I know the .NET framework and WPF pretty well, but I think the whole thing has gotten too blown up, especially for small apps as the whole .NET framework 3.5 weighs 197 MB by now.
I am looking for a language/framework/library that provides functionality similar to that of WPF (animations, gradients, a.s.o.) and the .NET framework (of course not everything, but the basic features) and which is faster and more lightweight than the .NET framework and creates smaller and faster applications than the ones using .NET.
Do you have any suggestions?