By Nigel McFarlane, devX.com
Microsoft's XAML markup language floats on top of
the .NET platform. It is compiled into .NET classes, usually C#,
which reduces it to a set of objects. Along with a host of other
XML dialects it is an example of a new type of specification for
GUIs.
This article takes a look at XAML's tags to see
what (if anything) is new in them. There are many such GUI
specifications now, a few being Mozilla's XUL, Oracle's
UIX,
Macromedia's Flex and the XML files created by the
Gnome Glade tool. Although not W3C standards, some of these new
GUI specifications are already on the W3C standards track. An
example is the box model used within Mozilla's XUL, which is headed
toward inclusion in future CSS drafts.
The original and most popular source of XML
definitions is, however, still the World Wide Web Consortium. The
W3C is responsible for formalizing XML and many XML applications
such as XHTML and SVG. Given that these standards are mostly
complete, do we really need all these new XML GUI
dialects?
Microsoft's XAML is a new spin on XML-based GUI
description languages, borrowing very little syntax from
established standards. Let's see if it's a radical improvement in
some way, or if it's merely familiar old friends dressed up in new
clothes.
http://www.devx.com/webdev/Article/20834
See also XAML References:
http://xml.coverpages.org/ms-xaml.html