“Another interesting announcement here at PDC is that Microsoft is creating a subset of their cool, fancy pants UI layer (formerly code-named Avalon, now WPF) on other platforms, including the Mac! In fact, one of the demos involved showing vector graphics rendered in Safari using a Microsoft plug-in.”
I would rather not run MS code on my Linux box anyway thank you very much.
-nX
I think that WPF/E is more intended to be used for web services that use Avalon and to be sure that those web services work on something else that IE. Its not used to build Avalon apps on mac.
OS X has anyway already everything to build high quality visual effects UIs and to do vector graphics. They really dont need microsoft….
I agree. Avalon will open a whole new door for webservices for those Windows loving coders out there. Microsoft are simply allowing other platforms to access that.
I dont see it either to buid avalon apps on the mac. If MS were trying to compete with Apple on this front it would be a grave mistake especially since its a criple version of it and especially when the intel transition is complete! Also when 10.5 and 10.6 hits the selfs it will prob make Vista look like Windows 3.11.
According to the slides of the session “Choosing the Right Presentation Technology: Windows Presentation Foundation (“Avalon”), Windows Forms, ASP.NET, IE, and More” (http://216.55.183.63/pdc2005/slides/PRS200_Wallent.ppt),
WPF/E seems indeed rather complete (it support video, too); it doesn’t need compilation since it’s XAML+JavaScript.
so you’re saving avalon is very feature packed for OS X?
Windows users use QuickTime and iTunes. They do so because Apple ported their QuickTime Media Layer to Win32. Did Windows need this orthogonal media framework? No, not really; DirectShow provides a standard way to deal with codecs. Many Windows users even hate having to use the QuickTime player enough that they find other ways[1] to deal with the container format. So is Apple trying to “compete” with Microsoft by porting the infrastructure necessary for porting their software? Well in the more broader sense it enables them to compete with Microsoft by allowing them to more readily port their products to Windows, where those compete. But is the QuickTime framework itself competing with DirectShow et al? No, not so much.
Are users helped or harmed by this effort? How about the business involved? Well, since Windows users can easily-enough look at all of the neat trailers for movies on Apple’s website, and play all sorts of neat songs that they buy from the iTMS, I would say that users benefit. Apple gets more users for their services, so they benefit. Thanks, portable software frameworks!
[1] http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm
Creating a crippled version of Avalon for non MS platforms hardly sounds tempting to get suckered into using. I would rather see MS do more to properly support industry standards (such as SVGs), but that probably wont happen anytime soon.
Embrace & Extend
.. but you can’t read its specifications because they are distributing them in the Windows .exe format: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpsspecdwn.mspx
You can read it just fine… the exe is a selfextracting zip archive.
Embrace & Extend
Yes,for them unavoidable,sometimes i wonder if MS has more MBA’s than developers running around.
I would rather not run MS code on my Linux box anyway thank you very much.
Neither will i,unless it’s GPLed or otherwise open-sourced and the community itself has something to say about what they envision and not something which is solely layered upon them.
Hmmm.. Isn’t Looking Glass from Sun supposed to do much the same thing? I do not know if it is GPL’ed or not.
Hmmm.. Isn’t Looking Glass from Sun supposed to do much the same thing? I do not know if it is GPL’ed or not.
I don’t know wether it’s GPL-ed or not.Personally i think it’s better looking notheless,and you aren’t forced to use you know which OS i mean.
Has this move by microsoft effectively killed off linux?
“Has this move by microsoft effectively killed off linux?”
There is always one person who has to say the dangerous question, i bet its you everytime!
No it has not killed Linux but it appears MS are trying to make strong allies with Apple and together kick out linux.. but i don’t see Apple getting annoyed with Linux. It appears everytime Mr. G gets annoyed with Linux he tries to remove it anyway he can. The worse thing is, if both MS and Apple developers embrace avalon that would create something Linux does not or can have until MS extends it hands towards Linux. But as we will say, i doupt that will very much happen. Well here’s waiting for 2006 for the biggest fight yet.
Just like Asp.Net was supposed to create cross-platform html. Yes, that panned out really well.
Is Ms Management or just Microsoft programming hacks that can’t get the job done? I used to think it was management, but, now I’m leaning toward Ms fanboys ignoring mgmt directives.
Typical Microsoft … let’s get some crappy technological implemenation pushed onto developers and users, lock them in and the competition out. Why on earth would anyone want to use the proprietary Avalon crap for internet services in an open environment like the internet. Who needs Microsoft crappy technology anyway.
Uhm… If you actually bothered to find out something about Avalon, you would know that it’s not for Internet services. It’s for presentation.
I’m guessing you were talking about Indigo, which makes little sense in a thread about Avalon.
If you don’t like Microsoft products and technologies for some reason, you are free to not use them.
“If you don’t like Microsoft products and technologies for some reason, you are free to not use them”
False. Most people are “Locked in” to using Windows for work or other business purposes due to proprietary software only available for Windows.
Not to mention the whole world’s exposure to the millions of spam relay and zombie infected Windows boxes while surfing the net.
This is not freedom from Windows.
“False. Most people are “Locked in” to using Windows for work or other business purposes due to proprietary software only available for Windows.”
You have the freedom to go work for someone that doesn’t use Windows at all. Or why not start up a company that only runs non-Microsoft stuff.
Most people don’t even CARE about what system they use, as long as they get the job done, and why should they care?
“Not to mention the whole world’s exposure to the millions of spam relay and zombie infected Windows boxes while surfing the net.”
You can easily avoid getting a single spam, and there is a LOT of stuff ISP’s could do to curb these problems. Most people DON’T need to have certain affected ports open from the net.
For browser vulns, just stay the hell away from porn and warez sites and other places that are untrustworthy.
Btw… You don’t even need to use a computer if you don’t want to. Ever thought about that?
When I was 16, Burger King forced me to use their register and their register software. I was locked in. It was bullshit! I should have had the choice to use whatever I wanted for the register.
Note: I have never worked at Burger King, thank god
Could be worse – you could have worked for McDonalds & been forced to use SCO’s software
A rather obvious move –
Microsoft is selling Office for Mac OS X and also providing MSN IM clients. Having the same graphics toolkit available as on Windows should allow them to share code between the platforms. Should there be a demand for more, they can still port the rest of .NET. Trust me, should OS X or Linux gain dominance over the desktop, Microsoft would release their software for that platform in a nanosecond.
…when MS no longer needs it.
Only MS Office (often second rate on OSX) is currently well supported, while many other ports have been discontinued (IE, for example — on Apple’s OS as well as other Unix systems).
There’s nothing in Microsoft’s history that says they will be there for the long run…unless they need it specifically to ease porting MS Office.
Only MS Office (often second rate on OSX) is currently well supported, while many other ports have been discontinued (IE, for example — on Apple’s OS as well as other Unix systems).
That’s why when every Office:mac release comes out, it get rave reviews claiming it’s better than its Windows counterparts? Like when Office 2004 was released? The only thing lacking is in terms of Entourage vs. Outlook, and the lack of Access (though I doubt Apple, with File Maker Pro, especially wants Excel) and Publisher, with other more minor Office apps.
One thing you and many others fail to realize is that Office is a bigger cash cow than Windows. Microsoft is not going to sacrifice profits from Office just to have marginal small increase in sales and profits from Windows. They have much more business sense than that. Ending Office for Mac wouldn’t make Windows sales significantly higher, but would lower Microsoft’s profits.
But neither is Microsoft going to waste money to port something to a platform that doesn’t provide it revenue, rather loses both direct and indirect, all in the effort to help their competitors.
It’s not like Linux is a mainstream os with any real market share or anything. Better off without them and would rather do it ourselves anyway.
Argh, use SVG, not this proprietary stuff.
– chrish
Sorry, but Avalon blows SVG out of the water. Can SVG do 3D?
I’m quite surprised by this. I definitely didn’t expect them to do this. WPF is an amazing platform (especially when combined with XAML), and I can’t wait to see it start being used.
Sorry, but Avalon blows SVG out of the water. Can SVG do 3D?
Yes, SVG can.
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.kevl…
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/svg-graphics-3d.html
http://www.mywebstuff.com/09_3dengine/
http://www.beatware.com/products/md.html
http://www.eclipse.org/tptp/platform/documents/design/ChartingServi…
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=13&url=http%3A//www.mir…
You need to use browser that supports SVG rendering or Adobe SVG editor.
Are you serious?
None of those links show ACTUAL 3d rendering, but 3d effects.
You asked if SVG can do 3D, you did not ask about rendering.
Fine, fair enough. I meant 3d rendering,a ctual 3d objects. I assumed that’s what peope would read.
SVG will give us javascriptable vectors. There is a specification for something called “Canvas”, which will be a javascriptable 2d imaging api, and theres plans for a spec for Canvas3d after the 2d implementation gets off the ground.
The way things stand in the open world, the standards based version of avalon will be a combination of XUL, SVG, and Canvas.
Can you map a video onto any 2d or 3d surface and have it play in real-time with SVG?
What is 3D? Isn’t like (x,y,z) coordination? There are different way to render object in 3D.
In addition, 2D is basically 3D with z = 0 i.e. no depth value. That is the fundamental basis of anyone in graphic department.
I thought recently (within the last two weeks) MS decided to change the name officially to DirectX 10, instead of Windows Graphics Foundations.
I was wondering about the issues of security and trust. Sorry, but a “Microsoft plugin” just somehow sounds bad and not like something I’d want to have on a system that needs to be secure.
Microsoft is putting this out just so that they can reap the benefits of saying that Avalon is cross-platform, and avoid the costs of having to maintain and optimize the damn thing. Look at Windows Media Player 9 for Mac–doesn’t use native widgets or familiar keyboard shortcuts, and is orders of magnitude slower than mplayer or vlc. Now that Flip4Mac has a working QuickTime plugin for WMV3/WMV9 files, I should delete WMP.
… about MS not being cross-platform and then when they do it you bitch they are:
a) it is crapy tech (w/o looking into it)
b) it wont’ really be cross-platform
c) it is embrace and extended (wrong metaphor in this case)
d) it will be crippled
e) point to the wrong doc for the spec to prove a point
No matter what MS does, good or bad, you folks will just bitch.
Don’t get me wrong, they have done plenty of stupid things … but almost anything you can complain about for MS you can complain about for Apple. They are both companies interested in making money and getting people to use (stay) on their platforms/tech. A largely using Apple would be a very similar to what we say now (except MS does a better job with developers than Apple).
“… but almost anything you can complain about for MS you can complain about for Apple.”
that it is a purely ignorant statement.
try asking lotus, novell, netscape, wordperfect, the US DOJ and US The Department of Homeland Security.
ask them if they’re “bitching and moaning”.
I think that you are identifying a typical defense mechanism.
Bion[1] deskribes a common group dysfuntion called basic assumption functioning. In theory a group from time to time breaks down and cease being a productive group and insted introduce a, false, basic assumption of the group purpose.
This particular instance is what he calls a fight-flight group.
[1] http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:2lrkWli0q6YJ:www.selfhelpmagazi…
(I used google cache to get around the annoying mime-type)
Windows revenue is bread and butter for MS. Every strategy of MS has been to stop any errosion on that front by causing pain to users of other OS’es. So I suspect its got something to do with XAML. MS probably wants to make sure XAML enabled web-sites run perfectly on mac as well. So that they can lure web-site developers to make “rich applications” in XAML (instead of XUL maybe, firefox runs on windows, mac and linux). Effectively causing a pain to the users of Linux.
Many said that Avalon wouldn’t be a “Flash killer” because it’d have no plugin for cross-platform deployment…
Can you do everything in SVG that you can do with WPF/E?
Is SVG as simple to use and to handle?
I’ve seen a lot of talk about SVG through the years, and I still don’t see it widely used.
SVG 1.0 from mid 2001 and SVG 1.1 from early 2003… If it is such a “big thing”, why is it not already everywhere?
It kind of feels like the now pretty much extinct VRML, and other stuff that promised much and delivered nothing.
Get ready for it. In the near future, IE will be the only major browser that doesn’t support it inline with xhtml. It’s going to start being used on the web whether microsoft ignores it or not.
I personally can’t wait to start fooling around with it more seriously when the next version of gecko is complete.
You mean like MathML is being used an the web (Mozilla supports it) whether Microsoft ignores it or not? That’s why Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and various blog engines rely on rendered images and mediocre formatting? If “used” here simply means that there will exist a non-empty set of sites that make use of it on the entire Internet, well then I’m pretty sure Microsoft doesn’t care about that.
said it before…. M$ and APPLE working together more to take on the mighty challenge which is linux! M$ knows they cant do it themselves and how it looks when they do something dirty so why not grab a partner and together reduce linux market share to nothing…. JT
OK, so Microsoft ports avalon (or just extensions) to another platform, avalon is built to integrate with directx, which platform #2 doesn’t have.. calls have to be re-written in opengl, which vista won’t fully support, thus what do you end up with, a slightly crippled avalon on another platform that uses more cpu to emulate the directx calls. Microsoft wins by skewing the results because Joe Mac User installs this ‘ theme ‘ or whatever its going to be, and its performace is crippling to the system because of the extra overhead required to emulate the directx calls. End user experience is bad, Joe User uninstalls avalon.
Am I missing something?
Wow. I like how you assume you know exactly how it will work.
I’m not assuming anything, I’m reading it on OSNews
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11489
Lets just say Microsoft will put 90% of its resources in fine-tuning avalon into vista, and only 10% in porting it to other platforms.. that seems pretty reasonable to me.
Now, if I could figure out how to just install media center in my xp install…
How about a primary source for this news, instead of just Homer J. Random’s blog ? Also where the hell did the ‘But Not Yet for Linux’ in the title come from – the blogger never even mentions Linux one way or the other.
die microsoft die!!!
It’s a server operating system and always will be. Nobody cares about linux on the desktop.
It’s a server operating system and always will be. Nobody cares about linux on the desktop.
I do. Several thousand geeks do. I guess that proves that statement to be false.