Software developers are by nature a skeptical lot.  Our scientific and mathematical training has taught us to question everything.  This makes it hard to be enthusiastic sometimes: we just don’t have the cheerleader genes. 

So why am I so enthusiastic about Avalon? 

Because the current set of technologies is aging and has been stretched too far.  WinForms offers a brave managed front, as do many of the Java UI libraries, but it is still built on the decade old Win32 API.  Berners-Lee may have glimpsed the potential applications of HTML, but he surely didn’t anticipate the complexity of CSS, XSLT, ASP.NET piled in layers on top of it.  I can’t imagine the bulk of UI being built on these edifices 10 or 20 years from now. 

Try to imagine the UI programming model of the future.  It will allow the easy creation of very rich UI, incorporating 2D and 3D graphics, really rich text, animation and media.  Everything will be integrated and the various types will be peers, not separate worlds with their own models and design philosophies. 

That is what Avalon aspires to.  That is what I am hoping Avalon will be.