First it was Sparkle and now the new babe in the block is Sliverlight. A month ago, I saw a video covering the Sparkle developers showcasing some pretty cool stuff about Sparkle. Ok. So, I am not one of those bunch who hate anything that comes out of Microsoft because it comes out of Microsoft. The way I see it, this is how it all maps -
- Sparkle (XAML) = Flex (MXML)
- Flash Player = Silverlight
There seems to be some really uncanny similarities between XAML and MXML… (Of course they are both XML!). Check it out. The graphics that these bunch of Latin-Greek-Hieroglyphs churn up are pretty good.
<Canvas xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation” xmlns:x=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml” x:Name=”_119_red_scanlione_gloss” Width=”1056″ Height=”816″> <Canvas x:Name=”Layer_1″> <Rectangle x:Name=”Rectangle” Canvas.Left=”0″ Canvas.Top=”0″ Width=”1056″ Height=”816″ Stretch=”Fill” Fill=”#FFFF0000″/> <Path x:Name=”Path” Canvas.Left=”404.558″ Canvas.Top=”258.867″ Width=”258.844″ Height=”258.844″ Stretch=”Fill” Fill=”#FFFFFFFF” Data=”F1 M 411.029,258.867L 656.931,258.867C 660.505,258.867 663.402,261.764 663.402,265.338L 663.402,511.24C 663.402,514.814 660.505,517.711 656.931,517.711L 411.029,517.711C 407.455,517.711 404.558,514.814 404.558,511.24L 404.558,265.338C 404.558,261.764 407.455,258.867 411.029,258.867 Z “/> <Rectangle x:Name=”Rectangle_0″ Canvas.Left=”0″ Canvas.Top=”0″ Width=”1056″ Height=”816″ Stretch=”Fill”> <Rectangle.Fill>
I really don’t think Sparkle or Silverlight is a threat to Flex or Flash Player. But, I definitely think here begins a competition. With Apollo, Adobe definitely has a head start over any new web 2.0 stuff. Lets not forget that Flash Player is what? 10+ years older than anything that will be born 2 years from now 
. As they say, we ARE living in interesting times!!! Definitely, we are!
Honestly, I think everyone has to learn from Microsoft to create such lovely sexy logos! It doesn’t make any sense. But, then who cares? Its a damn Logo and it looks great! 
Silverlight samples – Pretty Impressive! (You will need to install Silverlight for this)
- http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/wpfepad/
- http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/grandpiano/
- http://channel9.msdn.com/playground/wpfe/tiletext/
this cracked me up…couldn’t stop laughing
* Sparkle (XAML) = Flex (MXML)
* Flash Player = Silverlight
deja vu with all M$ products….they seem to follow and never a leader and never want to be left behind
You’d be maybe right about that vijay, if it weren’t for the fact that XAML is what is used in WPF (a .NET 3.0 component), a technology that has been available in preview form for years and years and was launched in final form when Vista came out.
Silverlight is simply able to render a subset of WPF / XAML tags on multiple platforms, MS did not invent the markup specifically for it.
About Flash having a 10 year lead I’d like to say this.
It’s a mistake to look at Silverlight and compare that to Flash directly.
Silverlight is merely a cross platform presentation layer that sits on top of, and directly interfaces with, the whole range of MS developer and Server tools and solutions. You cannot seperate those things if you want to do a real comparison, and you can’t really say that IIS, Windows Media Server, Visual Studio etc etc are immature solutions, right?
The way I see it – Apollo with Flex allows you to use any technology on the back end and still can be deployed over multiple platforms over the internet. Apollo to me is what Java Webstart failed to be. Bottom line, I can still use ASP.net served from IIS and have flex running on Flash player/Apollo at the presentation layer.
[...] :Silverlight, Sparkle and Flex [...]
Silverlight looks like a programmer doing the design to me.
All bulky and hard to use…
The key to creating a great application is having a UI that is easy to use and looks pretty coupled with a strong backend that is easily adaptable for changes.
I have created many Flash driven web sites and applications and one thing that I have found is that connecting Flash to data is not that easy. Coding with actionscript is horrible, any developer that has experience with actionscript can tell you that actionscript is on the bottom rung of programming languages when it comes to use, debugging, and features.
Silverlight 2.0 gives developers a new hope for creating applications that have a clean look, work on all platforms (almost any OS with a browser), integrates with a stable and long running programming language (.Net) that is superior in features, flexability, and ease of use.
This does not mean that developers are the only ones needed, obviously, silverlight projects can benefit from designers that know how to make great looking applications and now they can work together in a single framework.
I think when you actually compare the features and benefits of using silverlight over anything else you will see there is nothing silverlight can’t do that the competition can, but the reverse is not true.