Many people said that XPS (XML Paper Specification) [wikipedia entry] was the gauntlet. It's a complete replacement for the Adobe PDF [wikipedia entry] format except that it's based on XML and the new Office 2007 OpenXML file format.

And then there's the new Expression Studio: direct replacements for PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver. We've known about them coming for a while now.

But if XPS was the gauntlet, then what do you call Microsoft Silverlight? Silverlight is a 100% replacement for Macromedia Flash rich-media. It's cross-browser and cross-platform already. Pretty scary when you think about it. When Microsoft puts their mind to it, some pretty incredible things fall out.

Watch this link for a pretty stylish video.

I hope the executives over at Adobe have a few guardian spirits watching over them, because if we were to believe the slashdot commentators, Microsoft has the entire host of the 7 hells behind them.

And here's my Japan spin:

None of the japanese websites I have ever visited which use flash ever show up correctly because of the lack of Unicode processing in the Adobe Flash file format.

Come on Adobe, what's so hard about getting a few characters right and dealing with double-byte the same way everyone else does?

Labels: Adobe, Microsoft, Siverlight, XPS