yeah thats what I ment, i didnt remember the spelling but i did remember the meaning of the Mouse

Despite how much I dislike Flash… the main reason being that web developers typically use it for the wrong purposes (like building the whole website out of it).

However, I dislike the WPF even more, mostly due to vendor lockout (MS strangles the market and stops developing it… take a look at how long IE6 stagnated before FireFox posed a threat).

Really MS should not be providing this functionality, as when they do, it stops other companies from competing… going back to the browser wars, IE won because it came with the operating system, whereas Netscape had to be installed separately, which most people could not be bothered to-do.

The other benefit of WPF/E vs Flash is that the content is XML based and as such can be indexed by the major search engines whereas Flash cannot. Flex is XML based so it will be interesting as traditional webdev’s move from Flash to either Flex or WPF/E.

With the MS Windows O/S being the leader of O/S implementation on desktops and then from an advertising point of view online it would appear beneficial for advertisers to develop under WPF/E as the ‘Click to Activate’ issue is now bypassed and a simple ‘mouse over’ the advert can bring it to life vs the ‘other’ option where the user must first click the advert to activate the embedded content.

Macromedia should buy out the ‘Eolas Patent’ and eliminate this from the MS IE world as it is far too inhibiting as a content delivery mechanism for advertising on websites these days. I myself see an online ad and do not click it to activate it as I know it is an advertisement, previously you could just move your mouse over a Flash advert and it could dynamicilly expand to encompass your entire screen whether you liked it or not. This is far from making advertisers happy and WPF/E will give MSFT an advantage in the online environment now for advertising content delivery.

The simple solution, “click to active”, keeps the lawyers happy, but ultimately will be hurting Flash usage… and oh look, there is now an alternative which does not suffer from this problem (surprise, surprise).

Like the “poo-pod” (aka zune), we should avoid it like the plague and watch other parties create proper and fair competition with Flash… perhaps someone who might continue to develop the technology after gaining market share - unlike IE6 which stagnated for 5 years before the security patch of IE7 came out (the improvements that IE7 came with should have been made a few months after the IE6 release).

MSFT and Macromedia had an unofficial agreement not to encroach on each other’s space. Then Adobe bought macromedia, and has come out w/ Flex and soon Apollo which completely encroaches on MSFT’s space in the desktop.

WPF is the MSFT response in this soon to be heated war.

I’m not on anyone’s side; just telling you the reason why as I make my living in the java space.