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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.
http://channel9.msdn.com/3 878 43
And the videos about sparkle:
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=115
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=157
No. Like Flashblock.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
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!
Flashblock has whitelisting.
there's more than one way to do me.
The danger with an MS-made flash type plugin is that it will probably be included with Windows and IE by default. So the 80-90% of people who use Windows+IE won't even have to click a few boxes to view the content. On the other hand, there's no way in hell MS will release the specs under a suitable license for others to reimplement this tech for non-IE browsers or for other OSes (without nasty NDAs and huge licensing fees). So MS once again screws over its competition.
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.
Wrong! You don't need Vista to run it. WPF (Avalon) will also run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Here are the system requirements
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You can download the bits now and play around with it.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
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've seen quartz run. I've even had lunch with some of the product team. The same event I saw a demo of WPF (I forget what Microsoft is calling it now - most everything I saw at the conference was identified by codename - but WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation... I think it might be "Avalon" now)
I think you have some misguided concepts about how Quartz works. Quartz is just a web designer - with support for rich UI features. It has compatibility target levels - if you want to run on NN 4.0 it supports that with a reduced feature set. If you're interested, my favorite feature of Quartz I saw was actually the XML/XSLT WYSIWYG support (a close runner up is the AJAX RAD)... and that feature is compatible with no-CSS HTML 4.0! I know becuase there's an app I helped write (in 2002 without WYSIWYG) using the exact technology.
If you are targeting the WPF that still doesn't mean that your users will need Windows Vista to run it. Hell, the first demo of WPF I saw was on a Windows XP box. You don't really think the guys developing WPF have been doing it on Vista? Vista isn't even alpha yet... so WPF has been running on XP for some time already. The release of WPF will be back ported to at least XP, and I've heard ME and 2000 server are distinct possibilities. 98 won't be supported, but then 98 has been EOLed for a while. Besides... if you can't be bothered to upgrade your operating system once in eight years, then you obviously aren't interested in taking advantage of the latest technology anyways, right?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
You and everyone else are missing the point. While Sparkle can be used to make apps that run in IE, it is primarily for developing apps. It is not an plugin for IE. It is not intended to sweep the internet. It is for Windows. Sparkle is the designer for the main presentation layer for all of Vista. Microsoft has not to my knowledge ever even called it a "flash killer." It is not really competing with flash.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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
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!"
I've written programs using 3rd party libraries that generate and manipulate PDFs. That keeps me wanting to use PDF as much as possible instead of using something like Word, which is, IMO a complete horror to try and automatically generate.
Its positive attributes: fully compliant with Section 508 accessibility requirements, requires a plugin that currently ships with a majority of browsers and is otherwise free and easily accessible, and the fact that it's easy for even a third grader to make "whole applications." Why is making something accessible for people a sin? Macromedia decided it was a good idea, and I'm willing to bet that they are now a whole lot richer than anybody currently participating in this thread.
I'm currently building a site that I'd like to have some Flash-like interactivity without having to go out and buy a copy of Flash. I can do a lot of it using CSS and DHTML, but there's a steep learning curve involved. Sure, the documentation is "all on-line and readily available" - if you know where to look. I've enlisted the help of a friend of mine who does server application development for a living, and even he was stumped a few times. Why should I have to program a script just to detect the browser window dimensions and keep track of them should they be resized? Flash does that automatically, and it's a real time-saver. Sure, the site will be smaller and leaner in the long run and also gracefully degrade, but had I done it in Flash, it would have been deployed a lot faster, too.
Programmers are also not usually good interface designers. Just visit that OSFlash from the grandparent to get a good example. Horrible content organization, awkward navigation, and no simple link to take you quickly to where you can download tools and documentation to get started. What's the point of making an open source replacement for something if it doesn't actually replace it? Should Flash developers really trade in their graphical interface and timeline for a text-based IDE? I guess you really do get what you pay for.
As for Flash not interacting with the operating system, I think that's beside the point. Flash by itself serves an important function for delivering full applications within a browser - something that the above-mentioned languages can do, but as far as the majority of people are concerned, not always as easily and quickly as Flash. For one, the majority of those listed are all server-side, and are going to require a lot of horsepower from the server. What web-centric application would you suggest needs Assembly?
The client-side ones all require "third-party proprietary software" to run, and you can't guarantee that all versions are going to be current across all platforms, which will render your content inaccessible to some viewers. The right tool for the right job, as the saying goes. And if you really want Flash to interact with the OS, get Director; that's what it's there for.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
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.