This Reuters article in SciAm, amongst others, has a quote by someone* from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS).

From the article:

It said Microsoft’s XAML markup language was “positioned to replace HTML,” the industry standard for publishing documents on the Internet. XAML would be dependent on Windows, and discriminatory against systems such as Linux, the group said.

Uhh… XAML is positioned to replace HTML? Looks like someone is somewhat lacking in the “checking facts before making ass of self” area.

As Wikipedia puts it:

When used in WPF, XAML is used to describe graphically rich visual user interfaces, such as those created by Adobe Flash. XUL and UIML are other examples of XML-based user interface languages. The language allows for the definition of both 2D and 3D objects, rotations, animations, and a variety of other effects and features.”

Sorry folks, but it’s meant for “rich” interfaces - like for traditional applications such as Word, Media Players, or 3D Games.

Sure, you can embed it in a web page - but it won’t replace the web page. It’s also highly dependant upon having a rendering engine (typically Windows Presentation Framework) available. It’ll spread to desktops running Windows XP, and the .NET 3.0 Framework, and also Windows Vista - you might even get some people creating browser-based applications, but they’ll probably be for either a custom deployment environment (Kiosks, POS Machines, etc), or for corporate Intranet things.  In that case, it’s no different to having an ActiveX control, or Java applet embedded in a page - it requires something else to run it, even though it’s started through your browser.

* = I can’t figure out who it should be attributed to - there’s three different people all mixed in there