooh, I'd stay away from those updates. The poor programming of Apple has finally caught up with the arrogance of their users with rather serious security flaw with the updater. Evidently, no-one thought it a good idea to use encryption of any sort for at least two generations of the operating system's update program - 'cuz there aren't, and never will be, any exploits for the Mac, y'see.
Intelligent people use the OS pioneering new technological, legal, ethical, and economic territory. People seeking careers also know how to program "ugly little squares." Ignorant elitists are mesmerized by all the shiny, round buttons and willing to pay a premium for the privilege.
Of course, comparing Macs with Linux boxes is like comparing Apples with computers...
DATABASE WOW WOW
I mean, c'mon, there's Ghostbusters in .gif format. I didn't have to use bittorrent to find that shit and it took less than a second to download!
Offtopic, I know, but this is a grammatical (mis)construction showing up more and more recently. I don't know about you but it grates on my ears, trained to hear "needing to be replaced."
I first heard this when I was visiting Indiana about 15 years ago and I wondered if it was a local dialect. Recently I've heard it here in Florida. "The dog needed walked" and "She wanted scheduled on Friday."
Please, you all, don't forget the infinitive.
Exactly. Developers: don't use it. Microsoft can't be trusted not to be evil. Embrace. Extend. Destroy. They are the Borg, and $120 mil won't change that.
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.
"They talk about pantene colors and RGB values"
Pantene colors? What? Tan? I think it's PANTONE colours, monkeyboy.
Bunch a freakin' hippies who can't spell...gaaaah.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Someone please enlighten me. I thought Quartz was an Apple thing.
It supports advanced scripting and 3D display.
....and it was discontinued in 2000.
It was better, but no one knew about it, so it died.
Hey, lets make a desktop replacement, we'll call it Microsoft Bob!
Quartz? Can't MS even come up with an internal codename without having to copy one from Apple? Talk about lacking creativity!
No. Flash and Shockwave are two different formats.
Are there any plans for an open-source Flash player for Firefox?
...until all holes, bugs, buffer- & heap- overruns etc. are identified and patched.
...or Mac OS X ?
Then we may evaluate this wonderfull new prodct... does it btw. run on Linux ?
No, this is not a flamebait... and not a troll... this is called reality.
--
I don't belive in MS' products any longer.
The few above the have noted that MS is positioning Sparkle as a UI developer for XP/Vista, not a Flash killer per se, are probably closest to the truth. However, this is one of those softpeddle things the MS is good at (Think NT as a server back in the early 90's - that soda hurts when it rockets through your nose as you guffaw loudly doesn't it? But here it is, 2006 and Windows Server exists.) if Sparkle were to say, gain a wider reputation and kill Flash, Bill and Company won't complain. TT
Ahhh, life is full of repetitions. :)
<]=)
Keep the internet clean, don't browse with Internet Explorer.
I don't think this one will take off, most of the flash devs are graphic designers and really aren't that excited (In general) to move to the next big thing if it means re-learning a bunch of stuff to do the same thing. Also they are a lot less prone to move to the Next Big Microsoft thing, and more likely to want stuff that works on a mac. Just my experience
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle motion!
You must think in Russian.
Um, you didn't RTFA, I take it. It will be supported fully by Windows Vista, with some support on XP via a back-port (at some point in the future) or the underlying WinFX technology. So, in reality, they are just going to strap it onto the next version of the Windows juggernaut, and hope that that by itself with be sufficient to overtake Flash. Personally, I don't see that working out in the short term - Flash is just too widespread and well-known now to be shifted that easily.
-MT.
-MT.
Personally, the only time I see anything in flash is on one locked-down box at work that I occasionally need to use and on which I can't install a flash blocker. The only thing it seems to be used for is for really intrusive and annoying "all singing, all dancing" adverts that ruin the web surfing experience. On my home system and personal work PC I could not imagine going back to using the web without a flash-blocking application, a really extensive & aggressive hosts file with all the major advertising URLs mapped to null, and animated graphics disabled. So they have a newer and better Flash..... big deal, I'll block that as well.
OK, you don't nee Vista to run it. It's cross platform: it'll run on more than one version of Windows. Har bloody har.
The main advantage for 'Sparkle' is (in a pure-Windows environment) where designers will make mock-ups (esp for Web sites) in Sparkle. If the client then agrees with the mock-up they can simply hand-over their mock-up to the developers without the need of: "OK we need to cut the Photoshop-ed mock-up, lay-it out in HTML and then while we're doing this we hope the developers can wait for it or they might start on development while we're doing the HTML templates and then we need to spend time changing any development HTML code and hope we don't delete any tags along the way."
Of course, images and stuff will be made in Photoshop but the designers can also work (as they usually do) with the client actually creating a good look-and-feel with a functional flow and once it's OKed by the client then it can be developed on immediately by the developers without any intermediate steps.
Anyway I'm sure 90% of web-sites aren't designed along these lines but those that do Sparkle will be a big contributer to the whole production cycle.
Ciao
Worth noting that Sparkle is an interface designer for arbitrary WPF applications — most "Vista-based" applications can use it to design their interface, with a little less silliness than current interface designers have. Although I think it can make "web-app"-style things, that's not its primary purpose. From what I've seen of it, it's not even trying to be a Flash killer. The fact that its interface looks like Flash is just testament to Flash having a good interface for making animated things.
The FlashBlock plugin for Firefox lets you turn all your Flash animations into Flash logos that you can run (if you want) by clicking them.
I find your lack of faith in sparkle disturbing.
"will it work on none windows / none IE browsers"
No, just the ~90% of personal computers and laptops that run Windows and IE.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I daresay that it will be a lot easier to repackage Sparkle-generated apps and take them from the PC to the Web, and vice versa. That way they have all bases covered - application developers, web developers, web designers moving to web development, application developers moving the web development, etc.
-MT.
-MT.
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. 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.
using it.
This space available.
really? something coming from microsoft is going to supplant a product that's been so embedded in designers' and developers' minds for years that it's the defacto standard for interactive content? really?
that's like saying some kludged together microsoft web browser that they give away for free will kill off netscape.
er...
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I doubt that Microsoft will ever release a Flash Killer. Microsoft tends to shy away, okay it likes to shit on anything that is standards based. Much like the vaunted ActiveX, Microsoft in its glee to keep it to themselves pretty much made sure that it is a niche product. A large niche to be sure but it was not cross platform as it was supposed to be and support from third party browsers was spotty.
Much like media player for the Macintosh, Microsoft, either on purpose or by neglect made sure that the feature set between platforms was great and if you want to be sure to view content created for media player you had to have Windows. Macromedia on the other hand wanted the both platforms to be equal and made their player software and most important their content creation software in parody on both platforms.
Of course Microsoft would like nothing better than to have websites that can only be viewed on Windows running internet explorer. It would be the one way they could control something they could not buy, the internet. It would be doubtful that Microsoft would create content creation tools for other platforms nor would they allow third party developers to do so. Some companies are beginning to see that always putting their money on Microsoft will not always pay off. Apples iPod is a great example of this. Despite Microsoft and its partner companies telling consumers what they want with subscription services and invasive DRM, Apple has provided want customers do want, to own what they buy and to use it as they wish for the most part.
Yeah, I believe it's a compilation target for Sparkle-generated apps. Calling it a Flash competitor seems wrong to me though, it's closer to Java than Flash, albeit Java with a fancy Flash-like UI designer.
you have to license the very format. translation: you must ask permission just to see the spec. thats not even near open the way svg is. im really sick of this lie macro^H^H^H^Hadobe keeps spreading that swf is open.
its open when you dont need thier permission to see it.
Not really a testament to the usefulness of Flash, but rather the poor multimedia capabilities of modern OSes, and the problems caused by having so many proprietary multimedia codecs.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!
http://liquidben.com - Aspiring to an 'under construction' gif
Ever have one of those moments where you think "MAN! The Internet is SO COOL!".
Usually followed by "some people have WAY too much time on their hands".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I gave the two linked-to websites a look -- hey, I'll grant that at least theoretically, Flash could be useful. It's just that my experience with it in the real world has been pretty universally negative.
I tried this ferryhalim place, and saw a penguin game. I like Tux, so I decided to try that one. I think that the point of it is to put the mouse cursor in the middle of the screen and click as fast as you can. I mean, I'll grant that I *have* played minigames in commercial videogames that simply measured how quickly you could smack a button, so I can't claim that this sort of thing has never been done, but it just doesn't come off as that impressive or fun to me.
I'm willing to grant that maybe some of the games there are better than others, but there's a huge grid of games -- I don't want to dig through all of them.
As for the fcukstar.com place -- I opened it up, and almost immediately didn't like it. Forget my dad reading it -- *I* can't read the page. It consists of miniscule lines of light gray text on a dark gray background, with red highlighted text that's even slightly more difficult to read. I can read 9 point fixed gray75 on black in my xterms, but this is simply not legible.
Since I'm using xorg at the moment, I kicked into 640x480 zoom mode (Ctrl-Alt-KP+), and while it's still more difficult to read than my xterms, I can at least understand it. It has the fake scrollbars without arrows that I don't like much, and when I opened the "2oo5" list, they became sluggish. The popup menu is slow and plays the interface sounds that I complained about (there's a reason that Apple and MS and GNOME and KDE don't default to playing sounds when you, say, bring up a menu). Clicking on the arrow portion of the popup menu pops up that menu -- which I would expect from my use of many windowing GUIs -- but clicking on the textual part does nothing (and since the textual area was a larger target, that is what I first tried clicking on). I guess I just don't see what this website does that a simple Slashdot-like page with description and links would have also done.
This site has the same distracting animated Flash advertisements that I dislike (which cause CPU spikes on my computer -- granted, you could complain that Firefox simply does a poor job of handling this and should run Flash in a low-priority thread). Initially, Flashblock prevented them from coming up, but I figured that I should get a similar experience to a typical user viewing the page. These ads do not have sound, though, so they aren't as bad as the worst that I've seen. I don't actually know who the ad is for -- a strange logo appears on the left, two arrows move for a while, and then this huge brown blob comes flying straight at me. Then the ad cycles.
I guess that maybe the websites linked to were where I was supposed to go and be impressed, but when I clicked on them, nothing happened. When I middle-clicked (hoping that I'd get them in a new tab) nothing happened. When I right-clicked a link and chose "open in new window" nothing happened. Granted, I *do* have Flashblock installed, and maybe it could be some sort of interaction between the two -- but given how frusteratingly awful enabling either of the above two options is almost all the time (even if these websites are *really* good), I'm not willing to enable them.
There's a star with an "fs" in the upper left-hand-corner. It wiggles when I move my mouse over it, but clicking on it doesn't seem to do anything. There's what appears to be a little button in the top left hand corner of each section reading "fs", but clicking on it doesn't seem to do anything either.
I'm also going to comment on the design. I'm not a designer, so I am speaking outside my area of expertise (and it's easy to claim that this is intended to be artsy and experimental or simply subjective). However, this page does not fit with the majority of page layout rules that I'm familiar with. There a
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
When will Microsoft Realize that it is simply NOT a design company. Has anyone ever tried to use ANY Microsoft product to design anything? It is simply impossible! I am working on a project right now where my government client insists on using Microsoft poducts. I get to the point where I get so frustrated because the Product starts designing for me. It is constantly snapping tables together that I don't want together. It won't let me draw a line and end it where I want it to. And various other things like that. Microsoft has decided that they are being clever to help you complete a project that it ends up taking twice as long as it should because I have to go back and figure ways around the "features". Blah. Microsoft should just stop this. Bad Microsoft. Bad!
They limit what you can use the spec for. Hence it is not open. From the faq:
Can I use the File Format Specification to create a SWF interpreter or player?
No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).
Can I use the File Format Specification to create a Flash Video encoder or a Flash Video streaming service?
No, the File Format Specification is provided for the specific purpose of enabling software applications to export to the Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF).
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
... for those who didn't RTFA: Sparkle and Acrylic. Registration required!
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
Well I don't think it'll kill Flash. It's more at an attempt to kill Flex (particulary Flex 2). Flex and the new MS Expressions blah blah (name too flippin' long) are really similar. They both use XML to drive/create the interface. They both have design features. Flex 2 you can compile/build the whole interface in the IDE (no external programs). Also in Flex you can program in all the functionality. In Sparkle you can't compile to anything usable, and you can't give it much funcionality. You have to export to XAML, pull it into VSCS or VSVB, build up the interface there, then add the functionality. I don't like the interface they gave it either. I think for now I'll just stick with AJAX or DHTML, or something good.
Show me one instance where Flash truly is the best choice out there.
As has been said a hundred times, homestarrunner.com. Plus Newsmap. The latter should give you an idea of a whole class of applications where Flash is truly the best choice. A related competitor is the baby name wizard (google it), which is a Java app. It's neat, but on my dual-proc G4, it's slow as molasses and takes forever to load. 'Nuff said.
// This is not a sig.
Microsoft -- and -- Graphics Applications
Flash benefits from its ability on a technical level to be user friendly
and appeal to the creative community. (You can scoff, but its something
MSFT has never once accomplished no matter how much money they throw at
something.)
Flash is also small and fast. (Something else Microsoft has never accomplished
no matter how much money they throw at something).
I'll go so far as to say that given Microsoft's corporate culture and
programming techniques, this project is beyond their capacity.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
They already want you to download ActiveX, .Net framework, and now this? I already have antivirus, firewall, Java, Macromedia, Quicktime, etc. web-centric download add-ons up the yinyang. I don't need yet another security risk, and I'm not going to go out of my way for one, that's why they'll bundle it with Vista, or it wouldn't be adopted at all. I can't see this getting traction, it's not an area where MS's dominance in the business office tools will really help them.
As for your newsmap site, that is a horrible example for a rich client application. First of all, it keeps on reloading whenever something minor happens to change the layout (and when that happens, it hogs resources), I can't read half the text, I am unable to interact with it like a normal web page (mouse gestures are useless here), etc. It could have just as easily been made with an image map generated on the server and gotten around much of that without sacrificing anything in the interface. Now I suppose if had generated the thing on my client and thus didn't have to reload, that may be something. However, that would likely hog even more resources even more of the time.
A quick glance at the "about" though shows this product for what it is, a demonstration of a technology. So I guess we can add that to our list of uses for Flash, application prototypes.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Wait till you see the fun new active x changes coming down the pipe. I got the training on how to handle this the other day. Nightmare.
And how many Microsoft applications are due to come out in the next year based on WPF? Or designed and developed using Sparkle?
*crickets*
Yeah. And how much of the upcoming Vista release will be written in managed code?
*crickets*
If Microsoft doesn't believe *they* can write apps with it yet, why should we?
Wake me up when Sparkle 3.0 appears.
I just set the killbit in the Windows registry which prevents the load of Flash - ever. Much nicer not to have the annoying adds on all pages. Sure a few badly designed webpages are no longer available, but too bad for them :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating