JD on EP

btw, I'm guessing it's pronounced "whip fee", rather than "double-u pee eff slash-ee".

If WPF/E does turn out to be a Flash Player killer

Don't think Adobe should worry, you guys have the best design tools, so just convert them to produce WPF and WPF/E content instead.

And a Flex Framework for WPF and WPF/E would be fantastic.

Not that I'm looking forward to it but I may get tagged with learning a bit of WPF at work and then teaching it to some of the other designer/developers on the team. As long as it's on Microsoft time I'm game to learn anything but I wouldn't waist 5 minutes on it outside of work. Anyhow, I'll be sure to write my thoughts on the framework after I get into it. The hard part is going in with an open mind - it sucks - and not prejudging it. :-)

The current WPF homepage at MS has the page header, "There's a better way to create rich web experiences." How about, "There's another way ..." The Microsoft marketing department is fantastic at deluding themselves.

I'm thinking that anyone who is launching a new product like WPF might want to have links to some sample projects that, you know, WORK!!! How in the world can they have all the sample links go 404?

Same here Oz, 404 on all. wtf?

Oz, phrases like "better way" caught my eye too, as did the direct positioning in David Boschmans' (now removed) post: "I'm really looking forward to demo WPF/E because together with the Expression Tools we will then - finally - have a story to tell on creating rich web experiences. A story which goes well beyond creating a rich UI like Adobe/Macromedia Flash does."

I'd expect the official materials to use oblique references like "better way" because they don't have to explain them, and it's likely bloggers will be more direct and then they'll be challenged to substantiate their assertions, with varying degrees of response. As the new entry, I expect to hear many comparisons to the Adobe universal runtimes and creation tools... yup, blogsearch term "flash-killer" is already starting to pick up action again. ;-)

("nz", I think future versions of Adobe Flex and the design tools will likely wait to see Microsoft's actual effect in the cross-platform world before changing their schedules of developing other abilities.)

Update: To bail MS staffer David Boschmans out of any potential internal trouble, it looks like this Digg entry noticed the live pages about 4pm Pacific Time Saturday, predating David's post by six hours or so (depending on his timezone).

JD, that was very thoughtful of you to point out information to help cover David Boschmans.

I know from experience that Content Management Systems can be great at times and other times allow someone to make huge mistakes like, "oh frak, did I just publish the company secrets?"

Events like this just reinforce my first law of web publishing: Never, ever, ever publish anything new on a Friday.

The Expression Interactive Designer beta I tried was really not worth the trouble, so real MS competition on the designer tool side seems a bit off.
However, because of the open nature of XAML, that may not be so relevant. There are already several 3rd party tools available, like Mobiform's Aurora and Zam3D, and converters are beginning to pop up, like Swanson's SWF2XAML and my own PSD2XAML.

"And a Flex Framework for WPF and WPF/E would be fantastic". Already there - that's .NET and Visual Studio. The .NET system corresponding to Data Services (typed datasets) isn't great, but there are lots of better (cheap or free) OR/M systems that do the job.

For a few upcoming projects, I'll use Flex (with a .NET backend) instead of WPF - better install base, more mature solution (for the first time, I'm very impressed by something with MM origins :P) - but in a year or two I'm certain the choice won't be as easy.

>The Microsoft marketing department is fantastic at deluding themselves.

That's what marketing departments do, Oz. Adobe is no exception either. I can remember when PageMaker was "the best" page layout tool. Please.