nice sig, but I could figure out how it works; in particular it seems that c is not initialized? some crazy hacking.. I tried to figure it out for 10 minutes before I ran it.
just because one can build a GUI that is bad and inneficient does not imply that not GUI exists that is better than the glass teletype. similarly, just because one can abuse the power of flash and do nothing good with it, and can in fact make content harder to digest, does not mean that something good can't be done with said power. With more power comes more responsibility; there needs to be someone to weild this power. The real question is does it take a multi-billion dollar corporation to make all of these decisions correctly; I think not.
honestly, you are right this fills a similar niche; but 1. the output looks ugly, and very static 2. I think applets have always been too heavy for wide spread use full website use (when was the last time you saw an entire wesbite in an applet?) Altough there a few exceptions to what I say (ex: www.sodaplay.com), in general Java applets are ugly, big, unmanagable and unnatractive. Are there examples of luxor webapps?
You know.. its funny but flash can now fill exactly the void to which you yourself refer to here. Good gui, cross-platform, possibility for rich clients..
you seem to agree with me on so many of the details, yet disagree on the final prognosis, so perhaps either you or me (I think you:) are missing something. I will address each of your points seperately.
Avalon is not really about providing dynamic "web pages", which is, at least based on my probably outdated understanding, what Flash is about...
Not just dynamic, but rich/interactive. Flash started simply as a way to create easily downloadable vector animations, but it has become much more than that with recent releases of both the Flash player and editing software along with now Flex and MXML. People have been slow to get out of the "flash intro" rut however and realize Flash's potential. There are many reasons for this one of the most prevalent is that coding in Flash has been difficult as the editor (Flash) wasn't menat for coding large projects and also on the flip side of the same coin, most of the people involved with Flash have been 'artists', not coders, and hence the user-base, altough large is not suited in creating the framework and community necessary to create more complex flash apps. (notice the lack of responses to this post from slashdotters). Macromedia has been desperatly trying to change this, but has made some serious errors (as I outlined in my original post).
Avalon is about providing actual *native* Win32 applications, but doing so with a simple XML-based format, and potentially in a way that is deliverable over the internet. The key difference between this and all other browser-based technologies that have preceeded this (including Flash and Applets) is the *native* part. Technically, it has been possible to do truly native stuff from the browser with ActiveX controls, but obviously this is an attempt at a technology which is far more robust, secure, and appropriate for web-based and non-web-based apps.
Yes thats true, and I did say in my post that the one advantage that MS will have that is not beatable is their ability to provide this sort of seamless solution across local and network based apps; not just in looks but also in communication. However, in the long run this too can be combated. We can provide such a solution using Mono (the same XUL can create both the flash UI and a native front end, and can be comiled either way).. so even this is not totally out of the question. The important thing is that the ability to create rich clients exists in a uniform, cross-platform solution installed in 98.6% of www clients. This is an extremely powerful resource for combating XAML in particular.
Will Avalon replace the need for Flash altogether? Perhaps some day, when "skinning" ability in native windows apps is so strong that you can easily throw a very fancy skin on a custom native win32 app as easily as you could design a Flash app with the same look and feel. But until then, Flash will still have it's place as a framework for "flashy" web-based apps that do not require the native win32 look-and-feel.
You have some point there, but weather or not Avalon comes to replace Flash will depend much more on if writing XAML internet apps will be as easy and as widely spread. Which it in fact can be, even without longhorn.. perhaps in an IE "plug-in/patch".
Again, "flashy" use of flash is in fact a mis-use in this context. Perhaps they need to change the name..
Yes, I know I'm using the word win32 a lot here, along with native - but let me clarify - that is just an example, since we are talking about Avalon within the Windows platform. But obviously once this XAML technology gains the potential to be "native" to any desktop system, such as GTK or KDE - so what I am talking about still applies, and even moreso - we are not talking about providing Flash-based apps that run on the native "Flash platform" which is a plugin inside the browser - we are talking about providing actual native apps that run on the platform of the desktop OS.
I agree with everything that you are saying, but I think that putting everyone behind one of these options is in fact advantageous; it will end up favoring one app over the other, but as much as we love competition (and it is ok) one of the biggest problems with using OS solutions for consumers who are new to it is the fact that there are a dozen apps that all do the same thing and overlap in their functionality. There is a real need for standardization. Altough, perhaps some sort of democratic process would be a better option; which leads to a more interesting possibity to help unite thoughts and ideas for the OS community. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of website (perhaps a section of sourceforge) which keep track of your ID and your contributions to different projects, allow you to vote on the contributions of parents, etc. Given this score you can use your 'power' to vote on the future direction of projects. This seems to be a great idea to me, particularly if choice was exponentially distrubted towards the top of contributors would give us a unified path and vision. There is also the side benefit of giving people more incentive to contribute to projects (I think this would be surprizingly effective in this regard)... I'd like to know what people involved think of this idea; alas no one will read it.. *sigh*
"XAML enables you to create a UI without using code. You can create quite elaborate documents entirely in markup using controls, text, images, shapes and so forth..."
you layout the UI with XAML, you control it using embeded actions which are code. This code can be in any language and is independent of the UI. Thats actually part of the beauty of it all..
1. In fact flash is fast and compact; when used correctly it can be faster and more adept at transfering large media (precaching, streaming, parallel downloads, download ques, guessing where the user will click, etc).
2. At one point I think that you are right, the rich interaction and experience that is refered to cannot hold up on the bandwidth provided on the telephone line. But I think that thats ok, because with Voice over IP in a few years we won't need telephone lines, and it will be cheaper to have a DSL line.. but then at that point you will be complaining about the fact that all of the 3d interaction environments take too long to load on your DSL because they are geared towards optical users. =]
This is a good idea, but XUL is dependant on Mozilla distribution; this will never happen, at least not in the next 1.5 years. However we have a back door entry with Java and Flash. I believe that there is a huge amount of potential there that needs to be opened up (free) and standarized, particularly with Flash since Java is so clunky (thats right, in a browser Java Flash). But eitherway we must attatch this hook first, then we can make it compatible with XUL, whatever; creating another parser is realtively easy. (not that it will have to be precompiled into swf/java beforehand, but this is not a big hurdle) See my post below yours for more details on this thought.
I do think that the man has a point. The web is just dying for more RIA, we will need to jump out of the request/recieve process, and if MS comes out with this system with no competition it will continue to dominate, and it will be huge.
However, all the tools to create such interactions are available now. I know many people are going to hate to hear this, but Macromedia Flash provides the framework for all of the things that Avalon envisions to do, the system for developing such apps just needs to be created. The Flash player is installed 98.6% of client systems on the internet. (!)
So hear is an idea: why not incorporate developent of such flash apps into Mono? The swf format is now open and documented.
Macromedia recently came out with a system to do something like this called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/">Ma cromedia Flex</a>, however licensing for this product is a nightmare ($USD 12,000) which I think is a grave mistake on Macromedia's part.
They also have a new (sort of) framework called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/? promoid=home_prod_ce_0111903">Macromedia Central</a> which allows flash apps to run naitively and interact with local data (download with one click, save network data locally) and its acutally a great app, but its licensing model is again completely proprietary and closed. This is where we (the OS community) come in..
So what is the idea? Just incoporate the functionality of Flex into Mono, you can even use the same format used by Macromedia in Flex, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articl es/paradigm.html">MXML</a>, for interopability. It can be free open, and we have a full year to develop such a framework. There is a HUGE market for this. Particularly for people that are not ready to uprgrade their entire OS, but still want to use RIAs. On that not it will also be important to start devloping some of the killer apps (photo browsers, visual forums, real time easy chat for every page, data extractors, etc).
The drawback is of course speed, and we can't really beat MS there. However if we can get something like this going then it will be a big incentive for Macromedia to offer perhaps a larger + faster version of the flash player. One of the best examples of moves in this direction still has many problems with it, but you can see it here:
http://www.paxm.org/symbulator/download/rpn.html its a hack, but very complete and nicely done; this guy does a really nice job with his stuff, you can check out other things here: http://www.paxm.org/symbulator/download/
not quite; in this case its a very small minority of people that put the crap up, and very small minority that fall for it. Yet the rest of us have to suffer. In this case this is a problem with the medium and not the viewer.
are you doing this successfully? if so, you got any advice? I mean not the obvious stuff, I am a good coder and I have my wits about me, but any little things in particular? In fact... anyone thats done this successfully can reply.
Slashdot Mirror
nice sig, but I could figure out how it works; in particular it seems that c is not initialized?
some crazy hacking.. I tried to figure it out for 10 minutes before I ran it.
I would be one of those users..
yes, flaimbait indeed.. lets defend valiantly the commercialization of /.
is that how it works? I always thought the editors were just plain stupid.
dividends are important, but thats not how you make money in stocks. Mr. an_mo's got it right: its about your share in the company.
just because one can build a GUI that is bad and inneficient does not imply that not GUI exists that is better than the glass teletype.
similarly, just because one can abuse the power of flash and do nothing good with it, and can in fact make content harder to digest, does not mean that something good can't be done with said power. With more power comes more responsibility; there needs to be someone to weild this power. The real question is does it take a multi-billion dollar corporation to make all of these decisions correctly; I think not.
looks like we found our slashdot reader!
=]
yes; in fact whichever reader this is has decided that this is a "historically important program" because it appeared in this catalog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_processor
but you already do that.. unless you claim to be part of the .04 percent that has flash disabled..
honestly, you are right this fills a similar niche; but
1. the output looks ugly, and very static
2. I think applets have always been too heavy for wide spread use full website use (when was the last time you saw an entire wesbite in an applet?) Altough there a few exceptions to what I say (ex: www.sodaplay.com), in general Java applets are ugly, big, unmanagable and unnatractive. Are there examples of luxor webapps?
You know.. its funny but flash can now fill exactly the void to which you yourself refer to here. Good gui, cross-platform, possibility for rich clients..
you seem to agree with me on so many of the details, yet disagree on the final prognosis, so perhaps either you or me (I think you :) are missing something. I will address each of your points seperately.
Avalon is not really about providing dynamic "web pages", which is, at least based on my probably outdated understanding, what Flash is about...
Not just dynamic, but rich/interactive. Flash started simply as a way to create easily downloadable vector animations, but it has become much more than that with recent releases of both the Flash player and editing software along with now Flex and MXML. People have been slow to get out of the "flash intro" rut however and realize Flash's potential. There are many reasons for this one of the most prevalent is that coding in Flash has been difficult as the editor (Flash) wasn't menat for coding large projects and also on the flip side of the same coin, most of the people involved with Flash have been 'artists', not coders, and hence the user-base, altough large is not suited in creating the framework and community necessary to create more complex flash apps.
(notice the lack of responses to this post from slashdotters). Macromedia has been desperatly trying to change this, but has made some serious errors (as I outlined in my original post).
Avalon is about providing actual *native* Win32 applications, but doing so with a simple XML-based format, and potentially in a way that is deliverable over the internet. The key difference between this and all other browser-based technologies that have preceeded this (including Flash and Applets) is the *native* part. Technically, it has been possible to do truly native stuff from the browser with ActiveX controls, but obviously this is an attempt at a technology which is far more robust, secure, and appropriate for web-based and non-web-based apps.
Yes thats true, and I did say in my post that the one advantage that MS will have that is not beatable is their ability to provide this sort of seamless solution across local and network based apps; not just in looks but also in communication. However, in the long run this too can be combated. We can provide such a solution using Mono (the same XUL can create both the flash UI and a native front end, and can be comiled either way).. so even this is not totally out of the question. The important thing is that the ability to create rich clients exists in a uniform, cross-platform solution installed in 98.6% of www clients. This is an extremely powerful resource for combating XAML in particular.
Will Avalon replace the need for Flash altogether? Perhaps some day, when "skinning" ability in native windows apps is so strong that you can easily throw a very fancy skin on a custom native win32 app as easily as you could design a Flash app with the same look and feel. But until then, Flash will still have it's place as a framework for "flashy" web-based apps that do not require the native win32 look-and-feel.
You have some point there, but weather or not Avalon comes to replace Flash will depend much more on if writing XAML internet apps will be as easy and as widely spread. Which it in fact can be, even without longhorn.. perhaps in an IE "plug-in/patch".
Again, "flashy" use of flash is in fact a mis-use in this context. Perhaps they need to change the name..
Yes, I know I'm using the word win32 a lot here, along with native - but let me clarify - that is just an example, since we are talking about Avalon within the Windows platform. But obviously once this XAML technology gains the potential to be "native" to any desktop system, such as GTK or KDE - so what I am talking about still applies, and even moreso - we are not talking about providing Flash-based apps that run on the native "Flash platform" which is a plugin inside the browser - we are talking about providing actual native apps that run on the platform of the desktop OS.
I th
ok.. I should have read over that one before submitting it.. sorry. =/
I agree with everything that you are saying, but I think that putting everyone behind one of these options is in fact advantageous; it will end up favoring one app over the other, but as much as we love competition (and it is ok) one of the biggest problems with using OS solutions for consumers who are new to it is the fact that there are a dozen apps that all do the same thing and overlap in their functionality. There is a real need for standardization.
Altough, perhaps some sort of democratic process would be a better option; which leads to a more interesting possibity to help unite thoughts and ideas for the OS community. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of website (perhaps a section of sourceforge) which keep track of your ID and your contributions to different projects, allow you to vote on the contributions of parents, etc. Given this score you can use your 'power' to vote on the future direction of projects. This seems to be a great idea to me, particularly if choice was exponentially distrubted towards the top of contributors would give us a unified path and vision. There is also the side benefit of giving people more incentive to contribute to projects (I think this would be surprizingly effective in this regard)... I'd like to know what people involved think of this idea; alas no one will read it.. *sigh*
"XAML enables you to create a UI without using code. You can create quite elaborate documents entirely in markup using controls, text, images, shapes and so forth..."
you layout the UI with XAML, you control it using embeded actions which are code. This code can be in any language and is independent of the UI. Thats actually part of the beauty of it all..
2 things.
1. In fact flash is fast and compact; when used correctly it can be faster and more adept at transfering large media (precaching, streaming, parallel downloads, download ques, guessing where the user will click, etc).
2. At one point I think that you are right, the rich interaction and experience that is refered to cannot hold up on the bandwidth provided on the telephone line. But I think that thats ok, because with Voice over IP in a few years we won't need telephone lines, and it will be cheaper to have a DSL line.. but then at that point you will be complaining about the fact that all of the 3d interaction environments take too long to load on your DSL because they are geared towards optical users. =]
This is a good idea, but XUL is dependant on Mozilla distribution; this will never happen, at least not in the next 1.5 years. However we have a back door entry with Java and Flash. I believe that there is a huge amount of potential there that needs to be opened up (free) and standarized, particularly with Flash since Java is so clunky (thats right, in a browser Java Flash). But eitherway we must attatch this hook first, then we can make it compatible with XUL, whatever; creating another parser is realtively easy. (not that it will have to be precompiled into swf/java beforehand, but this is not a big hurdle) See my post below yours for more details on this thought.
Sorry, posted in plain text on accident..
Macromedia Flex
Macromedia Central
MXML
ego7
..put them together.
a cromedia Flex</a>, however licensing for this product is a nightmare ($USD 12,000) which I think is a grave mistake on Macromedia's part.
? promoid=home_prod_ce_0111903">Macromedia Central</a> which allows flash apps to run naitively and interact with local data (download with one click, save network data locally) and its acutally a great app, but its licensing model is again completely proprietary and closed. This is where we (the OS community) come in..
l es/paradigm.html">MXML</a>, for interopability. It can be free open, and we have a full year to develop such a framework. There is a HUGE market for this. Particularly for people that are not ready to uprgrade their entire OS, but still want to use RIAs. On that not it will also be important to start devloping some of the killer apps (photo browsers, visual forums, real time easy chat for every page, data extractors, etc).
I do think that the man has a point. The web is just dying for more RIA, we will need to jump out of the request/recieve process, and if MS comes out with this system with no competition it will continue to dominate, and it will be huge.
However, all the tools to create such interactions are available now. I know many people are going to hate to hear this, but Macromedia Flash provides the framework for all of the things that Avalon envisions to do, the system for developing such apps just needs to be created. The Flash player is installed 98.6% of client systems on the internet. (!)
So hear is an idea: why not incorporate developent of such flash apps into Mono? The swf format is now open and documented.
Macromedia recently came out with a system to do something like this called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/flex/">M
They also have a new (sort of) framework called <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/central/
So what is the idea? Just incoporate the functionality of Flex into Mono, you can even use the same format used by Macromedia in Flex, <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/artic
The drawback is of course speed, and we can't really beat MS there. However if we can get something like this going then it will be a big incentive for Macromedia to offer perhaps a larger + faster version of the flash player. One of the best examples of moves in this direction still has many problems with it, but you can see it here:
www.ego7.net
But, the time is def. limited.
-Ashot
http://www.paxm.org/symbulator/download/rpn.html
its a hack, but very complete and nicely done; this guy does a really nice job with his stuff, you can check out other things here:
http://www.paxm.org/symbulator/download/
not quite; in this case its a very small minority of people that put the crap up, and very small minority that fall for it. Yet the rest of us have to suffer.
In this case this is a problem with the medium and not the viewer.
yes, thats because the settings cover a large gamut; with 128MB you won't be using all those pretty textures on your hard-drive.
thanks, you spoke my mind.
are you doing this successfully?
if so, you got any advice? I mean not the obvious stuff, I am a good coder and I have my wits about me, but any little things in particular? In fact... anyone thats done this successfully can reply.
You should read more about UI and AI and it's current implementations.
were?