Microsoft attempts to create Flash-killer again. Fails
Once again, Microsoft has launched a bizarre and ill-thought-out attempt to topple Adobe Flash from its dominative position of the browser space. Its answer is the catchily titled WPF/E (from the codename of Avalon). Nice huh? Its a simple premise - a plug-in that uses its own proprietary file format (this time its called XAML) that can be controlled by your browser using Javascript.
As an entity its a weirdly bastardised version of the full WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) that is much more interesting. The big brother can do genuinely intriguing things such as full support for 3D objects. As the presentation layer for .NET 3, its being geared up to provide interesting, quick-to-develop interfaces for desktop applications, much like Adobe’s Apollo. The big brother will run in a web browser too, but only if you are running IE 7 on Windows Vista or Windows XP.
The little brother will provide “a subset of WPF features, such as hardware accelerated video, vector graphics, and animations”. Sound like anything? What I don’t understand is the strategy that they are employing here to encourage uptake of this product. Looking at the landscape of online application development, you currently have two real options. HTML or Flash. Assuming that WPF/E is attempting to take on Flash in the rich-media internet application space, the only way it is going to win ground is by providing something better than what is already there. If you are going to get the many thousands of designers, developers and customers to adopt an entirely new platform there has to be a compelling reason. Yet there appears to be absolutely no advantage to switching, certainly none that MS have publicised. MS has also made number of mistakes with its launch that are just utterly confusing. Not only does it appear to offer nothing new, but there are very few demos online of what it CAN do. Theres no OSX versions of any of the Microsoft Expression design packages. There seems to have been almost no effort to court the “big names” of the new media industry, unlike Adobe/Macromedia’s efforts of past years.
Bizarre. That said, maybe I am missing something? Theres some MS sanctioned examples here, and a community site with examples here (best to only go there if you have IE7, mind).
2 Comments
david on January 7th, 2007
Hi Simon,
Check out this video,
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=116327
They have already plugin for FF (not public yet),
http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2006/03/23/559106.aspx
Adam on January 4th, 2007
Si,
Did you see Rich’s writeup on it…
http://richardleggett.co.uk/blog/index.php/2006/12/21/reflecting_on_wpfe
Not sure I’m convinced either, particularly with MS’s history of cross platform support. The WPF stuff does sound a lot more interesting, but I think they are going to have a hard time tempting the kind of visual developers they need for to really exploit a tool like Blend. Your average MCSE dev does NOT have a design or interaction eye!