Microsoft vs. Adobe: A War Before Time
When I tried XPS Essentials Pack 1.0, I found it similar to PDF. Yes, what is missing is a Acrobat product line (I didn’t try the Expressions, so maybe I was wrong).
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8dcffdd-e3a5-44cc-8021-7649fd37ffee
So, now Microsoft is fighting against Adobe in any way,
- Silverlight vs. Flex,
- Expression Studio vs. Creative Suite,
- XPS vs. PDF,
Who will win? I have a guess. Who wins developers’ hearts who wins at last.
Visual Studio and Expression Studio may provide some advantages over Adobe. Up-to-now, I see XPS format easier to manipulate than Adobe PDF format because it is XML based. I see XAML great for building GUI (also XML based), but Adobe fails to provide a similar language. Even at this moment, I see no easy way to set up a development environment for Adobe technology (I am not a Java guy, so if Eclipse supports Adobe technology please let me know).
IMHO, Microsoft has more experience in this field of winning developers, so although Adobe starts as the dominator, it may lose in the end.
BTW, I am not quite biased even if I use Visual Studio 2005 every day. I am just wishing Adobe could learn from Microsoft in certain aspects, make it easy to learn and develop with its technology.