- All That Glitters Is Not Flash
- The Flash Effect
- The Microsoft "Gotcha"
- Is Macromedia Worried?
The Microsoft "Gotcha"
What Sparkle can deliver sounds all well and good. But should you be running out and buying Sparkle today and throwing your copy of Flash out the window?
No.
Microsoft's Sparkle Interactive Designer comes at a high price. You must have the Windows Presentation Foundation installed to view any content. If you're running Windows XP SP2, you can download a beta release of Windows Presentation Foundation now, but note that Microsoft assumes you have a high-end video card on your computer for those beautiful 3D experiences that WPF delivers. You're also running beta software that's apt to change, break, and potentially crash your computer.
Sparkle applications are to be experienced on the upcoming release of Windows Vista. That means you'll need to wait until the third or fourth quarter of 2006 to deploy your Sparkle applications.