Here are the poll result for the poll : "Do you think Microsoft Avalon is a possible threat to Macromedia Flex?"
Yes : 32%
No : 38%
Not Sure : 30%
The results seems to be mixed, but the majority think that Avalon is not a threat to Flex (The Linux and Anti-MS Community is always there ;) ). And looks like we also have a sub-set of users who are still confused and not able to decide if its really a threat ot not, since we have not yet experienced Avalon personally.
Comments
MS did release a public preview in November, pretty large download, i still haven't had a chance to play so i can't really say anthing about it. Give it a run..
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8f904e1-b4ca-402b-accf-aaa2bd60da74&displayLang=en
I've just come back from MXDU where both ColdFusion, Flash and FLEX featured heavily.
funnily enough there was a MS team showing off ASAP.NET 2.0. I cxollared the presenter who admitted that "Linux was the 800 lb gorilla and MACR were snapping at their heels with web solutions". If you add Apple being an alternative desktop OS then they're copping it from all fronts.
Maybe I'm a bit slow but the penny dropped as to why Flash (and by extention Flex) is so important to MACR: they have the perfect "thick client" that is truly cross-platform. MS won't be able to offer that: XAML is just another bunch of .NET classes on a Microsoft client - not Mac, not Linux.
I reckon they've got problems.....
cheers
barry.b
I think comparing the two in many ways is like comparing Flash to Windows Forms :)
Both have wins in their corners but in reality Windows Forms for a "windows machine" can do a lot more then flash... for now...
Hmm, what you wrote of "threat" made me think of something else... I fear a real threat from Avalon (among other things) in that some may have perceptions that one thing should be the other.
Specifically, arguments like the following will likely occur: "Well, I can alter user config files in Avalon, but can't in Flash". Microsoft's emphasis is on providing deep hooks into a given system, while Macromedia's emphasis is on safe playback across a range of systems. Both (will) use XML, vectors, network requests and such, but the ultimate uses of each will differ. I could see over-familiarity with Avalon as leading to threatening requests for Flash development, as we've already seen with some requests for the web player.
jd/mm