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Barely months into the AJAX hype cycle, we have a new Flash killer in town. Sparkle! *shudder*

I first heard of Sparkle in mid-2004 while researching my then prospective employer. In March 2005, I saw a funny animation featuring Flash and "Sparkles" help poor Mike Chambers and Mike Downey fight the Evil Deadline. :)

Last week Microsoft engineers demoed the shiny new Sparkle Interactive Designer in front of a PDC crowd in Los Angeles. I haven’t seen the 1-hour video yet (on a slow dial-up at the moment), but I’ve seen a lot of folks comment on it already.

Sparkle is a tool that enables designers to create "rich user experiences" (apparently the theme at this PDC) in XAML. Sounds like Zorn, doesn’t it? ;) XAML… MXML.

So, is Sparkle a Flash killer? Ask Bill Gates.

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