Microsoft's Sparkle, cool. Competition?
I found out that the details of Microsoft's Sparkle project were released, and I'm impressed and a little jealous.
Sparkle will allow designers to create their UI's using a designer-oriented tool. (To my non-designer eye balls the tool looked a lot like the Flash IDE.) But here is the kicker, it produces XAML code for use in a C# project. If you're not familiar with XAML, do a google search and read up on it. It's pretty cool. Just like with Flex and OpenLaszlo you specify your UI in XML. (Flex and OpenLaszlo both compile down to .swf files, which run in the Flash player.)
I'm impressed that a company is trying to provide a seamless workflow between the UI artists and the developers. The tools they are providing seem to be of a high level of quality, and will allow people to produce some amazing user experiences.
I'm jealous because the XAML code is rendered by your computer's GPU. (That's your video card, dude!) OpenLaszlo developers, myself included, would love to have better performance in their applications. There's only so much you can do "in software" to improve performance. I'm really curious if a future version of the Flash plugin could take advantage of your video card's rendering capabilities. Is it even possible for a browser plugin to use your video card?
Now the obvious bad thing to say about this technology and platform is that it's Windows only. So I won't say it. ;)
I really hope the dev teams at Macromedia and Adobe aren't distracted by their upcoming merger. We need tools and technologies to combat the developers who are going to be working with the XAML and the Windows Presentation Foundation.
Sparkle will allow designers to create their UI's using a designer-oriented tool. (To my non-designer eye balls the tool looked a lot like the Flash IDE.) But here is the kicker, it produces XAML code for use in a C# project. If you're not familiar with XAML, do a google search and read up on it. It's pretty cool. Just like with Flex and OpenLaszlo you specify your UI in XML. (Flex and OpenLaszlo both compile down to .swf files, which run in the Flash player.)
I'm impressed that a company is trying to provide a seamless workflow between the UI artists and the developers. The tools they are providing seem to be of a high level of quality, and will allow people to produce some amazing user experiences.
I'm jealous because the XAML code is rendered by your computer's GPU. (That's your video card, dude!) OpenLaszlo developers, myself included, would love to have better performance in their applications. There's only so much you can do "in software" to improve performance. I'm really curious if a future version of the Flash plugin could take advantage of your video card's rendering capabilities. Is it even possible for a browser plugin to use your video card?
Now the obvious bad thing to say about this technology and platform is that it's Windows only. So I won't say it. ;)
I really hope the dev teams at Macromedia and Adobe aren't distracted by their upcoming merger. We need tools and technologies to combat the developers who are going to be working with the XAML and the Windows Presentation Foundation.
posted by Michael Sica at
4:41 PM
7 Comments:
I'm gonna say "Yes, you can use videocards in a plug-in." I mean, it's just software. The only reason it's so restricted is because the plug-in designer created a wee little sandbox to protect users. It can still access DirectX or whatever-it-is-that-Apple-uses.
Here are some other bloggers posting about Sparkle and Flash.
http://justin.everett-church.com/index.php/2005/09/15/sparkle-hmmm/
http://www.ericd.net/2005_09_11_blogger_archive.inc#112683812771460591
The new Flash Player 8 DOES take advantage of OpenGL, on the Mac, which is why it performs so much better than previous versions.
Nathan,
I did a quick search on Macromedia's web site and Google, but I didn't turn up any information regarding the Flash player using OpenGL.
The closest I got was this:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/tn_13674
But it seems to be talking about the Flash IDE (editor).
Can you point me to any links that talk about this?
I did find a non-Macromedia Flash player that uses OpenGL:
http://www.globfx.com/products/swfplayer/
http://www.google.com/search?q=flash+8+opengl
Hello,
a) on the Mac, we do use OpenGL now for rendering.
b) We are not distracted by the merger :) We are going to be talking a lot soon about Zorn...it is coming along very well.
-David
WOW, that's awesome!
dmendels, does anyone know why the Flash player doesn't use OpenGL or DirectX on the Windows platform? Or am I retarded and it already does?
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