There was a brief discussion about Microsoft's WPF/E on the Streaming Media list and Brian Lesser posted a link to this video, an interview with Mike Harsh, a program manager on the WPF/E team (WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation and E stands for Everywhere). Note that this video was recorded quite a while ago.
I watched the video and took some notes. Here's a summary (from a Flash Developer's point of view):
I can kind of understand why Microsoft gets excited about content rendering reliably cross browser (they showed a clock playing on Safari on the Mac and Firefox on Windows and... wait for it... it looked identical. Yawn.), but I can't share that enthusiasm because it's common place for us in the Flash camp.
This looks like a copycat technology to me. XAML looks like MXML to me. The runtime like a copy of the Flash Player (minus real cross platform support and penetration). And the authoring won't run on a Mac if I understand that correctly. Fair play to Microsoft for trying but so far I haven't seen anything that impresses me. None of the demos show anything useful, like a real life RIA.
I know I am biased but if I was an investor on Dragon's Den I'd now be going: 'Sorry but I don't get it and for that reason I'm out.'
I watched the video and took some notes. Here's a summary (from a Flash Developer's point of view):
- WPF/E is a subset of and for this reason does less than WPF
- Microsoft will develop plugins for Windows and Mac and while they 'care about Linux' they're not going to supply a plugin but let 3rd parties take care of that (shows how much they really care)
- the target runtime size will be 2MB (similar to the Flash Player which is 1.1MB to 1.3MB)
- the programming experience is different to Flash (but not really different to Flex)
- Mike seemed to get excited about the fact that 'you could have text and fill it with video or rotate it or stretch it' (oh dear)
I can kind of understand why Microsoft gets excited about content rendering reliably cross browser (they showed a clock playing on Safari on the Mac and Firefox on Windows and... wait for it... it looked identical. Yawn.), but I can't share that enthusiasm because it's common place for us in the Flash camp.
This looks like a copycat technology to me. XAML looks like MXML to me. The runtime like a copy of the Flash Player (minus real cross platform support and penetration). And the authoring won't run on a Mac if I understand that correctly. Fair play to Microsoft for trying but so far I haven't seen anything that impresses me. None of the demos show anything useful, like a real life RIA.
I know I am biased but if I was an investor on Dragon's Den I'd now be going: 'Sorry but I don't get it and for that reason I'm out.'
Now anybody with notepad can make those things... Thats a lot more open than swf is
Anyway, dude, XAML is NOT like MXML. It is extremely verbose, and way more level. MXML has done a lot to abstract and hide away a lot of things. The end result is, you write less MXML. However, if you wish to go lower level, while you can use MXML, you are better off using ActionScript. I've seen some people experiementing with boilerplate MXML.
On a forum, I've seen some people showing some neat tags in XAML, so it's good to see the Microsoft world in love with "tags that do cool stuff" as much as the Adobe Flex & ColdFusion crowd.
WPF's tool, however, has something Flex does not; a timeline. You can say Flash, but you and I both know you can't get events for "on frame reached" without copious coding. I think the After Effects like timeline is what really sets Expression apart. More control over design, with that design accessible by coders is just really damn cool.
The runtime, however, I agree with you. However, like my Flash / Flex career, I really don't care about install base. I juts go find clients who, like me, don't care or it isn't a valid concern for them, like intranets.
...oh yeah, and death to binary formats!... or ... something...
I haven't seen much XAML or WPF tools yet so I guess I'll make up my mind later on that. Personally I still don't see what this technology has to offer me. Granted, a potential for more work but hey, I could do with a bunch of clones already...
Ok, my point of view is of an app developer and not a creator of blinking gimmicks in an advertising agency.
1. We have a number of .NET developers who write Windows apps and web apps. WPFe will let us write Flash-like applications in Visual Basic.NET or C#. We won't have to retrain our devs to learn the Flash programming language and its strange ways.
2. Write rich client applications that are not HTML based. Writing web applications based on HTML sucks. Everyone knows why, the browser compatibility issues, the mixtures of HTML, JavaScript, server-side code(.NET, Java, PHP, whatever). Sure, AJAX is helping devs create exciting new interfaces for web apps. But they are still web apps.
We'd like to have a little more control over the graphics and UI for our applications, we just don't want to write a HTML based one. Why are we writing web apps in the first place. The distribution model for web apps is extremely compelling.
3. The Flash model. If a company wants to distribute an app to a wide audience of mixed OS users (Mac, Linux, Windows) what choices do they have? Java, Web or Flash. Java works because each OS can have the Java runtime installed. The web model works because everyone has a browser. Flash is on nearly every computer that has a browser installed. If Microsoft is looking for a new development platform idea to help them dominate the new distributed world that they see coming which of these three models should they choose?
They've tried the web model (ASP.NET) and the Java model (.NET without the multiple platform support). Now they're picking the Flash model. Which is: create a runtime engine for rich graphical applications. Figure out how to get it to work as an add-in for all browsers. Get graphic artists and developer types working on apps together.
4. Microsoft can entice their legions of existing developers with this idea. Sell companies on using preexisting tools and knowledge to build better web distributable applications.
5. Perception of Flash. CTOs and other management folks (including potential clients for our consultants) have a narrow idea of what Flash can do. That is they think Flash = cartoons and annoying website advertisements. On the other hand, these same people 'know' that Java and .NET can create a wide range of applications. Which is easier to sell? If Microsoft markets .NET 3.0 (WPFe) correctly this will be a huge win for Microsoft. Microsoft is notorious for bad marketing decisions however. These bad choices have obscured some of the wonderful tools that they sometimes create. Don't get me wrong, they've created plenty of mediocre stuff too. I'm just saying that sometime they do something good, and screw up the marketing.
So let me sum up this long reply. With WPFe we can write real applications that run on many different platforms, are easily installed on the clients computer, have full control over layout, fonts, media and 2D graphics animation and UI controls and we can use familiar tools like Visual Studio and the .NET programming languages to do it.
That's why we will use WPFe.
WPF/E is about having a subset of this available across all platforms and devices. This includes a cut down version of the runtime, layout engine etc.
I think the goals of Flash versus WPF/WPFe are the same. But they're coming from different directions.
You can probably expect the same rich client apps running on a PC, Mac, SmartPhone, Linux box, XBox and even a watch.
Now anybody with notepad can make those things... Thats a lot more open than swf is"
There are two major problems with this:
- binary formats (like SWF) are far more compact than text formats
- interpretting straight from XAML/Javascript adds one more layer of interpretation. XAML/Javascript need to be converted into whatever bytecodes they are using, THEN they can be run and JIT'ed.
- Yes, SWF's can be decompiled (after all, it's an open file format), but it takes more effort on a hacker's part to do this than to simply intercept the XAML with WPFE. And besides, SWFs can be obfuscated, which make reverse engineering more difficult (not impossible though).
- first of all, no large project will be done simply in notepad. And besides, the same could be said about flex (build on flash), anybody can write MXML/AS3 with notepad, and use the free fully functional Flex SDK to compile. big deal.
why do MS engineers have no shame? why are they such copycats, be creative already, y'all are due!! Instead of investing in these massive copycats like www.live.com, why not just buy key businesses, like facebook.com, etc?
also, i meant "flex (built on flash)" not "flex (build on flash)"... the latter doesn't make sense.
While WPFE is cross platform, the idea of separating design from CODE is very important and this is highly portable. Someone already had a XAML to flash UI porter done last year (xamlon.com).
I just think you need to look further into what XAML does for you with WPF and WPFE to see the real utility.