Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer (“Sparkle”)

Is the last Microsoft child aiming to be a Flash concurrent?
Sparkle uses Windows Presentation Foundation, which also introduces Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), which enables developers and designers to use an XML-based model to declaratively specify the desired user interface (UI) behavior.
I’ve just downloaded it and the first impression is that the graphic UI is really ugly… but it’s just my very first impression 🙂
Then I will try to do some deeper tests…
some tutorials and examples can be found also here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/expression/articles/516697.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/interactive_designer/id_free_trial.aspx

Flash 8: security problems

There’s a couple of interesting posts on franto’s blog about the problems which the new release of flash brought… (about local and network access)

http://www.franto.com/blog2/flash8-security-problems

and
http://www.franto.com/blog2/flash8-security-problems-still-no-solution
I suggest also read all the users’ comments, very interesting… and the problem seems to remain unsolved.
http://www.franto.com/blog2/flash8-security-problems