Don Box - Tour of Indigo Team

The Channel 9 Team wrote:What do you think? Are you looking forward to using XAML?
It is interesting, notepad will out-last almost all of even the most well written development environments. I can easily see it out-lasting VB6.
This technology is pretty cool. I hate XML style new technologies (I think they are too resource intensive to pass) but when it is used correctly (like this) I love it. I must admit, I would like to have a converter so I can take the XAML and compile it right
into the app, to save the processing time.
A converter for say C# wouldn't be too complicated because XAML is strictly defined. I wonder if it is passed each time you load the application or each time you use the graphic interface? I would assume it is passed and stored as a more efficient format so
the 'events' within the XAML can pass to data handlers more quickly.
rasx wrote:XAML is impressive. Let's hear about security features! Let's hear about dropping XAML decalrations into ASP.NET and suddenly getting a web page (based on a subset of controls not Longhorn dependent).
Let's hear about Adobe or Macromedia embracing XAML so these mature design tools can be used by these mythical designers that work with us developers.
At least let's hear about Microsoft building, say, an XPDF to XAML converter.
It's a very good technology but will MS be able to make beautiful look of Mac OSX happen in Windows. XP is much more simple but Mac OSX has more hot looks. Not only should they be showing us these technologies, they must really start some great coding to make a some what beautiful, easy to use OS. Then their will be no complaint. Other uses of XAML could also be, for people wanting to make birthday cards and brochures and that kind of stuff. So I don't really reckon this technology lies just with developers. It lies within everyone. I think XAML will be one the best technology out along with .NET and the other Longhorn Pillars. Plus it's gonna be available on XP and Windows Server 2003, so it should really be something that will be encorporated not only into Longhorn but some exisisting Windows Operating Systems too. Although that is only the latest ones. But by the time it's released, 2000 will be like 98 when Xp was released. And 98... LOL!!!
Alexm wrote:>It's a very good technology but will MS be able to make beautiful look of Mac OSX happen in Windows.
Well if you apply the appropriate visual theme you can already get the look and feel of Mac OSX on Windows XP (and some even more impressive look and feels). For my money the new Royale theme is pretty cool too.
Looking at Lornhorn's new Aero UI, (the few glimpses we've seen from the PDC and other sources), it already looks top notch. Hopefully it'll be a significant step forward in elegant interfaces (though it'll be interesting to see how a older windows apps will look on the new platform).
On the other subject of backwards compatibility, I understand way it's impossible to retrofit the vector based render engine of Avalon into Windows 2000/XP, but perhaps it would be possible to use the framework to render XAML apps with the GDI on older versions of Windows, in a cut down form (losing the high fidelity graphics, resizing etc...).
Thus an application made using XAML could perform on a older platform much like a browser can render html pages even if it doesn't support CSS (although hopefully the drop in visual quality won't be as drastic).