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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: Inside Redhell: Microsoft XAML Blogger Round-Up
 Or we take a proactive positive approach and get to work on serious standards for rich client apps. I welcome XAML because it is a known change, and because the infrastructure underneath it will be solid. 1. We know that rich clients are coming. We've known this since before HTML was a wet dream. We needed the plumbing. That is in place now and the infrastructure of systems such as Indigo remove some of the complexity. 2. HTML won't go away. It is a model of a very useful application language that was overloaded by the ambitions of those who wished to make an operating system out of it and who used browser company politics to incite. Nevertheless, the gencode approach always scales from dumb and dumber to smart and in need of speed. 3. Standards are still valuable but we have to learn to listen and time their emergence. Rich client experimentation has gone on since at least the early nineties using the same family of design approach as has been later used in XUL and XAML. XUL and XAML validate that early work and among all of these, are confirmation of TimBL's principle of independent invention for it. That means it is time to begin or renew serious and legitimate standards work but with the understanding that the software companies will not slow down their development efforts. This is BrowserWarsRedux unless we are wise and patient and determined to do the right thing. That doesn't mean burn down Redmond; it means work with them. There isn't any other realistic choice. If the XAML PMs resist this, Balmer needs to seriously consider putting them back to coding and out of the strategic decision chain because the desktop is such an important part of the market. If they aren't noting that the animosity at every level of every customer and government is steadily increasing, they are doing precisely what Netscape did when it sluffed off XML. They will sink much more quickly than they believe. "Iceberg?" If they want to do something smart, they will work with a standards group to see to it that XAML has air cover. I watch the messages on this list and I lose my respect for the XULies and others because they want to beat the hell out of MS (and why not, MS has the biggest pot of money) claiming foul play when in fact they use the same tactics of FUD and claims of originality that are so easy to disprove. The MS XAML PMs probably knew about XUL but little else. They can afford to ignore grassroots efforts but ignoring legitimate standards is more risky. Like so many who start at HTML, they feel vindicated in ignoring the XULies because they've seen the XULies ignore others. Spy Vs Spy. As far as I am concerned, neither are more just than the other. So if anyone out there still has a sober serious brain, they may want to work with a legitimate standards group to produce a rich client standard. The forces converging in broadband, cable, and satellite pipes will drive out standards for these clients and Microsoft cannot dominate that. Even their power doesn't extend that far. But when that gathering does happen, one bit is sure: only the serious players will be at that table. I suggest the professionals begin to understand that. Do your homework, do your analysis, and plan for a product line that includes both HTML-based browsing and rich client applications that work on any modern screen and any server. Standards will emerge but they will not drive development. The stakes are now too high and the awareness too ubiquitous to do the HTML and running code, we got sets in the barn thing again. len From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:ricko@a...] Gerald Bauer wrote: > First to show off Microsoft's duplicity let's bring >on some "innocent" Microsoft employees wondering why >the Free World is outraged about XAML: How threatening this all probably depends on your view on MS' long term dominance of the Web. At the moment, it looks like MS will lose government and education markets to Open Source steadily; I expect that MS may be squeezed out (by low margins, piracy, different cultural expectations about the value of intangibles like software, their loss of credibility on security, and especially nationalist/anti-imperialist considerations) of the East and South. The combination of schools not using MS, Sony supplying a good browser in PS3, and TVs and phones becoming smarter, may well reduce MS' dominance in the home/student market as well. Military applications tend to have a very long life, so MS cannot expect much truck from the military away from supporting W3C/ISO/IETF standards-based formats. Which leaves business, SOHO and office use, and it doesn't look like XAML offers that much for SOHO. There is an economic theory called the "Sales effect", which says that after a market is saturated, sellers have to progressively spend more on stimulating demand by advertising, pushing margins lower, and on bottom-lining (spending more time on licensing and anti-copying measures which risks alienate non-business users more.) Maybe MS will find itself at that point during this decade in some markets. It will be very interesting to see how it plays out. Ten years ago the company next to mine used to prominantly display an already-old magazine cover saying "Unix is dead"... I think the most reasonable attitude is to welcome XAML, because it will provide more richness (think XUL), swear to never use it when HTML/REST can be used (think Flash), and just boycott browsers that don't implement W3C standards. 
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