What is Sparkle and is it a "Flash Killer?"

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2005-09-15 11:56pm

If anybody still thinks that Sparkle is a "Flash Killer", they must not have seen the same demo I did. Sparkle is so much more than a Flash competitor, and I am excited to see this kind of product in development.

Sparkle has been generating hype for almost two years now and the entire time it was considered to be a Flash-like product. We covered the story in November of 2003 and took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I believe that Microsoft wanted everyone to believe that Sparkle was a Flash-competitor in order to build anticipation and hype, and avoid any broken promises (á la Vista). Let me avoid the hype and get down to the real meat of what Sparkle is. Sparkle is a vector-based UI designer that supports both 2D and 3D objects. There are many applications for Sparkle ranging from Flash-like presentations to designing UI for windows applications.

Currently, when a designer designs a UI for an application they have to do it in a mock-up and then hand it off to the developer to implement in the software, if possible. Designers tend to get a bit out of hand and design things that are next to impossible to implement with current development platforms. Sparkle allows a designer to design the actual application by giving them direct access to the same objects the developers work with. The designer has complete control of the appearance and behavior of the controls without writing a single piece of code. Once ready to hand off to the developer, the designer simply saves the project using Sparkle and it creates a C# project ready for the developer to use.

How does Sparkle accomplish this? It utilizes a combination of XAML and C# to control the look and feel of the controls. In this scenario, Sparkle is a very powerful and simple to use winforms designer.

How did Sparkle become known as a "Flash Killer" if it is simply a form designer? The obvious answer is that the form designer is only one aspect to Sparkle. 3D has always been a rather daunting environment for designers due to the greater complexity. Sparkle removes the additional complexity by allowing designers to work with models in a 3D environment without worrying about the z-axis. It also has the ability to change a 2D object into a 3D object to allow for depth and rotation.

Data access has become an almost required component in applications, either web or traditional. Sparkle allows designers to connect to certain data types without writing a single piece of code. I will go into more detail about this in my Sparkle review, which will come later.

Hopefully this clears up some of the confusion around what exactly Sparkle is, and why it is not a "Flash Killer."

linky

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2005-09-16 03:02am

Great yet more carp that can annoy the shit out of you while browsing the web.

If I did not have Flashblock I would have uninstalled it a long time ago.

I hate 99% of all that crap flash gives you

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-09-17 04:41pm

I hate 99% of all that crap flash gives you

By that same token, one could also hate 99% of the crap that HTML gives you.

The 1% of flash that doesn't inspire hatred usually takes a form somewhat like this.