Microsoft will bring some of the graphics destined for Windows Vista to the Macintosh, phones and older versions of Windows next year through a user interface toolkit. Company executives at the Mix ’06 Web developer conference on Monday provided anticipated dates for delivery of Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or WPF/E, a user interface design software for operating systems other than Windows Vista.
Vista Graphics Tools to Reach Mac, Phones
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Support for other platforms (Windows 2000, XP, Mac, Embedded OSs), is always good. Don’t discount that the users will probably need the .NET runtime as well, and probably will need to install service packs and other updates. After all that, it will be just like Java Applets: a technology used infrequently. The whole shebang will be fun on Windows Vista itself, though.
Well, I’m all for more marketing. Keep them coming.
you can already run .net on mac anyway, the cli has been running on osx and freebsd for over a year now
I remember reading about this a long time ago but that was when they kept on deciding the features they said Vista would have kept on leaving the feature list. I really hope this means .NET is going to Mac too.
Microsoft has really been turning my head a little lately – wouldn’t move to Windows but with Ajax, .NET, this, open sourcing of MechCommander 2, etc it seems like they will definatelly be around 10 years from now. Microsoft could leave Windows entirely and I think they would still be around as a technology company. Interesting times are ahead.
Edited 2006-03-22 03:22
… another Great Idea from MS that all the management idiots will jump on and spawn a new generation of websites that only look good on Windows (after v2.0 at least, when everyone is onboard and support for other platforms starts to slip.)
Unfortunately, I only rate this troll post a 4/10. For only a few extra points, you could have thrown in something about Windows randomly BSoD’ing on your system, and then talking about how great Ubuntu is.
Better luck next time, my friend.
Which is why you’re getting voted down and he’s getting voted up right?
His post hardly seemed like trolling. It’s a valid point that a base technology from one notoriously closed vendor isn’t exactly the way to bring about a new wave of software design methodology.
It’s not so much that I expect it to be open sourced. More that I expect it to be well documented, publically.
that was just delayed today….
More hype about a product that wont make it to stores till April of 2007
Its pretty difficult to have a delayed product when there was no official release date.
You mean like the previous official Microsoft release date of September of this year..
Care to provide a link to back up that assertion?
April? Since when?
Sort of like X11, no?
IMVHO it’s more an subset of the Windows Vista API / .Net Framework / Microsoft-javascript-specific-functions that can be used on older operating systems or small devices, to bring the Vista look-n-feel and experience to others users.
X11 really is just a display client/server architecture. And also, it will surley be available only to Microsoft softwares and Microsoft operating system, can you really speak of “cross-platform”?
This is also lead to the issue raised in the previous post: web content that become more microsoft specific if people start to use that.
Again all this said IMVVVHO.
Edited 2006-03-22 08:29
This is also lead to the issue raised in the previous post: web content that become more microsoft specific if people start to use that.
You won’t have to worry about that, the net and content will remain very much the same as it is now – maybe with some more of that god awful flash, but pretty much the same.
Now, in terms of application service providers, and Office being provided on line, and given how XAML can be rendered within a webbrowser, the issue won’t be so much ‘proprietary web content’ but ‘proprietary code’ as the front end to Microsofts application services.
With that being said, however, one could argue that if you were going to run a Microsoft online service through your webbrowser, one would also assume within the same breath that you would also be running Windows.
What needs to occur is the need to implement these technologies, or atleast in the case of wine, allow .NET 2.0/WPF and the likes to run under wine, along with IE 7 etc. if there is going to be a fighting chance for people to be able to access those Microsoft services with non Microsoft operating systems.
Are there anything similar comming as open standard?
It would be great to create web based software that ran like an application on any platform, without installation.
It seems the new competition here for RIA (Rich Internet Applicaton) dominance is between Flash/Flex, Sparkle (which is now called WPF/E – I’m not sure what they were thinking there), and AJAX (and the other related tech, like Canvas, SVG, etc.).
If there is to be a public standard it will likely be centered around AJAX, though it is worth noting that the Flash SWF format is usually a published format, and that Microsoft may still submit the WPF/E format to ECMA like they did with their new Office formats and .NET in general.
It will be interesting to see if the Mono Project is able to implement a compatible system to run WPF/E sites. This would actually give that platform a leg up on Adobe (Flash) since there is currently no open source implementation of the Flash Player (well at least not yet).
… except in GNU/Linux, of couse.
I believe the future of the presentation layer will be defined by Adobe and Microsoft, and their strategies are VERY similar. Both include the use of XML as a UI descriptor (XAML vs MXML), an ECMA affirmed language to control it (C# vs Actionscript 3), and a low level virtual machine to run it (CLI vs AVM2).
Sadly DHTML, SVG, XUL and Java all missed the boat here.