The Computer graphics and Graphical User Interfaces (or “GUI”) is arguable one of the most successful technologies in the software industry. The successes of Apple computers and then Microsoft were mainly attributed to their successful deployment of the Computer Graphics. However, due to the rapid advancements of the Internet making those traditional GUI technologies obsolete, and even Microsoft decisively moving towards XML-graphics (called XAML/Avalon) in the Wondows-2006 (code named Longhorn).

The growing importance of the Internet, requirement for the applications to be distributed and accessible online, forcing businesses to decide between ability to “reach” online users and graphics intensive “rich” interactive application to build local desktop applications. This choice is popularly known as “reach” vs. “rich”.

The battle is decisively going in favor of “reach” over “rich”. Since the businesses are forced to choose, most businesses choosing “reach” over “rich”. However, the need for “rich” is more than ever. The reasons are numerous: The information is more complex than ever. The information is huge and collected from many servers (unlike the traditional applications that used data mostly fetched from local systems), which also increases the need for better customization and security. The Internet also opened up the need for merging or address many new areas that are more specific to the Internet, such as, GIS or Location based, networked or wireless sensors, distributed operations, network security, glitches in page downloads, distributed command and control systems etc.

There is overwhelming evidence to show that the traditional GUI is in study decline. If you ask any technology recruiter, he would tell you that, it is hard to find a resume with Windows GUI-API experience. This is drastic change compared to a decade ago, when it is hard to find a resume without Windows GUI-API experience. Most developers don’t see future career growth in the Traditional-GUI.

Even some people from Microsoft Consulting Services privately admit that Microsoft had lost a whole generation of developers. The reason it takes huge amount to hire someone with COM experience is because nobody bothered learning COM or GUI programming in the last eight years or so, so one has to find somebody really senior, usually they're already in management, and convince them to take a job as a grunt programmer, dealing with (God help him) marshalling and monikers and apartment threading and aggregates and tearoffs and a million other things that, basically, only Don Box (chief architect of Microsoft) ever understood, and even Don Box can't bear to look at them (http://news.com.com/2100-1046_3-5148148.html) any more.

Note: This above paragraph is extracted from a very interesting article at the web site: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html. Joel is a former employee of Microsoft and product manager for Excel, who is a respected writer on technology trends. I had been close follower of legendary battles between Microsoft (Windows-OS), Apple’s GUI, IBM (OS2) and many UNIX/X11 vendors since 1989. I worked for Oracle, which is an archrival of Microsoft. Being a UNIX/Motif developer, I was hoping it wins. But, in 1994, I took courses at UC at Santa Cruz in Windows-GUI and switched side, when out come was clear.

Not just Don Box but many Microsoft managers pretty much admit that. One gets the same feeling, if one read their interviews and blogs of Microsoft product managers. (e.g. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=948). They say that is the main reason Microsoft is decisively moving towards XAML/Avalon and betting the company on the “rich” Internet technologies.

Pioneer-soft believes the XAML is first good step, but hardly offers a viable GUI solution for the developers, to build large graphics intensive applications. The bare XAML is too complex to create web applications. It is practically impossible to create more than one layer of hierarchy of components, as explained in the ValueProp1 document.

The study decline of traditional GUI puts any one developing GIS, visual simulations and other graphics intensive applications (e.g. analysis, data where housing, decision support or command and control systems) using traditional GUI at risk of being obsolete shortly after the release. The old-GUI is too complex and has limited capabilities, but hard to find skilled people to update and to maintain them in the long-term.

If pioneer-soft’s technology were to be successful, our revolutionary component technology would pretty much assures that those applications will be dead on arrival or soon after the release. How many would prefer to spend two times more to build inferior applications with limited functionality? Which further may cost three times more during maintenance cycles to adapt to evolving needs? Who spends 5Million to fix his five years old Propeller engine commuter plain, if he could buy new Jet plain for 4Million that consumes less fuel?