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December 04, 2006
"Microsoft targets Adobe"
"MS targets Adobe": Microsoft did finally push info live on their "Expression Studio" tools, and newspapers are using lines like the above or "Flash Killer". I'm still skeptical of how they can balance their overall MS-centric business with the multi-platform needs of their audience, but the proof'll be in the pudding... I'll wait to see what actually happens. Throughout the day, though, I'll be collecting commentary here from others, adding to the extended entry. Feel free to add links to additional novel observations in comments, thanks. (But no astroturf, please... evangelism either way isn't appropriate, and in all cases full verifiable names make comments more useful, thanks.)
Update: Most of the comments at the end of this collection are op/ed, with some evangelism.
Ryan Stewart had the first post that caught my eye... I think he had the text at the ready. ;-) The part that concerns me is this: "'WPF/E' is Microsoft's answer to the Flash Player. The client for 'WPF/E' is a small download (less than 2 megs) and it will run on both Windows and Mac as well as inside Firefox, Internet Explorer, and even Safari. No more lock in, Microsoft understands that you need to be able to view 'WPF/E' content regardless of your platform."
The problem I see with this is that it takes Microsoft assertions of platform-neutrality at face value. This may be believable the first two or three times you hear it, but I've seen what happened with IE/Mac, ActiveX for Macintosh, the whole EMBED -> OBJECT competition and W3C influence, "Windows" Media Player story arc, and more. Each was promised the same way, and each faded away when their actual job was done. Things might be different this time, but fool me once, twice, thrice, and eventually....
(Disclosure: I personally admire the work Ryan does -- I like optimists -- and Adobe has bought him meals when he has visited.)
Update: Ryan later adds a line about search engines, from talking with Microsoft staff: "With Flash, everything is compiled down to SWF and the search engines rely on metadata to index them." This hasn't been true for quite some time, as searches like this demonstrate. The text inside a SWF can certainly be indexed by search engines. But with non-static presentations you've got to figure out where the search engine should bring you in the experience... see Joe Berkovitz for a discussion of the actual problem. (And this begs the question of whether *all* your text is what you'd want to be found by anyway... usually it's just a few key details and phrases which need to be indexed in order to be listed in searches you can compete in.)
Darryl Taft, at eWeek, has an interview with MSer Forest Key, but doesn't address a question from developer Ryan Dawson elsewhere in the article, about why Microsoft is trying to popularize a new clientside runtime engine, when they could have just compiled to the very capable, and very proven, and already massively-deployed Adobe Flash Player. This angle is still a mystery to me too... best hypothesis is "not invented here" syndrome, a need to control the stack.
Mary Jo Foley sees mixed messages in the whole campaign, and provides source data and interviews.
MS staffer Somasegar reprises that theme from last March that the usability designers and "experience matteres" have converted the entire technology field over the past few years: "Over the past year you have heard me talk about the importance of user experience as a central part of software creation. Increasingly customers and businesses are looking at differentiated, rich user experiences as a key success factor."
Joe Stegman, WPF/e lead, has a video at Microsoft's Channel 9. The video displayed for me in my up-to-date XP machine, but ran for an hour and I won't be able to invest that time for awhile... the blurb says "Ernie Booth and Laurence Moroney visited Joe Stegman, lead PM for WPF/E and discussed issues such as the MAC on his desk, WPF/E, the fountain outside his window, and of course WPF/E. We also experimented with a new product placement technology in this movie. See if you can spot it...."
Robert Scoble answers the question "Why reinvent and try to redeploy a runtime?" with "Because Longhorn was prototyped in Director, and it took too long to recode." Seems a non sequitur, to me... confuses production issues with audience issues.
Posted by JohnDowdell at December 4, 2006 12:15 PM
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Comments
I have to say that i was looking forward for this day. I think this kind of competition could be good for us developers. Still as a long time SWF advocat a was a bit afraid. Today i installed all the products that are threatening my daily work routine and have to say it`s not that overwhelming. The product line looks cool at the first glance but at a second look there are so many quirks. I watched a wpf/e sample in Fireworks and IE. In Fireworks it loaded forever without any feedback and than it behaved totally different than the same thing in ie. Things like that will make it difficult for MS to compete with adobe. I think what everyone is mixing up is wpf and wpf/e. Wpf is cool but wpf/e is by far not that powerfull. It`s in no way superior to the flash player. Sure adobe must be alarmed and they definitly need to get 3d and more power but they are still in a very good position.
Posted by: Benjamin Dobler at December 4, 2006 01:46 PM
I feel WPF is quite a competitor for Flex and Acrobat Reader.
In terms of fanciful effects, powerful functions and good connectivity, I feel WPF is better. Plus, there are a lot more MS developers than Flex developers. WPF has 3D capability. So, If one can view 3D models in a web browser why would he run some external software.
Posted by: shang at December 4, 2006 02:03 PM
I dont know about that. WPF has got a ways before it is stable - The .net 3.0 MediaElement tag has random crashing and other issues. While visually nice in terms of what it can do as they took all of the flex/flash filters and implemented them so you can do nice uis, the stability of it needs to come up to par before it can be used for development.
WPFe - Nothing that impressive. Why not just use AJAX and not have to deal with the plugin? You dont write C# - its js.
Posted by: ak at December 4, 2006 02:34 PM
Forget IE/Mac - what about IE/Unix? Microsoft has proven that they're exceptionally good at keeping up appearances while a market is competitive, and equally good at dropping the ball if they pull ahead.
Anyone who trusts Microsoft to be a long term partner need look no farther back than the launch of the Zune, with it's new incompatible DRM, to see how they discard their partnerships when it suits them.
Don't get me wrong, it looks like they've done some good work, I'm always happy to see more dev tools written, and Adobe could use the competition; but they'd have to spin it off from Microsoft before I'd consider it. (Not likely since they built it at least in part via aquisition.)
Adobe has already proven that it is committed to supporting more than just Windows while Microsoft's cross-platform record is very mixed and mostly negative in the long term.
Posted by: James Ahlschwede at December 4, 2006 02:41 PM
If there "Flash Killer" is anything like there OS I see a lot of browsers getting high jacked. And btw Flash already got 10+ years dev. under his belt
I think M$ not will come far in this market.
Posted by: Jack at December 4, 2006 03:15 PM
MS should have some prof that their product is better by showing it in some type of elaborate example. The software would have to hold real ground over flash before I would even start to consider their software. Even if the software can do all that flash can it should do a hole lot more before they state it's some "flash killer".
Posted by: Josh Chernoff at December 5, 2006 10:56 AM
I'm also very sceptical. MS and cross-platform support just doesn't go together. My prediction is that it will kind of run on Macs initially with support for that OS quickly getting left behind. We already know that MS has no interest in *nix and is leaving the support for that to 'other parties'.
Posted by: Stefan Richter at December 6, 2006 01:36 AM
wpf/e is just out, give it time, it will evolve. I've been following blend/intereactive designers development for awhile. The real power behind it is the way it dinds and handles data and integrates with exisiting ms technologies. It seems to me it has the power of flash,flexbuilder and apollo all in one app, certainly nothing to turn ones nose up at. And the interface is simply put, beautiful.
MaTT
Posted by: matt at December 6, 2006 02:18 AM
suppose this will help somebody, who got used to Microsoft products. As far as I am concerned I am will remain to be NON MS fan, and for interenet web developing (soon with Apollo desktop dev) I choose Adobe. Microsoft always aim at wide audience but they've miss it because of non-inventive technology that they market like ground breaking stuff. Anyway like first reply said, competition can be good stuff for web developers :)
Posted by: MrSteel at December 6, 2006 05:58 AM
to be sure to win the war, flash player MUST be able to use the graphical accelerator of the client... i'm sur that the MS one will use it, and at the beginning the difference will be on the performances…
Posted by: cr at December 6, 2006 10:30 AM
It's already certain that Microsoft has the least interest in the "cross-platform" model. It doesn't benefit their business model: their web properties should be tied exclusively, or as much as possible, to their own operating system.
It's similar to how Apple emphasizes that Mac OS X should only be run on Apple hardware, and not on vanilla PCs.
The key word here is "control." Just like Apple is ultimately interested in selling Macs with OS X as the creamy filling, Microsoft is ultimately interested in selling Windows with WPF and company as the creamy filling.
That's why its named Windows Presentation Foundation.
Posted by: Rayne Van-Dunem at December 17, 2006 02:48 PM
"Give it time"? Well, sure, I'll give it time, since it obviously needs it. Microsoft ought to do the same, though. If it still "needs time", then don't throw it at us and hype it to death.
Microsoft's new strategy of showing off their half-baked ideas has done nothing to reassure me as to the quality of their products... but it has shown me very clearly that their development processes are messy, confused, and without a clear vision or direction. I always suspected that MS's dev methodology was akin to throwing a thousand monkeys at typewriters. Now I no longer suspect it: I know it.
Posted by: Trou3le at January 11, 2007 12:30 PM