AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.
Create a link to this page
Copy and paste this link tag into your Web page or blog:
Byline: Tim Anderson
Microsoft's Expression and the platform wars
WPF/E is another piece in Microsoft's efforts to win over designers and developers to its platform. It is part of the battle for the next generation of applications that live on the web, rather than on the desktop. Although Microsoft has a well-regarded web application server, in the form of ASP.Net supported by SQL Server and the .Net Framework, it has lost out to Adobe when it comes to web design.
Flash is the de facto standard for vector graphics and animations in browser-based applications. This is not just decorative, but forms the user interface for a rich web application. Adobe also dominates the designer tools market. Designers tend to create graphics and user-interface prototypes in Photoshop, Director and Flash, which are handed to developers for implementation. Since Adobe is now extending its tools and runtimes to work on the desktop as well as on the web, it is competing directly with Microsoft in application development.
The web has also changed expectations of how applications should work. There is a school of thought that says all applications on a particular platform should have the same look and feel, the idea being that ...