Sources say Redmond's "Flash killer," expected to be part of Expression Studio, will debut at next month's Microsoft Professional Developers Conference.At its upcoming Professional Developers Conference next month, Microsoft Corp. is set to shed more details on its developer-oriented graphics tool, code-named Sparkle.
Sparkle will be one element of the upcoming Expression Studio suite of design and developer tools for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly known as Avalon. Expression Studio also is expected to be unveiled at the PDC, sources said.
Expression Studio also will feature a design tool Microsoft has code-named Acrylic, which Microsoft said last week will support the Microsoft Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). Other components of Expression Studio will be delivered over time, sources said.
Sources said the primary goal of the Expression suite is to solidify Microsoft's presence in the developer space by not conceding the design market to Adobe/Macromedia.
Word of the existence of Sparkle first leaked in 2003. Since then, the Sparkle team has grown to about two dozen staffers, sources said, and is headed by Kavi Singh. One member of the Sparkle team is Lutz Roeder, the creator of .Net Reflector, which is a class browser and decompiler, sources added.
As of last week, the company still would not comment on Sparkle, or even acknowledge the code name exists.
Sparkle will be targeted at developers of a variety of business, Web and online training/sales applications—all markets that make heavy use today of Macromedia's Flash platform, sources said. Sources added that Sparkle also will be able to run on a variety of devices, as it will rely on a compact version of the WPF that is similar in packaging and positioning to the current .Net Compact Framework technology.
Microsoft is looking to push the Expression suite in lockstep with its Visual Studio developer tools suite to make designers key participants in the development process. So, for instance, in a scenario using the Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) tool set, designers can use the Expression tools to build user interfaces, graphics content and designs to be handed off to developers, requirements analysts, testers, architects and other roles supported by VSTS, sources said.
Elements of Sparkle—also known in some circles as a "Flash killer"—ultimately could become a set of system application programming interfaces (APIs) in the Windows operating system. Specifically, these APIs could become part of the WPF graphics engine, which will be part of the upcoming Windows Vista and available for Windows XP as a service pack.
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In addition, Sparkle APIs in the operating system will be accessible from any .Net-supported language, sources said. As Sparkle and Acrylic are designed to work with Microsoft Office products, "creating nice animated graphics on a Web site becomes more and more of a Microsoft playground," a source said.
While Acrylic and Sparkle make up the core of the Expression line, sources said other key bets to round out the tool set include a photo image editor and possibly support for movie making or DVD creation.
All of these moves put Microsoft into direct competition with Adobe/Macromedia and Apple Computer Inc.
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