[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -----
From: Matthew Raymond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Problem is, his suggestion of getting the opposition going on this
>> doesn't seem likely (I'm assuming he's referring to the Open Source
>> community). Everybody's too busy going their own way. Having said
that,
>> that's probably the strength for the current Web: it's a total
>> hodge-podge of many technologies, many organizations, many companies
and
>> many developers.
> First of all, I think you miss his point. He's saying that
> opposition would be more likely to develop critical mass if Microsoft
> announces a real release date for XAML. The lack of focus on a
specific
> standard is in part a belief that XAML's release is still way off in
the
> distance. If there was a hard release date, people would start looking
> where that fits into their own development schedules and realize that
> they don't have nearly as much time as they thought they did.
You're right. After re-reading this I missed the boat on this point.
Maybe
That's what we all need is a solid date to light a fire under our
behinds.
> As for a hodge-podge of standards, I really don't see that. There
> may be some diversity in some areas, but the most successful
> technologies on the web (HTTP, HTML, DOM, ECMAscript, CSS) are based
on
> open standards developed by several web standards organizations.
Yes, HTTP, DOM, CSS and JavaScript yes. HTML is a hard target to hit
since you may still be expecting old bastardized HTML from the
Netscape/IE war days or you may be saying strict XHTML instead.
Even if you stick with say XHTML I have yet to see a complex page in
XHTML look the same in IE, Firefox, Opera, Konqueror and that one on the
Mac (Sorry, I forget the name of it) and I'm not talking about simple
problems like differences in fonts.
Then you have Quicktime, MPEG, AVI, WMV, SWF, Java, VRML, Shockwave
(mostly legacy), Acrobat, Real Player (almost gone now) and a few others
that are not so popular. I know that these ones that I've mentioned are
not open standards, but they are standards nonetheless and in many
circles these plugins are expected to exist on the Web client side,
therefore they make up the hodge-podge of what the Web is today.
And even though these are not open standards, they still need to be
considered by the Open Source community since they help to make things
complicated. They've made what the Web is today more deep rooted meaning
that it'll take quite an attractive new technology to lure everyone
away.
>> Microsoft would have to offer one really really sweet deal for the
>> entire Web as we know it to fold and for everyone to move over to
>> XAML/.NET/Windows 200x. That would have to be the mother of all
killer
>> apps.
> To some extent I agree with you. However, without reasonable
> competition deployed prior to the release of XAML, Microsoft could
come
> in with a complete and comprehensive suite of development tools an
grab
> a significant portion of the development market before anyone knows
what
> hit them. It would take a decade to undo this kind of damage if we're
> not prepared.
I do see what you're saying. But at the end of the day it's all about
dollars and cents. Even if Microsoft offers an extremely scalable
technology, offers extremely easy-to-use development tools, offers those
tools absolutely free, offers development documentation that makes
development easy and offers this all to the public at large tomorrow,
it's still going take money to redevelop new Web content, redevelop
back-end programming to talk to DB's, redevelop front-ends.
Now, if Microsoft offers to completely pay for all the new development
costs as well, then I'd say we're in trouble. But that aside, the
consequentialist mentality of the business world is, I think, what'll
stop this from happening too quickly.
I'll add another 0.02 to the pot.
;o)
>> (my 0.02)
> That's in New Yen, right? ;)
Heheh, nah, that's in Canadian funds ... so in USD that would be about
0.0002
;o)
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