Other Thoughts on WPF/E

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I posted a majority of my feelings about WPF/E over on ZDNet but I wanted to also follow up with some stray ones here. I thought Mary Jo Foley took a good angle and she hones in on the Expression Studio, which is the biggest question mark for Microsoft.

First off, let me make sure everyone is clear – WPF/E is not a Flash killer. Flash isn’t going away, and value-adds like Flex and VoIP down the road make Flash a formidable foe for anyone getting into the cross-platform runtime business. But WPF/E isn’t trying to take Flash head on, but it does provide a needed jolt to the web video market. Flash was able to blow everyone else out of the water because a) it was everywhere and b) it was easy. WPF/E is easy to use and they’re working on the “everywhere” part. In addition, it will have some DRM functionality. Now I hate DRM as much as the next person, but with DRM sites like YouTube have a way to monetize more of their content and the big guys may be more likely to offer full shows and/or movies. WPF/E enables this and that’s a pretty powerful business use.

But another thing they did well was lowering the barrier to entry. With all of the interactions done via Javascript, developers can jump right in. Is Actionscript more powerful? Sure, and it does a lot more, but again, it isn’t meant to be a Flash killer, so it’s a good move for them.

Expression Studio is a harder sell. From what they were able to show me, I think it’s a solid product, and they’re working with the right people. But Dreamweaver and CS2 (though they dislike that comparison) are going to be very tough nuts to crack. And the fact that it only runs on Windows means they won’t be able to make inroads into the lucrative Mac market. So then what is the endgame for Expression? To help build XAML apps? To gain some “street cred” in the design community, to take on Adobe’s tools? I’m not sure, but how that plays out over the next year is going to be very interesting.

[tags]WPF, WPF/E, Microsoft, Adobe, Expression Studio[/tags]

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  • http://teknision.blogspot.com Tony MacDonell

    I don’t know if I agree with you on a few things here Ryan.

    I do think that WPF is squarely positioned to be a Flash Killer. If not, why would Microsft not have developed a partnership with Adobe to leverage the Flash Player in Vista and WPF? Why build their own plug-in? Will it kill Flash? I say no obviously, but it is aimed straight at it.

    The thing I find interesting is this:

    The model being advertised for WPF/E is XAML and Javascript. They state that this model is for the web, but if you want to build desktop applications using WPF, a different development model is used via the .net languages. The .net approach can be used for WPF/E apps as well if you want to, but for now they are promoting the standards approach as the main one.

    If Microsoft is attempting to pull web developers into WPF by offering an implementation that is based on AJAX development along with their new WPF/E plug-in, they may not succeed like they think, if the 2 programming models are radically different. People may be duped to think: “Build once, run anywhere”, but quickly realize they have to get a copy of Visual Studio along with the proper compilers to build the apps they want to build.

    WPF/E may succeed, but i think it will on mass based on plug-ins for Eclipse, Dreamweaver, etc. I do not think WPF/E will be a stepping stone to WPF for most. This is where making money from their Expression toolset on Windows as a business model, may not be a good idea.

    I think alot of people will play with WPF/E (including me), but I don’t think it will stick in the long run. Adobe owns the loyalty of the entire marketing industry, and I can almost guarantee that they will not move over to a Microsoft toolset. That alone will keep the Flash Player in play even if WPF/E sees huge adoption in the software world.

    The Flash Player + Apollo takes a different approach, where it is offering a cross-platform runtime, with 1 programming model that applies to all environments. The programming model is also based on 10 years of work by Macromedia/Adobe, as well as an army of developers and designers.

  • http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com Ryan Stewart

    Hey Tony,

    Your point about Flash in Vista and WPF is well taken and you’re right, there’s definitely a lot of competition there.

    From what they told me (and it was pretty high level) they’re trying to keep the programming models between web development and WPF/E development very similar. They want the people like you who are going to play with WPF/E to come away impressed and willing to do more with it.

    Now as you mentioned, this is a pretty up hill battle. Marketing firms are loyal to Adobe and Adobe has a long history in this space. You and I are both products of that. Adobe was really here first and they have the advantage. My biggest hope is that these two companies force each other to make better products.

    That way we ALL win (as hokey as that sounds).

  • http://www.thewpfblog.com Lee Brimelow

    Hey Ryan,

    Someone at Microsoft took my example and did it in WPF/E. The load time is MUCH faster. Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2006/12/04/lee-brimelow-s-xaml-test-animation-in-wpf-e.aspx.

    Lee

  • David

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    Nice user experience!