Avalon: Microsoft's Answer to Flash?

With more and more details of Longhorn evolving we can glean a little more information about Microsoft's possible answer to Flash - Avalon. The release of Longhorn is still 2+ years away so there's no need to get worried about anything yet, but this could be the next big thing just waiting to happen.

From what I can gather, Avalon is the new UI that will be introduced with the release of Longhorn and will become the defacto standard for desktop applications. It's capabilities are very similar to Flash and SVG, and it will, in all likelihood, be competing against Flash in the "sometimes connected desktop" category and on the desktop in general.

So what does programming with Avalon look like? It's strikingly easy, and uses XAML, a spin-off of XML...

<Button Background="LightSeaGreen" FontSize="24pt">
    Calculate
</Button>

Looks like something that might be fed into Royale, right? Exactly...

But.. by the time Longhorn is released Central and Royale will be 2+ years old as well, and we'll probably be on Flash 8 by then. Still, I can't help but think that Macromedia is going to need to create a tool like ScreenWeaver if it wants to stand firm in the desktop environment.

Anyone else think these are exciting times? I'm looking forward to seeing this play out. I think Royale combined with some sort of ScreenWeaver-like tool that Macromedia needs to make is Macromedia's best chance at competing with Microsoft's UI of the future. They might not need to make a separate build tool like ScreenWeaver, but I think they need to bundle something with the IDE that lets Flash access the OS if it's going to compete on the desktop market... that is, if Macromedia wants Flash to play in that space to begin with.

But please, don't take my word on any of this.. it's is all speculation. We can only play the guessing game right now. I encourage you to check out some links that you can use to form your own conclusions, and keep checking the headlines as it might affect whether or not you'll be using Flash in 3 or 4 years..

Creating Real Apps with Avalon (woo baby, check out the code samples)
Avalon: A new UI for Windows
Microsoft Readying 'Avalon' Framework for Longhorn
Microsoft to reveal more Longhorn details