Avalon, Sparkle, Quartz, Flash thoughts...

DIGG IT!     0 Comments Published Thursday, November 06, 2003 at 6:04 AM .

The more I read about MS Avalon, it just seems like a replacement to the antique GDI drawing API for windows. It is most likely just another repackaging of the DirectX API with kernel support. ;) \0

In OSX apple upgraded their drawing API to Quartz. Here is a quote on Quartz:

"Quartz is a powerful graphics system which forms the foundation of the imaging model for Mac OS X. Quartz offers a sophisticated two-dimensional drawing engine and an advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing functionality. Quartz's windowing services provide low-level functionality like window buffering, event handling/dispatch as well as dynamically creating the translucency and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface. "

Avalon is an MS initiative to improve the GUI on Windows. It is a technology chasing Quartz in terms of look and feel. Actually, considering Redmond's track record, it is most likely a repackaging of DirectX fully integrated into the OS. This is very similar to their work on XBOX using Nvidia processors. Nothing new as usual, copy, copy, copy, and little true innovation.

Sparkle won't fly due to the fact that Redmond won't support multiple platfoms, the download will be huge, and it will require DirectX at a minimum and potentially the .NET Runtime (nail in the coffin). This simply can't compete with a player size of 500Kb and a fanatical developer base in full growth mode. Flash has momentum as a medium and Microsoft wants part of the market.

The 7th generation Flash Player will be 100X better than Redmond's 1st version player. The key value to Sparkle is it lets you develop windows applications to Avalon much easier than traditional development tools. How in the world are they going to get applications written to a fancy new (directX++) drawing API, if there isn't a simple easy to use development tool.

Sparkle = DirectX + bytecode + vbscript

I will bet $100 that the player is over 2Mb in size and requires DirectX 9 to work. The player will not be cross platform and it will have huge security holes the day that it is released. The first Sparkle virus will appear within 1 month of its release.

The only reason why they pre-announced this years in advance is to stop developers from adopting the current defacto standard for rich media development, FLASH. This is old hat for MS, they have done this 100 times in the past:

MS Marketing Rule 1 : Fear of switching tools is increased by pre-announcing products.

I am sticking with extensible, portable, compatible, Macromedia Flash.

cheers,

ted ;)

PS. I googled "microsoft avalon" and got an ad for Laszlo Systems Flash development tool. Go figure....

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