Microsoft introduced Sparkle last week at the PDC. There is an excellent video covering its capabilities over at Channel9.

For reasons that I don't completely understand, the industry is limiting its vision and only seeing this as a "Flash killer" or "MS Flash". I see this is a necessary and much needed combination of two traditionally disparate development steps: design of a user interface by a graphical designer and laying out that interface by a developer. I can't tell you how much time I have spent switching back and forth between Photoshop creating a particular interface look and then a visual interface designer (or even just directly in code *shudder*) implementing the design wondering if there was a better way. There are few times when you can point to a paradigm shift -- this is one of those times.

I am anxiously anticipating the companies that embrace this paradigm and move it to the next level!