Hi Geoffrey,
I agree with your analysis. Here's my soapbox for what its worth :)
Speaking honestly as a small independent developer, without an IE
option sticking with SVG is not really feasible, switching to Flash narrows
options and now also has a questionable life expectancy, while switching to
WFS-XAML is a painful but compelling opportunity to survive.
In the long run rich client technology paves the way for web
services. MS is pulling out all stops to own the rich client technology
base. This could give them the competitive advantage in web services
analogous to OS ownership in the desktop hay day. MS would love to use their
waning OS advantage to leverage into rich client ownership before the window
of opportunity closes. MS is primarily concerned about the next generation
struggle for web services ownership, think Google. Though, I still wonder if
the XML factor reduces any competitive leverage MS hopes to gain.
Adobe should be highly commended for their early and extensive
support of SVG, but their long term survival is on the line. From their
point of view SVG was only a competitive advantage against Macromedia and
they found a different way to counter that threat. Adobe's ceiling is the
competitive world of MS and Google as they struggle for ownership of web
services.
Vista/WFS-XAML is projected to be available about the same time as
ASV EOL (but then Bill has been wrong before). Alternative native browser
SVG is still not up to ASV capabilities and without some kind of IE option,
native SVG only reaches a small percentage of users. WFS-XAML will
eventually be available to the 80%+ of users on MS IE. Also, WFS-XAML
supercedes SVG in some critical ways: 3D, built in gui widgets, hardware
graphics speed, C#/CLR in place of EcmaScript. XAML will be a better rich
client base than SVG 1.2. Where is SVG 2.0 with 3D vectors, a built in set
of gui widgets,...?
If MS is wrong about Vista release dates, there could be a gap for
rich client web development for IE between the EOL of ASV and the release of
WFS-XAML. An overlapping download option for ASV is the best solution from a
web developer perspective. From an Adobe perspective, attempting to force
svg rich client development to move to Flash before XAML appears makes some
sense. However, closing down ASV so quickly may have little effect other
than alienating a small community of developers and raising nagging
questions about Flash's viability as well.
As it turns out in 2 years Adobe/Flash could be gasping for air and
Flash developers should take note what Adobe policy has been toward the SVG
developer community. I imagine Adobe's bottom line strategic concern is
creation tools not rendering. Flash developers must likely plan for a
similar migration to XAML in just a few more years.
The Open source Mozilla community will also be forced to counter
WFS-XAML in some way in order to keep from being leapfrogged and then
marginalize. My guess is that XAML rendering in FF will quickly trump
further development of SVG rendering unless MS patents force some kind of
enhanced SVG. Otherwise MS creates a whole new rich client internet which is
off limits to the open source browser world.
However you look at it, MS is in the driver's seat in 2007. If they
choose to transcode image/svg+xml to XAML, they could with very little
effort. But why would they support image/svg+xml at all? The Adobe/Flash
world and the FF,Opera/SVG world will both be playing catch up
technologically.
Ironically XML based rich clients are here to stay whether XAML or
SVG. Thin clients and fat clients look out!
rkgeorge
-----Original Message-----
From: svg-developers@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Geoffrey Swenson
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 1:32 AM
To: svg-developers@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [svg-developers] Is Adobe's greed clearing the way for XAML
By abandoning SVG, the net effect for us and Adobe is that XAML is going to
be the way to go.
Unless Adobe massively changes Flash to have a decent editor and improves
the ease of programming I just don't see it gaining a lot of developer
interest. Why should I pay almost $1000 for Flash and its tedious,
user-hostile graphic editor, the non-intuitive and overly animation-focused
timeline editor, when the same $1000 buys me the MSDN library including XAML
that was designed from the ground up to be a programmable graphical
environment?
If you don't have $1000 for MSDN, just Notepad and a good XAML book &&
online help should get you a long ways, especially for web-based stuff.
Microsoft can leverage their position as the largest software company to
make XAML a very complete solution in a way that nobody else can manage. I'm
sure that it will be, as usual, somewhat overdeveloped and bloated, but
since it is part of the graphical underpinnings of Vista, they must have got
it to work, unlike - for example - Firefox SVG which is still way behind the
soon-to-be-orphaned Adobe plug-in.
If I am going to have to pick one technology, I'll take the one that runs on
most of the computers. I am also picking the one that makes development
easy. If it happens to be Open Source, fine, but if XAML ends up being the
way to go, so be it. It really helps to have a revenue stream to pay for a
lot of talented work. Just 5% of Microsoft's Vista budget is hundreds of
millions of dollars - even Adobe does not have that kind of money to spend
on this.
By early next year IE7 and Vista will be released. Almost everyone running
XP will be automatically upgraded to IE7, so coverage will be fairly large
in a few weeks after the release.
I don't agree with the reviewers that think that Vista / IE7 are a warmed
over copy of Apple and Firefox. Perhaps the user interfaces are nothing
really new, but under the hood is a whole host of improvements are going to
make development of custom graphical applications a lot easier. XAML is at
the core of this, and I am looking forward to it.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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