Microsoft offers development tools for Mac, Web

LOS ANGELES--Even as it steers developers toward the forthcoming edition of Windows, Microsoft is building tools to write applications for the Mac OS and the Web.

At the company's Professional Developers Conference this week, Microsoft said it will allow programmers to use its latest front-end development tools to write applications that run on operating systems other than Windows Vista, the forthcoming edition of desktop Windows.

PDC 2005
additional coverage

• Microsoft flexes its muscles with Office
• Microsoft announces work flow graphics tools
• Gates on Google: What, me worry?
• Microsoft to dig into work flow strategy
• Photos: New looks for Windows, Office
• Gates telegraphs Microsoft?s software services
• High-end goals for Vista
• Microsoft expands Vista testing
• Meet 'Max,' the free photo-sharing tool
• Microsoft to hand out early code
• With Canon, bringing Vista into color
• Power outage unplugs conference

More:
• News.com's full coverage
• Recent Microsoft news

The company introduced Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere, or WPF/E, software to build applications using Microsoft's XAML page layout language in conjunction with JavaScript.

Until this week, it was thought that Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly code-named Avalon, could be used only to build graphics-rich applications on Windows. But because JavaScript runs on many operating systems, developers could, in theory, use WPF/E tooling to target several operating systems.

Apple's Mac OS will be one of the operating systems supported with WPF/E, as well as older versions of Windows and Microsoft Smartphone, according to Microsoft executives. And other operating systems are planned, said Forrest Key, group product manager in Microsoft's developer tools division, without confirming plans for Linux support.

"About a year ago, we realized that we needed to have a broad reach," Key said, which led to the development of WPF/E. "There will be more platforms to come."

The Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere software will be available when Windows Vista ships in the second half of next year, Key said. A prototype of the Mac OS edition is running at Microsoft now, said another Microsoft executive, who asked not to be named.

Presentation Foundation Everywhere is a subset of the full user interface tooling available in Windows Presentation Foundation on Windows and, as such, will not enable the same graphical richness as Windows. End users will need to download a "run time" for running XAML code, which will be less than 1 megabyte.

"What we found from a user experience perspective is that the best thing, clearly, is to

[webgodjj]

yawn...

So it seems like a bunch of closed source products loosely based
off of open source ones? This sounds so exciting.

[t8]

Open vs Closed

More closed crap competing with superior open source.

[t8]

Open vs Closed

More closed crap trying to compete with superior open source.

Apple doesn't need Microsoft anything

Why ruin a perfectly good OS like OSX with crappy stuff from Microsoft?

OSX has it's own development tools and there's plenty more Open Source tools available.

indeed

Apple doesn't need any M$ developer tool - no-ones doing any serious Apple Development.

After 25 years in large enterprise organisations, I have yet to see anyone use Apple for ANYTHING, except comic relief.

Show me any organisation spending $100 million+ on development annually, that actually uses any Apple product, and I might then see a need for Apple Developer Tools.

How about improving whats out there?

How about first getting MS Office to work? Or Virtual PC to stop
crashing on Tiger? Or hey! Here's an idea, what about updating
that ANCIENT MSN Messenger app for folks that want to use that?

C'mon, MS is just looking for media attention, as usual. Yes, Troll-
ish, but true.

[bdkennedy1]

I agree...

If this new web suite works anything like Office, it's nothing to look
forward to. Word has to scan through my hundreds of fonts before
it opens. What's up with that?

[muntz]

'gadgets'

'gadgets'

jeez, they couldn't wait to steal this idea from Apple (yeah-yeah,
but before Konfabulator, Apple had desktop widgets which trump
Konfabulators modern looking widgets--at least Apple made them
useful by putting them in their own layer over the desktop). Can MS
do anything original at all? Seriously.

[bdkennedy1]

Ummmm...Wrong

As much as I hate Microsoft, "gadgets" aren't new to them. They've
been toying with them since the ill-fated Microsoft Bob from 1995.

[Earl Benser]

MS definitely has vision problems....

... it has a clear view of the road ahead and all the great and
wonderful things it could accomplish....

,,, while ignoring the trails of defective software, security breaches,
and just plain lousy program designs and programming that bob in
MS's wake....

So what's new?????

[bdkennedy1]

No IE but development tools?

I find it interesting that Microsoft dropped IE for the Mac but now
they're going to have a web suite for the Mac? Weird.

[Pixelslave]

Sparkle is not a Flash Killer

Do writer of technical news really understand what they are writing? Sparkle is NOT a Flash killer. For one, the chances that designers dumb Flash in favor of Sparkle is thinner than the winner of the Big Looser. Secondly, the main audience of Sparkle are the people who design "DESKTOP APPLICATION". Yes, those people who designs the interface of applications like PhotoShop, Office, Flash (insert your favorite or least favorite apps here.) A Sparkle project is part of a, say, a C# project. According to a video from Channel9, Sparkle itself is done by Sparkle. What does it have to do with a "Flash Killer"? I don't know -- I can only say that the reporters just don't get it, so they pick the only thing they can understand from Sparkle -- building interactive web graphics and call it a "Flash Killer".