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Microsoft executives provided technical detail and anticipated ship dates for a product code-named Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere (WPF/E) at the Mix '06 conference last week.
The goal of WPF/E, which should be available in the first half of next year, is to bring a significant portion of the slick look and feel of Windows Vista--the update to Microsoft's Windows client software--to other operating systems and non-Microsoft browsers. WPF/E software can display video, two-dimensional vector graphics, and animations but stops short of the full 3D graphics and document rendering capabilities available in Vista, according to the company.
Microsoft said it will create versions of the WPF/E software for Windows XP, Windows 2000, the Firefox browser, the Mac's native Safari browser, and mobile phones. Microsoft will rely on third-party companies to make editions of WPF/E for Linux and non-Windows Mobile phones, executives said.
The development of WPF/E signals a stepped-up commitment to building software that can run on operating systems other than Windows, analysts said. That's a major shift for the company, which admits it only paid lip service to the concept in years past. "Maybe in the past when we said 'everywhere' we didn't really mean everywhere. Now we really mean it," said Forest Key, director of product management for Microsoft's Expression designer tools. "We want to support the widest breadth of scenarios from the browser to the desktop."
As part of that shift, Microsoft said it will allow developers to use its mainstay development languages, C# and Visual Basic, to write applications for other operating systems and devices, including the Mac.
To run WPF/E applications, machines will need to have software to render the graphical elements. In that sense, WPF/E will be an alternative to Adobe's popular Flash software, which displays interactive graphics, animations and multimedia in Web browsers.
Although Microsoft is spending plenty of time talking about its front-end development strategy, analysts and industry executives note that the software is not yet available and that some important details are still missing. In addition, Vista itself has been delayed once again and isn't expected in wide distribution until January.
In particular, developers and designers will need to know precisely how WPF/E stacks up to the full-blown presentation capabilities Microsoft is preparing for Windows Vista and Windows XP, said David Temkin, chief technology officer at Laszlo Systems, which sells interactive Web development tools that compete with Microsoft.
"It's interesting to hear that they'll be 'subsetting' or 'de-featuring' on other platforms--that's a little bit of a red flag," Temkin said. "One thing that's been critical to Flash's success is that all the features work everywhere."
In addition, Temkin said it's important to see how easy it will be for end users to get WPF/E on non-Microsoft software, which will require browser plug-ins in some cases. "Fundamentally, they're introducing a new plug-in into the browser market. It's been some time since vendors have done this," he noted.
Still, Temkin said Laszlo may support Microsoft's upcoming presentation software in its own tool set, which right now can generate rich-client applications that run within browsers using Flash or using AJAX by the end of the year.
Developer story
Microsoft's push into the graphics market relies heavily on the strong position it has with mainstream software developers, built up over the years through products like Visual Basic and Visual Studio.
Vista includes a revamped look and feel. Developers write applications that take advantage of the sophisticated graphics in Vista, such as 3D images and vector graphics, through APIs (application programming interfaces). To display those applications, Windows machines need software called Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).
WPF will run on Vista and Windows XP, the current version of desktop Windows. With WPF/E, Microsoft is hoping that developers will use its tools to write Vista applications and then alter them slightly to run them on other operating systems and browsers, said Microsoft's Key.
See more CNET content tagged:
Laszlo Systems Inc.,
Adobe Systems Inc.,
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IBM Corp.,
Microsoft Windows Vista
While I agree 100% with your point, the semantics of it are the antithesis of what I believe you were trying to get across. :)
cross-functional application would choose to use this new
technology when non-Windows platforms will be (again)
marginalised while a mature platform that delivers full
functionality across platforms is available today in the form of
Flash. I really am sick to death of these attempts to make me
use Windows so I hope that the development community takes
one look at this and develops in Flash instead.
Seriously, why hamstring a platform so that it is less functional
on non-Windows computers? It will require additional testing
and design if the developers are interested in supporting other
platforms so they might as well save themselves the trouble and
use Flash.
coming in..
Time will tell, like in a year so so.
dominance on the desktop won't last forever and are wise to
diversify.
Eventually the OS you run on your "internet device" won't matter,
and spreadsheets, word processors, etc. will be commodities (or a
service) that interact with each other seamlessly.
Flash does deliver that in the sense that Flash players work the same way on every platform (though it has its disadvantages, but that is not important right now).
Microsoft 'sort of' embraces an open web, which effectively does mean that they want to put their stamp on the web, yet again and tie it into the Microsoft platform; like they tried before when they pushed Netscape out of the market.
Let's hope this will fail miserably, otherwise progress on an open web (rendering conforming to the standards set, and agreed on by Microsoft too!, by the W3 will slide back once again, like in 1998.
an alternative to Flash and was pushed by Adobe before they
bought Macromedia. Why doesn't MS pick up the ball and move
SVG forward as they embraced XML. After all, the XML support of
MS Office is a step forward. A real Flash-killer would be SVG
export for PowerPoint animations, for example and everybody
would benefit from an existant open standard (see http://
www.w3c.org).
WPF/E is a true app platform, complete with managed code and other app-centric features.
SVG is dead. It's time to let it go, man.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/liquidmotion/
Another one for the recycle bin.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/previous/liquidmotion/
Another one for the recycle bin.
Yeah, this whole web thing is just a fad. ;-)
I don't care much for Windows anymore, it is so small and limited in comparision. I can access the Web from any connected device with a browser. Windows is just one client among many. The biggest client in the future will be the cellphone.
Why is it that MS has to put their freakin' hands in everything?1?! Don't they have enough projects running behind?
I think here before too long MS is gonna implode under their own massive agendas. There are only so many coders that can only do so much!
What next MS?
Refrigerators?
Toasters?
How about fireworks?
Those at least are purdy!!
The article cite's WPF/E as competition for Adobe's Flash - am I missing something here?!
Second, it's not just a UI language - it's an object serialization format for any CLR class.
Things like XForms are 100% visualization. XAML goes way beyond that.
- Security in Silverlight?
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by Leechman
April 16, 2007 9:32 AM PDT
- From Mike Harsh's blog: "So what is WPF/E? It is a cross-platform, cross-browser web technology that supports a subset of WPF XAML. WPF/E also has a friction-free install model and the download size we?re targeting is very small. WPF/E supports programmability through javascript for tight browser integration. The WPF/E package also contains a small, cross platform subset of the CLR and .NET Framework that can run C# or VB.NET code. Yes, we are bringing C# programming to the Mac."
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Reply to this comment
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See all 33 Comments >>The bit I'm concerned about is this: "WPF/E also has a friction-free install model".
Microsoft's "friction-free install models" have been a big-time security problem for the past decade. When they started down this road in 1997 the number of viruses and worms effecting windows increased by orders of magnitude, and became harder and harder to stop, because of their hard refusal to build a solid sandbox into their security model. They repeatedly poohpoohed sandboxed extensions like Java because of teh performance cost, and have continued to develop systems with "soft" sandboxes like the .NET framework since.
And, look here, "The WPF/E package also contains a small, cross platform subset of the CLR and .NET Framework that can run C# or VB.NET code."
I predict that this will prove a true windfall for malware authors.