Why wait for Avalon?
Frank Hillman responded to my previous post of Is XAML a big deal? and asks Why wait for avalon? especially when there are some great tools and libraries available today. That's a great question. In short I don't think you should wait. If you need to get something done today then you should go ahead and use the best tools available on Windows to get the job done.
Having said that I do think it is important to understand that Longhorn is coming and Avalon is a key part of that. I believe Avalon is fundamentally necessary if we are to raise the quality of the user experience for future versions of Windows.
Avalon is important as it provides a full new presentation stack for Windows. This allows us to provide a much higher quality experience and take advantage of hardware acceleration. Currently we are constrained by the current GDI/User based stacks that are the primary way to present content and UI on Windows today. With the new stack we can provide higher quality media, animation etc. It is possible to argue that many of the things Avalon enables you can do today and for some things this is true. However Avalon does make it significantly easier and brings many of these things within easy reach of developers. There are a great many benefits to be had with a new presentation system that natively supports capabilities such as layout, databinding of any property, visual styling of controls and elements etc. all in a consistent way.
Remember though that equally important parts of Longhorn are Fundamentals, Indigo and WinFS. When we bring these parts of Longhorn together we can really offer some much more interesting applications. Avalon is what helps makes the other pillars come to life but it's only when we can find data efficiently and communicate effectively that we see how Longhorn enables a new generation of applications.
Should you wait for Avalon? Probably not but you should be thinking about all the capabilities that Longhorn is going to bring to developers and how this might enable your applications to offer greater capabilities and significantly improved ease of use.
I'd strongly encourage all developers and architects to watch closely the progress we make on Longhorn so that you are ready and prepared when it arrives. Of course don't forget the importance of managed code in Longhorn as well. Managed code and the .NET framework is central to the future of Windows.
So I'd say don't wait, embrace managed code and the .NET framework today but watch Longhorn closely for what it will provide.
