Archive for the ‘.NET’ Category
The Proposal
Moses, the maker of FuseKit, is hoping to influence Adobe product lines to include a common base for animation and motion going forward. Currently the AS3 world is very alive and is inspiring developers like myself to build lots of toolkits and really creating reusable code and kits that can make things very easy from going to Flash to Flex. But wouldn’t it be nice if a part of these kits that have to be downloaded every time you have an application use them be part of the native Adobe applications, or a core animation kit that partially standardizes animation basics to build upon further?
Are we just asking for trouble or is this a good idea? I don’t’ think it can hurt to bring this to the surface. I know that common syntax and familiar kits can really help the developers and designers move from Flash to Flex to After Effects to Javascript, it could also help Adobe with usage and usefulness of their entire suite of products. Or further this could be a standard that allows Silverlight to also build upon (open standard) and may the best platform win.
I think it would be very wise for Adobe to:
- Standardize animation toolkits across their products and
- Start standardizing some of the basic tools of building motion and filter kits to native but still allowing a flourishing open source and community research and development aspect.
What MosesProposes:
- Blog entry by Moses on this topic
- Diagram: Current Situation
- Diagram: Proposed Core Library
Moses did speak with someone at Adobe about this and it is generally in the plans:
“It was also a pleasure to see Richard Galvan present the upcoming crop of Flash features: the sleek update to the animation timeline (better late than never?), support for columnated flowing text (double finally!) and the big one, native 3D player support for Display Objects as rotatable 2D planes. He ran out of time and didn’t get to a few others shown at Adobe MAX, such as built-in IK (inverse kinematics) and faster pixel-level drawing for texture-mapping and photoshop-like filter effects.
Talking to him after the presentation I learned that Richard has a keen awareness of exactly where each feature is at currently. We chatted about low-level animation mechanics of the Flash Player, and I found out that the holy grail of a time-based player is indeed on the distant horizon, but that each rev will need to be a small step toward this goal. The new Flash timeline features meld After Effects, Premiere and Live Motion, and from what I’ve seen I have to say that they are nailing this long-overdue upgrade with great design decisions and a level of usability we’ve never seen in Flash. Kudos, team!”
The Current Situation
Right now Tweener and TweenLite (and animation package and a few others) have a unique position in that they work the same almost for AS2 and AS3 (Flex or Flash – with minor property changes such as _x to x as that has changed in AS3). But it would be nice if these kits also had a version for After Effects (really bringing that tool into Flash/flex developer worlds) and Javascript and it would be great if Silverlight also were supported (AgTweener anyone?).
Tweener is leading the pack in this aspect of creating a similar experience from AS2 to AS3 in Flash and AS3 in Flex and even JSTweener for Javascript, and a kit for haXe which is becoming my favorite toy and the dark horse with the most upside potential, with haXe on the loose these points may all be moot as haXe can target any platform (except After Effects easily, correct me if I am wrong and Silverlight but it could easily be done so to do it for Silverlight 1.0 which is ES3 based).
I don’t use After Effects as much right now but if I could easily incorporate this into Flash/Flex and script and animate in a similar syntax and way I know After Effects would definitely have a boost in interest.
Also, the forgotten one Director, can we please get an ES4 based language in that application, or an update? Then kits and add-ons are much more possible. I really miss hardware accelerated 3d in browser as a pushed technology, Director is still around but it does not get the focus it needs. Feel the freedom and coolness just in this small test here in director, hardware accelerated 3d is the best, the Director application environment and Lingo and hacked in javascript are not the best. As a long-time Director user, hobbyist and professional I am disappointed in Director’s support at Adobe thus far, but I digress.
The Reality
The reality is right now the only problem with kits like Tweener, TweenLite, Tween, mx.transitions, mx.motion, etc is that the source has to be embedded in movieclips multiple times. Sometimes there are multiple animation kits per compiled SWF that have to be used for more advanced features. This adds bulk that if common might not need to be there (this comes into play still on mobile and large games/apps).
Let’s say you have an application that pulls in many disconnected SWFs and they all have animation in them, well if you have 20 of these let’s say, and you embedded a very small Tweener at 9k per SWF. That is about 200k of duplication of AS code. Due to the kits small sizes this is not a problem really but when animation kits like Animation Package come into play, you are talking 40k per SWF which would leave you with almost a meg of just duplicated animation code. I don’t think this is that major of a problem for kits like Tweener (9k compiled) and Tweenlite (3k compiled) but as projects get bigger and more depth of animation platforms needed this can be a problem. This can also be solved in architecture with a controller and dummy SWFs to animate but there are times when you need animation in the compiled SWFs and then also need it in many others and the controller.
The other reality is the animation kits (mx.transitions.easing, mx.transitions.tween) for Flex and Tween for fl are a little bloated, more difficult than needed to use and as has been seen, much slower than kits currently available in the community. My one fear about this is that if Adobe makes this, possibly like Microsoft’s toolkits and libraries they put out, they are always bloated and slower, then because they are embedded they are untouchable. If it was standard enough as building blocks that are faster because they are native, then this is the best option as embedded script would be hard pressed to beat native code in the players/applications.
The Future Plans
Some of this is underway….
Animation kits for future, Adobe is releasing Flash 10 called ‘Astro’ that has many new improvements in tweening with xml closer to flex or even Silverlight like transitions and storyboards. Aral Balkan, a sponsor of OSFlash, posted on this and even that Diesel Flash CS4 will include more Tween tools for IK/bones. Tweener , TweenLite, Animation Package, Animation System etc these are all helping to define the best way to do animation kits.
Physics toolkits have their own animation kits currently usually to handle the movement according to algorithms. FOAM, APE , Box2DFlashAS3 (just released very recently will be posting more on this after I check it) and Motor Physics (unreleased but heavily demoed at polygonal labs) are great physics toolkits and I like this being part of the community to get refined, maybe one of them or the best performing ones becomes part of the proposed Adobe Animation bundle. These will define the best way to do physics kits.
3d in flash toolkits have also been emerging rapidly in 2007 with Papervision3D, Away3d based on pv3d, Sandy, and even engines starting to get built on top of these platforms.
The general direction is moving towards another platform in there somewhere but I think much work is left to be done to standardized physics systems, 3d and advanced motion filter tweens and bezier, splines (Catmull-Rom), editors, etc. I think it is getting time for basic animation kits to become more standard though and in latest versions of flash this is included in the flex and flash scripts but not the native code.
Right now the standard in syntax and the broadest reach is Tweener and due to the bigger fish syndrome, haXe that can target any platform, it also has a Tweener and can create code for as2, as3 and any target written in if After Effects, Premiere or other apps get more robust and standard animation and motion kits. Tweener has kits made and contributed for AS2, AS3, haXe, Javascript and others.
There is also Hydra and the AIF Toolkit that are standardizing After Effects and Flash shaders and filters into a new shader language like Cg and reminiscent of processing.org.
As humans we trial and error and build new platforms in the market to step on to create better platforms to build cool stuff, it is evolving right now. AS3 is inspiring platforms within platforms of Flash and Adobe kits as well as on Silverlight and in the Javascript world with JSTweener, jquery etc. As these things are refined we build a level standard platform to build more stuff on. Eventually this will be there and whoever does the standard platform for animation will probably reap in users and abilitty to easily add new products and solutions where people already have training. Silverlight is an example with .NET developers. .NET was also an example with C# so similar to Java. ES4 based AS3 has proven it is inspiring all types of new platforms and kits and will continue to do so and it is an interesting time in this industry whichever direction it goes.
Flash and Silverlight allow developers to make amazing tools, they allow creative expression and they also are usually a bad user experience many times.
Lots of that is changing as more applications are made and frameworks like Flex and Silverlight progress. Much of the needed performance is now available for Flash/Flex in AS3 and the AVM2 virtual machine that runs it, making full applications much faster for all actions that might have been a drag in AS2 and vector based application’s of the past. Some great tools were made with this still that were usable like gModeler a flash based UML modeling tool but the performance boost will make these applications even more usable for mainstream.
Some great examples of user friendly apps where the flash or the silverlight element doesn’t blind the developer from usability. These applications might really have a market for general users of applications from advanced depending on feature set as long as they are usable.
Is a word processor that is really well done. This is made with Flex and everything from validation to the toolset is very usable and clean. I use Google Docs and haven’t looked back for about a year but this application is a nice change to web editors for documents at the current state. It included all the usual basic functionality and great new zoom, revision history and sharing tools that web office tools like word processors has come to expect. Be sure to try this one.
scrapblog (Flash/Flex/AS3)
scapblog is a bloggy/presentation that is a great template editor and the tools are broad and expected from users including great integration with the web for photos and video at major sites such as photobucket, flickr, etc.
Google SearchMash (Flex/Flash/AS3)
This is a Flex 2 (actionscript 3) application that is very fast and usable in vector.
Sample Textured 3d Vista demo(Silverlight 1.0)
This demo showcases the speed of Silverlight and a usable OS like interface that performs well. It showcases Silverlight but also has great usability in expected user actions and results.
Tafiti is a search tool that uses SIlverlight and live search to represent search results in a rich way. They did a pretty good job with usability and especially considering the Silverlight 1.0 lack of good input controls. Little bit laggy.
The point is solution developers should use technology but most importantly make it functional and usable to what users expect. RIAs will succeed very well as long as you can select text, hit back buttons, deep linking, use menu systems, integrate services, have all the features of apps not in vector engines like Flash or Silverlight and to make it mainstream friendly they need to have a low bar of entry and just work. RIAs have an advantage right now as office apps move to the web and photo apps as well, many of these apps above would appeal to general computer users in addition to advanced users.
Currently working on some motion detection with flash/c# and webcams right now. Here’s a basic overview of some motion detection source files and tricks. Most motion detection is based on snapshots and finding brightness of a pixel with all combined colors, then comparing that to previous snapshots to detect enough variance and thus movement. If you have a webcam hooked up, this sample in Flash AS3 highlights this well showing the camera on the left, then the brightness snapshots on the right. It also has an indicator to the amount of movement due to much brightness.
C#
Here is a nice example of motion detection using various motion detection algorithms in C#. This is built on the very slick AForge.NET Computer Imaging Library.
If you ever wanted your own motion detection or recording it is all possible with the basics of checking brightness and snapshots in the most simple form checking how much change or variance their was to bright pixels or the count of bright pixels compared to previous snapshots.
// Calculate white pixels private int CalculateWhitePixels( Bitmap image ) { int count = 0; // lock difference image BitmapData data = image.LockBits( new Rectangle( 0, 0, width, height ), ImageLockMode.ReadOnly, PixelFormat.Format8bppIndexed ); int offset = data.Stride - width; unsafe { byte * ptr = (byte *) data.Scan0.ToPointer( ); for ( int y = 0; y < height; y++ ) { for ( int x = 0; x < width; x++, ptr++ ) { count += ( (*ptr) >> 7 ); } ptr += offset; } } // unlock image image.UnlockBits( data ); return count; }
Flash AS2
For instance the basics here show how you can compare each pixel and the change in the brightness for each pixel:
//accuracy tolerance=10; //color of the current pixel in the current snapshot nc=now.getPixel(x,y); //red channel nr=nc>>16&0xff; //green channel ng=nc>>8&0xff; //blue channel nb=nc&0xff; //brightness nl=Math.sqrt(nr*nr + ng*ng + nb*nb) //color of the same pixel in the previous snapshot bc=before.getPixel(x,y); //red channel br=bc>>16&0xff; //green channel bg=bc>>8&0xff; //blue channel bb=bc&0xff; //brightness bl=Math.sqrt(br*br + bg*bg + bb*bb); //difference in brightness between now and before d=Math.round(Math.abs(bl-nl)); if(d>tolerance) { //there was a change in this pixel }
Flash AS3
Here is a link to grab a conversion of the AS2 Flash motion detection above to AS3.
Source of AS3 motion detection here.
C# or other hardware accelerated capable kits are faster but AS3 and Flash with the new AVM2 virtual machine should be about 10 times faster than AS2 as much of the improvement in performance and the virtual machine is on iteration speed increases such as loops (i.e. pixel loop).
UPDATE: See a sample of this Preloader that allows many files to be downloaded.
There are some great videos and links on the downloader object from Microsoft for Silverlight.
In Silverlight you can create an object called a downloader that probably stems from the htc ie5.5 downloader that was part of ajax beginnings, it is ver similar to the XMLHTTP object but it has zip capabilities. This downloader can download individual files or zip file packages that you can grab xaml, xml, images, script etc from them and use them or load them in to xaml files. This helps to keep things compact and allows for preloaders and smoother beginnings of your animations where needed.
The zip downloading is attractive and much of this is going on in Flash AS3 with FZip or ASZip AS3 packages. These are made possible with ByteArray and BinarySockets and other fun tools that give no limits. In Silverlight all you have is javascript or the silverlight downloader object to get other data at runtime.
Downloading assets in Silverlight is different than in Flash. Flash compiles libraries to swf files, it can load pngs, it can preload anything in numerous ways. Silverlight does not compile to one file or into compressed binary currently and this offers flexibility but it also makes file sizes at their default size very big. PNGs for instance can’t be zipped any smaller usually but in Flash9 these are sometimes 1/10th the size of the actual file when compressed better in the SWF file. Even if you zip them in Silverlight they are still around the same size. Silverlight XAML files compress well and these can get very large if lots of pathing is used.
Flash has always been the master at smallest file sizes and even the player itself is extremely small, under a MB. Silverlight 1.0 which is just javascript is 1MB, the Silverlight 1.1 plugin with DLR support is going to be 4MB currently (it still is in alpha so it could come down).
Currently in Silverlight 1.0 this is just a javascript release, the DLR and C# version of Silverlight 1.1 Alpha probably has 6 months or a year. So with no byte array binary handling or sockets of any type except javascript ajax, downloader is your only option now. But it is a good tool for now to help with preloaders and bringing files in smaller to make your rich applications and games faster.
Currently the only createObject call that is supported is the “downloader” object. I would like to see more here like a “socket” object but when Silverlight 1.1 launches with C#/python/ruby support things may change in this regard.
To create a downloader you do this in javascript:
[sourcecode language='jscript']
// Event handler for initializing and executing a download request.
function onMouseLeftButtonUp(sender, eventArgs) //sample mouse button click
{
// Retrieve a reference to the plugin.var slPlugin = sender.getHost(); // Create a Downloader object.
var downloader = slPlugin.createObject(“downloader”);
// Add DownloadProgressChanged and Completed events.
downloader.addEventListener(“downloadProgressChanged”, onDownloadProgressChanged);
downloader.addEventListener(“completed”, onCompleted);
// Initialize the Downloader request.
// NOTE: downloader APIs disallow file: scheme
// you must run this sample over localhost: or off a server or the following call will fail
downloader.open(“GET”, “promo.zip”);
// Execute the Downloader request.
downloader.send();
}
// Event handler for updating visual progress indicator
function onDownloadProgressChanged(sender, eventArgs)
{
// Calculate the downloaded percentage.
var percentage = Math.floor(sender.downloadProgress * 100);
// Update the Rectangle and TextBlock objects of the visual progress indicator.
progressText.text = percentage + “%”;
progressRectangle.width = percentage * 2;
}
function onDownloadCompleted(sender, eventArgs)
{
// Retrieve the XAML content from the downloaded package file.
var jacketBrowserXaml = sender.getResponseText(“jacketBrowser.xaml”);
// Create the objects from the XAML content.
var jacketBrowser = plugin.content.createFromXaml(jacketBrowserXaml);
// Add downloaded XAML content to the plugin.
sender.findName(“rootCanvas”).children.insert(0, jacketBrowser);
// Retrieve a reference to the Image object representing the jacket.
var jacketImageSlice = sender.findName(“jacketSlice”);
// Set the Source property of the Image object to the specific jacket image
// within the downloaded Zip package file.
jacketImageSlice.setSource(sender, “rotation01_green.png”);
}[/sourcecode]
This video is the quickest way to understand the whole downloader setup.But this is also a very simple example. The hard part is deciding where to put your preloaders and how to load things in. If you are putting your XAML in a zip file you will need to have a preloader in a container XAML file as the main control and then a Canvas object to load that XAML into. This complicates many things and is really a design approach from the beginning.
In coming posts I will be posting a multifile preloader, a single file preloader, a zip preloader and some sample setups for silverlight projects and Flash projects based on zip and direct preloading.
I will put this sample script to work below for preloading files in Silverlight 1.0:
[sourcecode language='jscript']
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// PreloaderMultifileClassLibrary.js
// The MIT License
//
// Copyright (c) 2007 Ryan Christensen, drawk llc
//
// Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
// of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal
// in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
// to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
// copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
// furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
//
// The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
// all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
//
// THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
// IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
// FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
// AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
// LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
// OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
// THE SOFTWARE.
//
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// setup the namespace objects to be good javascript form
// Ag1 = Silverlight 1.0 library
if(!window.B)
window.B={};
if(!window.B.Ag1)
window.B.Ag1={};
if (!window.Sys)
window.Sys = {};
if (!window.Silverlight)
window.Silverlight = {};
Silverlight.createDelegate = function(instance, method) {
return function() {
return method.apply(instance, arguments);
}
}
B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifileAssets = function()
{
// TODO alow JSON or Array passed
// loads up the asset arry to cycle through
this.resourceArray = new Array();
}
B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifileAssets.prototype =
{
loadAssetsArray : function()
{
this.resourceArray[0] = “spinner.png”;
// add your images/zips/files to load here
for (var i=1; i<=16; i++)
{
this.resourceArray[i] = “drive_in_files/image” + i + “.png”;
}
this.resourceArray[i++] = “drive_in_files/bg.png”;
this.resourceArray[i++] = “drive_in_files/c1.png”;
this.resourceArray[i++] = “drive_in_files/c2.png”;
this.resourceArray[i++] = “drive_in_files/c3.png”;
this.resourceArray[i++] = “drive_in_files/c4.png”;
}
}
// total pages available
B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifile = function(control)
{
this.plugIn = control; // Store the host plug-in
this.currentDownload = 0; // Current resource to be downloaded
// this.maxNumPages = maxNumPages;
this.preloaderMultifileAssets = new B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifileAssets();
this.preloaderMultifileAssets.loadAssetsArray();
// alert(this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray);
this.downloadAssets();
}
B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifile.prototype =
{
downloadAssets : function()
{
//alert(this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray);
var _file = this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray[this.currentDownload];
if(_file != null && _file != undefined)
{
this.downloader = this.plugIn.createObject(“downloader”);
this.downloader.addEventListener(“downloadProgressChanged”, Silverlight.createDelegate(this, this.downloadProgressChanged));
this.downloader.addEventListener(“completed”, Silverlight.createDelegate(this, this.downloadCompleted));
this.downloader.open(“GET”, this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray[this.currentDownload]);
this.downloader.send();
}
},
downloadProgressChanged : function(sender, args)
{
try
{
var progressRect = this.plugIn.content.findName(“progressRect”);
progressRect.width = (sender.downloadProgress) * 450;
}
catch(e)
{
}
},
downloadCompleted : function(sender, args)
{
this.currentDownload++;
var progressText = this.plugIn.content.findName(“progressText”);
var progressPercent= this.plugIn.content.findName(“progressPercent”);
if (this.currentDownload < this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray.length)
{
progressText.text = “Downloading: ” + this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray[this.currentDownload];
progressPercent.text = parseInt((this.currentDownload/this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray.length)*100) + “%”;
this.downloader.open(“GET”, this.preloaderMultifileAssets.resourceArray[this.currentDownload]);
this.downloader.send();
}
else
{
// Hide progress UI
var downloadUI = this.plugIn.content.findName(“downloadUI”);
this.plugIn.content.findName(“fadeDownloadUI”).begin();
downloadUI.isHitTestVisible = false;
progressPercent.text = “100%”;
progressText.text = “Downloading Complete”;
// initialize canvas and anmiations
this.plugIn.content.findName(“innerCanvas”).Visibility = ‘Visible’;
this.plugIn.content.findName(“IntroAnimation”).begin();
}
}
}
[/sourcecode]
If you change your Silverlight handleLoad to something like this you can use the class above for list of files before it plays the xaml animations and presentation.
[sourcecode language='jscript']
handleLoad: function(plugin, userContext, sender) { // be sure to add these parameters, by default they are not added
// alert(plugin.id + ” : ” + userContext + ” : ” + sender.toString());
plugin.content.findName(“innerCanvas”).Visibility =’Collapsed’;
plugin.content.findName(“innerCanvas”).Opacity = 0;
var preloader = new B.Ag1.PreloaderMultifile(sender.getHost()); // pass in the silverlight control
[/sourcecode]
I will have a complete tutorial of this soon.
Incremental Blogger has posted a very well done mouse gesture/handwriting/tablet PC silverlight demo. ByteArray has a similar script for flash with a Mouse Gesture library but this is very accurate to real handwriting.
Dojo Toolkit, a robust javascript library similar to my favorite js kit mootools, recently update and 
added some support for Silverlight effects. This is one really cool aspect of Silverlight in that it allows you to script/code it in many languages in the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime) including ironpython, C#, IronRuby, javascript and others. Where as with Flash you only have Actionscript3 available.
Check out the Silverlight demos here:
| butterfly.html | 20-Aug-2007 18:19 | 33K | |
| circles.html | 20-Aug-2007 18:19 | 4.0K | |
| clock.html | 20-Aug-2007 18:19 | 7.3K | |
| lion.html | 20-Aug-2007 18:19 | 22K | |
| tiger.html | 20-Aug-2007 18:19 | 100K |
DojoX
- high quality implementations of previously experimental features: gfx (portable 2D drawing), data wires, offline, storage, cometd, etc.
- dojox.gfx now includes Sliverlight support
- many more features and improvements than there’s room for here.
Dijit
- unified look and feel for all widgets
- ambitious a11y and i18n features in every Dijit widget
- a mature CSS-driven theme system with multiple, high-quality themes
- huge improvements in system performance
- data-bound widgets
- Declarations for lightweight widget writing
- a new page parser that allows instances of any class, not just widgets
- no magic
Core
- reduced API surface area (easier to remember and use)
- dojo.query() always available, returns real arrays
- from-scratch high-performance DnD system
- Base (dojo.js) is 25K on the wire (gzipped)
- dojo.data APIs finalized
- new build system
- new test harness for both CLI and browser use
- dojo.behavior now marked stable and based on dojo.query
- excellent animation APIs with Color animations in Base (always available)
- all the features you’ve come to count on from Dojo (RPC, JSON-P, JSON, i18n, formatting utilities, etc.)
[ source ]
SharpDevelop 3 which can be downloaded from build servers here is looking pretty good for revision 3 of my favorite .NET Open Source IDE and maybe even favorite overall considering it responds quicker that everyone’s .NET tool VS.NET.
The latest revision in builds just got the WPF and XAML tools in there. I tend to not use SharpDevelop for website development but do so for class libraries, apps and maybe forms development on occasion. This might help the layout side of things for the next gen of user interface development in .NET beyond just Expression.
One thing that has been apparent with IDEs as sometimes as they grow in size and scope and try to add more features, it is actually a slow down in some cases. I have been slowed from VS.NET 2003 to 2005. They are great tools but things start taking longer, it seems it should be the other way around.
When I need to just bust out a class library many times I do so in SharpDevelop because it is responsive and quick. I just hope they retain this speed. I unfortunately like to work on many projects at once so my IDE has to be smart about long processes (I curse you pending checkins! In 2004 when in beta VS.NET forced me to external IDE source control in Subversion and TortoiseSVN – much happier now).
XAMLPad right now is a pretty good quick development tools for XAML as well beyond just Expression and VS.NET Orcas Beta.
Be sure to try out SharpDevelop if you have not yet and develop .NET or would like to start. It is a great IDE and has some good extras like converting C# > VB.NET buffers whichcan be extended out to a service.
Bubblemark has added a JavaFX version of his bubble animation test that spans now all of the RIA technologies out there. Bubblemark is a great site and has been a great site for comparing animation in the browser. Alexey Gavrilov has kept the site up to date on all versions of Silverlight since when it was WPF/E and it is a nice quick baseline test to check FPS performance across these new vector toolkits and scripting.
My results are very similar to Bubblemarks tests:
JavaFX — 14 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (JavaScript) — 56 fps
Firefox + Flex — 62 fps
Adobe AIR — 62 fps
Firefox + Silverlight (CLR) — 99 fps
Silverlight is not final and is quite light compared to Flex (I wonder if a vanilla Flash9/AS3 export has been done or if it would perform any different), but if Silverlight has a lead on FPS, where FPS is really success of any kit in RIA or vector, then it could be a rough battle. Flash/Flex is really far far ahead due to the browser penetration and the development community but the better performance is always a good indicator of possible success. Plus, Microsoft controls the desktop market and any “benefits” it might give their own kit which includes distribution and performance in preloading or caching.
Sample Silverlight textured 3d in a pretty slick Vista Silverlight theme. It is a pretty impressive demo that is full screen app and a slight performance test with the 3d in it.
I would love for some kits like papervision3d, Sandy etc to be ported to Silverlight. There are some other early 3d works from bubblemark, a 3D engine recently released in early stages called Balder (source at codeplex), pageturns, and more but it is still pretty young.
Sample Textured Silverlight 3d Vista demo
3D Engine for Silverlight Alpha 1.1
But until Silverlight is available in the market it will hard to justify projects in it unless they are demos or technology show pieces. When it hits around 85% market availability and is finalized (it is currently 1.1 Alpha) it could be dangerous.
Obligatory posting on FlashDevelop3 Alpha being released. To people like me alpha means “old school” released. I am ready to use it today!
If you are not using FlashDevelop for your coding portion of your flash application, you might be missing out. There is a reason some of the best actionscripters (ahem actioncoders) use it.
