CSS Zen Garden Creator on MSXAML

  Hello,

  Allow me to highlight the blog story titled "Avalon/XAML First Look" 
by CSS Zen Garden creator Dave Shea.

  Dave writes:

The code itself looks like (well-formed) tag soup from 1997. Whereas 
the web has seen a shift from presentational markup (in the form of 
tables, embedded attributes like bgcolor, and the dreaded font tag) to 
structural markup with a separated presentation layer (CSS), XAML is 
purely a presentational language. I couldn’t see evidence of attention 
toward semantics, and all the presentational attributes are embedded 
right in the markup. Januszewski referenced ‘a CSS-like syntax’, but 
there’s nothing CSS-like about it. It’s ugly presentational HTML all 
over again. A sample snippet:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <Canvas
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/xaml"
        xmlns:def="Definition"
        Width="500" Height="500" Background="White">
        <Canvas.Resources>
          <LinearGradientBrush def:Name="RedGrad"
            StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="1,1">
             <LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
                <GradientStopCollection>
                   <GradientStop Color="#FFFFFF"
                    Offset="0" />
                   <GradientStop Color="#FF0000"
                    Offset="0.5" />
                   <GradientStop Color="#000000"
                    Offset="1" />
                </GradientStopCollection>
             </LinearGradientBrush.GradientStops>
          </LinearGradientBrush>
           </Canvas.Resources>
            <Rectangle
               RectangleLeft="0" RectangleTop="0"
               RectangleWidth="500" RectangleHeight="5000"
               Fill="{RedGrad}"
            />
           <SimpleText Margin="5" FontSize="14">
             An h3, this is not.
           </SimpleText>
    </Canvas>

It appears to me this is single-purpose code, rather than the layered 
approached of HTML/CSS/DOM. Can it degrade? How much thinking has 
Microsoft done about accessibility? What will this code do on a 
PocketPC or PalmOS cell phone?

Maybe this code makes sense from a desktop computer application 
development context, but it does not work in today’s web development 
context. The separation of structure and presentation is now a 
no-brainer, so I’m left wondering why it has been completely ignored 
here. It’s like the past few years of undoing the markup sins of the 
late 90’s haven’t happened. Or, they haven’t happened at Microsoft. 
(Other divisions [MSN] seem to get it, to be fair.)

XAML on the Web

Which brings us to the second problem — XAML on the web. Yes, XAML is 
designed to run inside a browser. It appears a special XAML plug-in or 
player or something equivalent is necessary, as it was demonstrated 
running inside of a stock version of IE6 under Windows XP. But 
Microsoft ‘loves the browser’ according to Januszewski, and wants it to 
be painless to select a link on a web page and open a XAML app as a 
result. Longhorn will presumably feature tight integration of the two.

The past couple of years of IE security problems have raised a lot of 
awareness about browser lock-in, and the problems that tying your 
application into a specific browser/operating system can later cause. 
Like ActiveX, in-browser XAML/Avalon appears to be a method of 
continuing that trend. Something tells me we won’t be seeing an Avalon 
player for Linux any time soon.

I’d be a whole lot more comfortable with XAML if it were strictly meant 
as a Windows OS rendering language. Proprietary markup on a proprietary 
platform is nothing to get worked up over. But the obvious web 
cross-over leads me to hope we’re not going to see a whole new 
generation of browser/OS-specific web apps. I wonder if Microsoft might 
be hoping for something different.

If anyone who understands XAML better than I would like to come in and 
tell me how backwards I have it, I’d love to hear from you, comments 
are open. I’d rather my first look is all wrong and my worries 
unfounded (even though I’d like to think I understood the presentation 
properly).

  Source: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/04/14/avalonxaml_f

   Any thoughts? Any comments?

  - Gerald


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