Microsoft is finally making real efforts to woo the designer community who have traditionally worshipped the Adobe and Mac product ranges. One new product that addresses this previously overlooked community is Silverlight, which uses the XAML technology and is touted as Microsoft’s Flash killer. For anyone who is keen to listen, Microsoft proposes that Silverlight will achieve similar results to Flash, but it does so in an entirely different way and has different aims. So, the big question is, will Microsoft be able to break the dominance of Adobe’s Flash platform, that is available on the PC, Mac and mobile devices alike? I’m sure the jury is out on that one, but it can be said it is an uphill task.
Tags: 3.0 technologies, ActiveX control, Adobe, animation, brilliant tool, browser-based, designer, e.g, extensible application markup language, favourite editor, Flash, Flash platform, Flex, HTML, interactivity, Internet Applications, Internet arena, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X, Magic Extensible Markup Language, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, mobile web browser, moonlight, MXML, operating systems, OSX, RIA, rich internet applciations, Rich Internet Applications, Rich Internet arena, Silverlight, stream media, thermo, user interfaces, vector graphics, video, Web 2.0, web application development mix, web developers, web world, windows presentation foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, XAML, XAML technology, XML
The Internet has emerged from obscurity to become a dominant platform for application development and is integral to the idea of Software as a Service (SaaS). Unfortunately the demand to build applications of increasing complexity has continued to outpace the ability of traditional Web applications to represent that complexity and expectation. Utilisation of AJAX technologies attempts to reconcile some of the issues, but frequently the result is a frustrating, confusing or disengaging user experience resulting in unhappy customers, lost sales, and increased costs.
Tags: ActionScript, Adobe, AJAX, enterprise architecture, Flash, Flex, gears, Google, HTML, Information Architecture, JavaScript, Microsoft, MXML, RIA, Rich Internet Applications, SaaS, Service Orientated Architecture, Silverlight, soa, Software as a Service, Usability, User Interface Design, Web 2.0, web services, Workflow, XML