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.

Comments

No.

[Qbertino]

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.