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Gerald Bauer | 10 May 21:55
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On the new <canvas> HTML5 tag by Stefano Mazzocchi

Hello,

   Stefano Mazzocchi (of Apache Cocoon fame) writes in the blog story titled "On the new 
<canvas> HTML tag":

  Mozilla turned on the new <canvas> HTML tag, so I expect Firefox 1.1 to have it.
<canvas> is a was first introduced by Apple in Safari for their implementation of the 
upcoming 'DashBoard' in MacOX 10.4 (aka Tiger) and now it's part of new, non-W3C effort 
to improve HTML for richer client-side web applications. It introduces the notion of an 
"image you can paint on" programmatically. People have been doing this with applets, then 
shockwave, then flash, then svg, now this. The trend is clear: smaller, leaner, faster to 
startup, more integrated in your environment (means real event interoperation with the 
page!), easier for DHTML designers to understand.

This leads me to think that <canvas> is going to be huge. By the time the new Adobe
+Macromedia colossus decide the faith of flash+SVG, this little HTML tag will slowly make 
both suboptimal for many simple tasks they are used for today.

Also, <canvas> has the potential to become the new <iframe> for advertisers, making it 
harder for things like adblock to recognize adds and remove them (or maybe adblock will 
just need to be a little smarter and use DOM3 xpaths instead).

The other interesting thing is that <canvas> is somewhat proprietary and only Mozilla, 
Firefox and Safari implement it (maybe Opera does too but I'm not sure). Some people 
complained about this not 'being standard' (as in "W3C recommendation" standard) and 
this was the reply from one of the developers:

We are turning canvas on -- it's already on by now. Get over it. Nothing in a relatively new 
spec is set in concrete, but that does not prevent useful work from being built on it. This 
is how the Internet protocols, and then the web, were built. Welcome back to incremental
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Gerald Bauer | 11 May 19:53
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Microsoftie Responds To MyXAML Lead's MSXAML Critique

Hello,

   John Gossman (Microsoft) writes in the blog story titled "XAML comments by Mr. Clifton":

  His comments are right on, a sensible end note to the more confrontationl tone of the 
thread he refers to.  We struggled for a long time over somewhat conflicting visions of 
XAML:  as a declarative UI programming language, as a more general serialization 
mechanism, or as a document format.  Simiilarly we agonized over whether to be 
optimized for hand or machine processing.  It still isn't completely over:  I was talking to 
customers recently and a debate broke out over whether XAML should even be human 
readable, in particular over whether a designer should ever show it.  A show of hands 
found half of the room felt it was mandatory that XAML be displayed by the designer, and 
half were vehemently against ever looking at the stuff. 

At the end of the day, XAML is just a tool.  You can program Avalon just fine from the 
language of your choice (Python anyone?) and never see XAML.  You can write your own 
declarative mechanism, and if you want to use CSS, go ahead.  The language wars having 
been going on at least since Lisp and Fortran, and I don't have any reason to believe XAML 
will be any less controversial.  At best, it will be a fraction as successful as those two 
greybeards.

The current version of XAML (which Marc hasn't seen yet...its coming with the next CTP), 
leans much more towards being a general serialization mechanism suitable for machine 
processing.   As he suggests, we could have gone another direction and been much more 
independent of the underlying object model and much more optimized for UI design by 
humans.  That would be a different language though...and frankly, it's still waiting to be 
implemented.

   Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/johngossman/archive/2005/04/30/413754.aspx
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Gerald Bauer | 17 May 03:22

Microsoftie Opens XAML Wiki Site @ xamlshare.com

Hello,

    Adam Nathan (a Microsoft employee working on WinFX) writes in the blog story titled "A 
new XAML wiki: XAMLshare.com":

   Could wikis be the solution to all the world's problems?  Probably not, but I've created 
another one anyway.  It's called XAMLshare.

  I'm starting to see folks share MSXAML samples on their blogs (myself included), and 
thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a central repository of samples?"  So there you go.  
Unlike pinvoke.net, I'm unable to jump-start it with tons of content.  I "XAMLshared" my 
playing card samples, but hopefully Nathan, Sean, and other people will start contributing 
their awesome samples, too!

I imagine that page naming could become tricky, as we might end up with a list like:

CoolButton
CoolButton2
CoolButton3
CoolerButton
...
But hopefully people can come up with descriptive (or at least unique) names for their 
controls, like "WoodenButton", "WoodenListBox", etc. that cross-reference each other.  I've 
also created a "Themes" category so someone could just contribute a "Wooden" style that 
re-skins all controls, for example.

I don't know how useful the site will end up being, but I'm open to suggestions on 
organization or anything else!

    Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/adam_nathan/archive/2005/05/16/418068.aspx
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Gerald Bauer | 25 May 20:12

Mozilla Guy On XAML vs XUL

Hello,

   Gervase Markham (a Mozilla employee) writes in the blog story titled "XAML and XUL":

   I just attended sequential talks on XAML (from Rob Relyea of Microsoft) and XUL (from 
Ben Goodger, Firefox Lead Developer) at the XTech conference. One could argue about 
whether and how these technologies are in competition, but what struck me most were the 
differences in focus, approach and design philosophy, which I would summarise as 
exclusivity vs. inclusivity.

Portability. The motivation behind XAML seems to be to make it easy to write Windows 
applications, or web applications in IE. The motivation behind XUL was to provide a first 
class UI on every platform without having to do the work multiple times - i.e. "we want to 
be inclusive; let's work out how we can do that".

Localisation. The XUL system is designed to be very easy to localise, and Ben made a point 
of mentioning it. Firefox 1.0 is available in 40 languages, localised entirely by volunteers. 
No mention was made of localisation in the XAML presentation.

Licensing. The XAML presenter dodged the question of whether Free software 
implementations of XAML are possible. The reference XUL implementation is available to 
all under a Free licence, the standard (as far as it's documented) is open, and the authors 
neither hold nor would enforce patents on it.

Of course, having only heard 45 minutes on XAML, I could be mistaken in some of my 
understanding. Alternative views or corrections welcome.

   Source: http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/gerv/archives/008211.html

   Any comments? Any thoughts?
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Gerald Bauer | 26 May 04:21

MyXAML 2.0 Available For Download

Hello,

  Marc Clifton writes in the blog story titled "MyXaml 2.0 Release 05-25-05 Available For 
Download":

  I am releasing an updated preview version of MyXaml 2.0 which corrects a few minor 
problems:

o  event late binding now works
o  MyXamlAutoInitialize now works for all element instances in the object graph
o string values can now be assigned to properties of type object

and also supports the custom property hook that I discussed in my previous post.

You can download the latest version here.

Note that the download is simply a zip package of the MyXaml 2.0 development directory, 
rather than a complete installer with examples, etc.

  Source: http://myxaml.com/marcclifton/archive/2005/05/25/1966.aspx

  - Gerald 

_________________________________________
United XAML       | http://unitedxaml.org
XAML Forum & News | http://xamlnews.com
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Gerald Bauer | 26 May 23:00

Microsoft XAML Spec Owner Responds to XTech2005 XUL vs XAML Posting

Hello, 

  Rob Relyea - the Microsoft XAML spec owner - writes:

 Gervase Markham is attending XTech, an XML focused conference in Amsterdam.  He 
attended my talk on Avalon/XAML and had some comments.  In this post, I'll address the 
first of his three comments.

 Avalon's Motivation

 Gervase said:

"The motivation behind XAML seems to be to make it easy to write Windows applications, 
or web applications in IE."

Our goal is not JUST to make it easier to build today's applications...I'll try to clarify. 
Avalon will:

1)      Be the new presentation platform for Windows

We are building a new presentation platform for Windows that enables a whole new 
generation of applications.  It is called Avalon.  It will run on Windows XP, Windows Server 
2003, and Windows "Longhorn".  Today's Windows applications will continue to run 
compatibly.

We are working with software developers from around the world to help them build great 
new applications that can benefit from the new capabilities Avalon offers.  Many 
developers and business people are very excited by what we are building.  If we and they 
do our jobs right, users will be delighted by the applications offered in the future.
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Gerald Bauer | 26 May 23:08

Brad Fults on Microsoft's Non-Response About XAML Licensing and Portability

Hello,

   Brad Fults comments:

   To be sure we understand the dialog that has been going back and forth, Gervase nailed 
down three points on which XUL is seemingly better than XAML either through 
interpretation from Rob Relyea's XTech presentation or lack of explanation from Relyea 
and Microsoft.

Rob Relyea said he "replied" with his blog post, but if you read his post and the comments, 
it's plain to see that he simply confirmed two of Gervase's points (portability, licensing) 
and provided absolutely no further illumination about the remaining point (localization).

In my humble opinion, this kind of dodging stinks of dubious salesmanship and should be 
left to Microsoft's PR department; not to its developers when speaking with the world 
developer community. Instead of addressing or refuting any of Gervase's points, Rob 
simply said "Hey, Avalon will be awesome for Windows!", something that can be expected 
from a shady vacuum cleaner salesman.

In general, if you don't have a rebuttal to an argument against your product, keep quiet. 
No developer wants to hear more of Microsoft's sensational marketing blabber.

_________________________________________
United XAML       | http://unitedxaml.org
XAML Forum & News | http://xamlnews.com
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Gerald Bauer | 27 May 00:41

XTech 2005 Slide Deck On MSXAML By Microsoft Spec Owner Online

Hello,

  You can find Rob Relyea's slide deck on XAML online in the XTech 2005 conference 
proceedings section.

  See http://idealliance.org/proceedings/xtech05 for details.

  - Gerald

PS: Find out more about XTech 2005 @ http://www.xtech.org

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United XAML       | http://unitedxaml.org
XAML Forum & News | http://xamlnews.com
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