Scoble posted a video about Sparkle and the Sparkle team. It’s worth a look, but I didn’t watch the whole hour of the video. Sparkle looks very cool, but I don’t think it’s any better than Flash. It does show that Microsoft is following Macromedia into the Designer/Developer space. It appears to be a very powerful, professional tool that a lot of developers will probably like.

It’s not the “Flash Killer” that people have called it, but it does target the same people that Flash targets. It is going to give designers the ability to build Windows Vista applications very easily and work with developers to make applications that are easy to use and look good.

All of the Avalon stuff coming out of the PDC is clearly a shot across the bow of Macrodobe. As a Flex developer, I think the competition is great and I can’t wait to see Macromedia present some of its own cool stuff at MAX. It’s a great time to be a rich internet application developer.