Adobe vs. Microsoft: death match for RIA leadership

The buzzwords du jour are AJAX, RIA, Web 2.0 ... Both Adobe and Microsoft are involved and trying their best to get market share. Abode has Flash and Flex; and AJAX is compatible with every programming language and plays really well with CF (through ajaxCFC :) ).

Microsoft has been working on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), previously called Avalon. This presentation layer takes an xml based declarative language called XAML (pronounced zammel), that stands for eXtensible Application Markup Language.

I knew about XAML, but the interesting part is that Microsoft went big! They are also releasing a full development application set called expression. The community technology preview just came out and it looks like a take on Abobe's Creative Suite.

I suspect what unlike XUL (pronounced zul), which is Mozilla's xml declarative language, XAML will penetrate the market thanks to Microsoft's big name. It should natively work with the .NET framework and we should soon also see a version for Mac, even though Microsoft will no longer support their IE for Macs.

If you are a new developer and want to be ahead of the game, keep an eye on Flex 2.0 and XAML. There are other technologies such as laslo, xul, ror, bindows, backspace, and dojo, that should not be overlooked either.