Microsoft is planning to release an ASP.NET MVC 4 preview with a Go Live license, according to Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Server and Tools Business. The popular framework is used to develop ASP.NET-based Web sites and applications using a model-view-controller architecture, which separates presentation, logic and backend components for greater flexibility and testing. With a Go Live license, the pre-release technology is approved for production use with the understanding that some changes may occur before the final release. Microsoft released the ASP.NET MVC 3 beta, which introduced the Razor syntax, with a Go Live license in October 2010.
Guthrie did not offer a specific date when he confirmed plans for the Go Live license earlier this month during an Unplugged session with LIDNUG, the Linked.NET Users Group on LinkedIn. However, he announced in his blog on January 29th that he will give his first public presentation on ASP.NET MVC 4 during the Microsoft TechDays in Belgium, February 14-16 and the Netherlands, February 15-17. Some developers may have assumed that his move to the Microsoft Server and Tools Business meant that he is solely focused on Windows Azure. That is not the case. While Guthrie no longer heads the Silverlight team, he is still in charge of ASP.NET and related frameworks.
Microsoft has publicly stated that the Windows 8 beta is on track for release in late February. The company is circling the wagons around Windows 8 and its upcoming marketplace for Metro apps so it's likely that the release of beta tooling, namely Visual Studio 11 and .NET 4.5, which supports development of those apps, is not far off.
The ASP.NET MVC 4 Developer Preview, which was released at the Microsoft BUILD conference in September 2011 alongside the Visual Studio 11 and ASP.NET 4.5 Developer Preview (.NET 4.5), introduces support for mobile apps (C# for now, VB functionality is limited), among other enhancements. The initial ASP.NET MVC 4 preview supports Visual Studio 2010 and the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview.
Mobile app support is a major draw in MVC 4, but some developers have questioned the rapid pace of the ASP.NET MVC releases, which have introduced major advances and changes to the framework (akin to the early days of Silverlight) since the technology's launch in March 2009. Microsoft has released new versions on a yearly cycle, rolling out ASP.NET MVC 2 in March 2010, and ASP.NET MVC 3 in January 2011. The source code for ASP.NET MVC 3 is available for download on CodePlex under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL).
Express your thoughts on ASP.NET MVC 4 and the framework's rapid advancement. Are you excited about the upcoming support for Go Live deployments and mobile apps, or concerned about the challenges Microsoft continues to face with its Web and mobile platforms? Comment below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 01/31/2012 at 6:20 PM1 comments
Microsoft made a bit of a splash during its final Consumer Electronics Show appearance last week. Two state-of-the-art Windows Phones finally got the media's attention – the Nokia Lumia 900, which received the nod for best cell phone of CES from CNET, and the HTC Titan II. Both handsets are designed to support AT&T's 4G LTE network in the United States and are slated for release in the next few months.
Outside of CES, Brandon Watson, senior director for Windows Phone at Microsoft, released some 2011 stats for app developers last week that offered a glimpse into Windows Phone downloads. The data showed 48 app downloads per WP7 user in 2011. Games ranked first as the most popular Windows Phone downloads in 2011, both free (31 percent) and paid (64 percent), followed by Tools and Productivity apps, free (18 percent) and paid (8 percent). More than half of WP7 users (56 percent) had the option to bill Marketplace purchases directly to their wireless service accounts.
Microsoft registered 80,000 Windows Phone developers in 2011, according to Watson. Of the 50,000 apps certified and published in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the Entertainment category ranked first (17 percent) with the highest number of apps, followed by Tools and Productivity (15 percent), Books and Reference (15 percent) and Games (14 percent).
The company didn't, however, share key information such as the actual size of the WP7 market, free downloads versus paid apps, average price per paid app download or any data on the profits that developers made off of their Windows Phone apps.
As the new year begins without any reported bump in Windows Phone sales over the holidays – at least in the United States—the debate about the quantity and quality of Windows Phone apps rages on. Many popular mobile apps and standard services are not available on Windows Phone, which many people argue negatively impacts device sales, including mobile banking apps from major financial institutions, Pandora, and even Skype, which the company acquired. Microsoft is working to address this issue and reportedly expects to have the top 25 apps on the Android and iOS platforms available for Windows Phone in the first half of 2012.
The ultimate market maker may be smart phones that retailers and consumers rank as top tier devices—and Windows 8. As Windows 8 becomes available on x86-based tablets later this year, the Metro interface may peak consumers' interest and Windows Phones stand to benefit.
Express your thoughts on the outlook for Windows Phones in 2012 and your experiences with the Windows Phone Marketplace. Are you developing Windows Phone apps and making a profit? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 01/17/2012 at 6:51 PM4 comments
The folks at Microsoft have finally released Silverlight 5, the latest—and perhaps last—major update of the company's .NET technology for building rich interactive applications that can run out-of-browser or as a Web browser plug-in.
Silverlight 5 advances features for building rich client and media applications. It supports the PivotViewer and RichTextblock controls, improves text clarity (OpenType and text wrap) and offers a Postscript Vector printing API. It also adds support for WS-Trust in-browser, 3-D graphics, 64-bit apps and hardware decoding of H.264 video. Here's an overview of these features and more in Silverlight 5.The upcoming Internet Explorer 10 for the Windows desktop will be compatible with Silverlight, according to Microsoft, but the Metro-style version of IE10 for Windows 8 will not support the Silverlight browser plug-in. Windows Phone 7.5 (formerly codenamed Mango) is based on Silverlight 4 and remains a distinct platform. Silverlight 5 is supported in IE on Vista and Windows 7, Firefox, Chrome and Safari, according to Microsoft.
Silverlight 5 was announced about a year ago during a Firestarter event keynote given by Scott Guthrie who was then corporate vice president of the .NET platform. Even then, questions about Silverlight's future in the wake of Microsoft's growing emphasis on HTML5/JavaScript, were already drowning out news of another upgrade.
Despite the growing concerns of a loyal developer community, when the Silverlight 5 beta was released at MIX 11 in April, the conference focused on Internet Explorer 10 and its support of HTML5/JavaScript, and developments related to Windows Phone 7.
Microsoft's assertions that Silverlight is a strategic technology for client apps inside and outside of the browser, apps on devices (Windows Phone and Windows Embedded) and media solutions, have not convinced a lot of developers that the platform has a viable future, even on Windows. Lately much of the discussion has moved to XAML and how easily developers can transition their Silverlight skillsets to building Windows 8 Metro-style apps for the Windows Runtime.
Windows 8 and WinRT were unveiled in mid-September. The Silverlight 5 release candidate, which appeared at the beginning of September, was overshadowed by the upcoming Windows 8 announcements.
One bit of news with today's announcement of note: The company says that it will offer a Microsoft Support Lifecycle (MSL) policy for Silverlight (as a tool) for the first time. For Silverlight 5, the support continues through October 12, 2021. The company has also pledged to provide 12 months notice before discontinuing support.
Get the Silverlight 5 SDK, Silverlight 5 Tools for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and related tooling here.
Express your thoughts on Silverlight 5 and the future of the platform. Are you downloading the latest tooling or moving on? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 12/09/2011 at 4:44 PM8 comments
Has the .NET revolution been replaced by a C++ renaissance? Not at Microsoft.
You may have noticed over the summer that Microsoft started to offer "GoingNative" sessions on Channel 9, and continued to talk about a C++ renaissance, a phrase that the company coined as it recommitted to advancing C++ functionality in Visual Studio 2010, which offered support for upcoming C++11 (formerly called C++10x) language features like re-value references and lambda expressions. The initial changes seemed promising to some C++ developers, although features like C++/CLI IntelliSense never made it into the IDE or the VS2010 Service Pack 1.
But native developers who downloaded the Visual C++ for Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview were not happy when they saw the lack of core C++11 language features in the early VS11 tooling. Microsoft admits that its VC++ compiler is behind competitors in terms of C++11 compliance, the latest version of the C++ language, which was ratified in August. And the company has acknowledged that most of that won't change in the upcoming release (see C++11 Core Language features table). Microsoft did update the C++ Standard Library and extended its proprietary Parallel Patterns Library (PPL), which will also now support Linux.
In late September, C++ developer Jalf created "Speed up work on VC++" on the UserVoice forum and more than 1,031 developers have since voted in agreement.
"It is obvious, from looking at the amount of unfixed bugs, and the woeful C++11 feature support, that the VC++ team is understaffed," Jalf wrote in his forum post. "For a company bragging about its "C++ renaissance", that's just absurd. For the sake of all your C++ customers, you really need to speed things up. I won't dictate *how* it should be done, but I can think of three obvious suggestions…"
He and others suggested that Microsoft either devote more resources to VC++, open source it or think about licensing a compiler.
Many developers wonder if Microsoft was so focused on creating proprietary frameworks (WinRT C++/CLI) and language extensions (C++ AMP) that they didn't have the resources to advance the compiler. Herb Sutter, Microsoft's principal architect of C++, explained during a BUILD session, Writing modern C++ code: How C++ has evolved over the years, that those efforts got first priority but Microsoft also worked on a new C++11 language feature, namely variadic templates (support for a variable number of arguments), that didn't quite make it into VS11.
Microsoft is taking steps to reach out to its C++ community, however. On February 2-3, the company is hosting a GoingNative 2012 conference on its Redmond campus with Herb Sutter, and keynoter Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of the ISO standard C++, slated to offer sessions that will be streamed live and available on demand within 24 hours.
"This is Microsoft's first native-code-only developer event in years, and it's not limited to Microsoft products or technologies -- it’s about ISO C++ on all platforms," Sutter explained in a blog about the conference. "We're taking the initiative to put on this event because we know that there's a huge demand for information about the new ISO C++11 standard, but that information is still really hard to come by -- the standard was just published last month, none of the major books has been updated yet to reflect it, and high-quality public information is just starting to trickle out…"
Registration to attend the conference in person is $112 and the facility has capacity for about 350 people, according to Sutter.
Express your thoughts on Visual C++ 11. Did Microsoft focus its development resources on the new WinRT and miss key Visual Studio 11 updates? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 12/06/2011 at 6:48 PM3 comments
On Tuesday, Microsoft released an updated preview of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8.
The Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 4 requires the Windows 8 Developer Preview, which was released in September in conjunction with IE10 Platform Preview 3.
The latest preview for Windows 7 was IE10 Platform Preview 2, available for download in June.
According to Microsoft, IE10 Platform Preview 4 adds cross origin resource sharing (CORS), which enables Web developers to use XMLHttpRequest for file and data sharing across domains. It also introduces support for File API: Writer (blobBuilder), improved Web Worker functionality and HTML5 video text captioning, among other enhancements.
Breaking changes in Build 4 include limited support for IE's Vector Markup Language. This preview removes VML from the IE Standards and Quirks mode. Microsoft recommends that developers use standards-based replacements such as Scalable Vector Graphics, supported in IE since IE9. Similarly, DirectX filters are no longer supported in the Standards and Quirks mode.
"IE10 Preview 4 introduces an updated quirks mode that is more consistent and interoperable with the way quirks modes works in other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera," explained Rob Mauceri, Microsoft group program manager for Internet Explorer, in an MSDN IE blog about the new features in preview 4. "This updated quirks mode supports quirks for page layout, while allowing use of more up-to-date standards features like HTML5 elements for audio, video, canvas, and more."
Microsoft also updated the Internet Explorer 10 Guide for Developers for Platform Preview 4. Get the IE 10 Platform Preview Build 4 download here.
Are these test drives helpful or is Windows 8 too far off for many developers? Express your thoughts on Windows 8, IE10 and Microsoft's JavaScript/HTML5 strategy. Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/29/2011 at 2:17 PM0 comments
Most people who commented on my recent blog, .NET 4 and .NET 4.5 Won't Coexist were not thrilled with Microsoft's decision to do an in-place update of the .NET Framework in the upcoming Visual Studio 11/.NET Framework 4.5. Microsoft is working on backward compatibility for .NET 4.5, of course, and trying to work out the kinks, but sometimes it’s the little changes that turn into major development headaches.
One area where backward compatibility in the latest tooling is applauded by developers is related to conversion of Visual Studio projects. For the first time, the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview supports backward compatibility of project files, also known as project roundtripping, according to a recent blog posting by Microsoft Senior Developer Evangelist Zain Naboulsi.
Developers can open a Visual Studio 2010 SP1 project in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview and instead of converting the project file--a requirement of earlier versions of the IDE--they can continue to work on the same project in Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. This roundtripping feature supports Visual Studio 2010 with Service Pack 1 only; it does not work for projects created in earlier versions of the IDE.
A few respondents who commented on the MSDN blog have noted instances in which the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview still prompted them to convert project files (TF databases, for example). Naboulsi also points out:
When you use any feature specific to the new version of Visual Studio, like changing the Framework to the latest version, then the project cannot be opened in the prior version.
Are you jazzed about the project backward compatibility in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview? Express your thoughts below or drop me a note about cool features or tips that you've discovered in the next-gen tooling.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/15/2011 at 2:05 PM2 comments
It seems fitting that Microsoft marked the one year anniversary of its gesture-based Kinect (skeletal tracking) technology on Friday—the week of Halloween.
Among the flurry of announcements was the release of the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta 2. Like its predecessors, Beta 2 is for non-commercial app development only.
The biggest news is that Microsoft has finally announced a target timeframe for Kinect for Windows SDK v1.0, which will support commercial development, according to the company. The first version of the commercial toolkit (which is version 1 of the current beta 2 tooling) is slated for early 2012.
Windows for Kinect SDK Beta 2 adds support for 64-bit applications and the September Windows 8 Developer Preview (Windows desktop apps only, Metro style apps are not currently supported). Beta 1 and the Beta 1 Refresh supported development of 32-bit Windows 7 apps.
Beta 2 also provides APIs to manage two Kinect devices in the same application. The toolkit, according to Microsoft, includes numerous improvements in performance, memory allocation, skeletal data tracking, speech recognition, audio as well as color and depth images. A Status Changed event was added to provide information on device status. You can read more about the updates here.
The SDK includes most of what you'll need outside of specialized toolkits for speech recognition and DirectX: the Kinect drivers, native and managed APIs, documentation and code samples. You'll also need Visual Studio 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010 and Kinect for Xbox 360 (retail edition).
One question that largely remained unanswered at BUILD in September was how applications built for Microsoft platforms – Windows 8 on the PCs, Windows 8 Metro Style apps on tablets, Silverlight for Windows Phone apps and Xbox 360 video games—would run on multiple devices. Microsoft is starting to cross-promote the gesture-based Kinect, a clear winner among its recent technologies, on Windows Phone, Xbox game consoles and Windows-based PCs.
The company released an Xbox Live version of Kinectimals for Windows Phone in late October, which enables users to "train" lion and tiger cubs on their Windows Phone and then play with the trained virtual pets in their Kinectimals for Kinect Xbox 360 video game. As someone noted in the comments rating the Windows Phone game, this is the type of stuff the company should promote in its Windows Phone advertisements.
Voice commands, natural user interfaces and sensors represent the next frontier for software development. How do you envision technologies like Kinect being used in non-gaming applications? Are you more likely to check out the Kinect for Windows development environment with a commercial license on the horizon? Express your thoughts below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/08/2011 at 6:12 PM1 comments
Developers may have to get back to .NET app migrations. The upcoming Microsoft .NET Framework is designed as an in-place update meant to replace .NET 4, instead of the side-by-side installation model that the company used with the current release.
Microsoft released a preview of the .NET Framework 4.5 in mid September as part of the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview. The.NET Framework 4.5 has the same version number as .NET 4 and Microsoft is working to make it backwards compatible so that it supports existing applications. (.NET 4.5 and .NET 3.5 can still be installed side by side.)
Microsoft officially introduced side-by-side installations of .NET with .NET 4. Scott Guthrie explained the changes in his blog back in August of 2009:
.NET 4.0 has a new version number for both the framework libraries and CLR engine – which means it runs completely independently from .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5. What this means is that you can install .NET 4.0 on a machine that has .NET 2.0/3.0/3.5 installed, and configure some applications to run using .NET 4.0 and others to run using the older .NET versions (the IIS admin tool allows you to configure this for ASP.NET applications). This allows you to use .NET 4.0 for new applications - without having to necessarily test and upgrade all your existing ones.
Microsoft is requesting feedback from early testers on application compatibility issues with .NET 4.5. Some developers are requesting that the company at least change the version number of .NET 4.5 to prevent software deployment and debugging issues. Others want Microsoft to allow .NET 4.5 to run side by side with .NET 4 to help avoid the compatibility testing and related headaches.
Microsoft's Brandon Bray indicated that compatibility isn't the only issue in response to developers' comments on a blog written by Manish Agnihotri, a Microsoft program manager, who is responsible for "driving compatibility across the .NET Framework":
I'll work on getting a discussion going about side-by-side vs. in-place releases. There's more to consider than just compatibility. And I can assure you, the comments left here are being read and discussed amongst the teams contributing to .NET.
You can still use Visual Studio 11 to build projects that multitarget .NET 4.5, .NET 4 and .NET 3.5, according to Microsoft. Limited multitargeting support was first introduced in Visual Studio 2008 and advanced in Visual Studio 2010.
Express your thoughts on side-by-side versus in-place updates to the .NET Framework. Are you prepared to test your existing applications and upgrade them if necessary to run on the next version of the .NET Framework? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/01/2011 at 3:49 PM11 comments
At BUILD Microsoft released the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview but what may be coming next—after Visual Studio 11—promises to take code generation and refactoring to meta-programming levels. Programming legend Anders Hejlsberg, a Microsoft technical fellow and the chief architect of C#, hosted a session on the future of Visual Basic and C# at BUILD and announced an October preview of the .NET compilers as a service (codenamed the Roslyn Project), which opens up the Microsoft C# and VB compilers as public APIs. Hejlsberg first talked about the compilers as a service project at PDC 2008.
On Wednesday, Microsoft released the first CTP of the rewritten C# and Visual Basic compilers. The existing compilers are built in C++. The new compilers are rebuilt in managed code using their respective languages. (Compilers as a service are not on the roadmap for other .NET languages, according to Microsoft.) Miguel de Icaza introduced a Mono C# Compiler as a Service on Windows last April. The Mono project originally introduced the C# compiler as a service in September 2008 but only Mono users ( Linux and OSX) could use it based on Mono-specific extensions that prevented its use on the Microsoft runtime.
The purpose of the Roslyn CTP is to get developers' feedback on the new model and public APIs, according to Microsoft. The Microsoft "Roslyn" October 2011 CTP exposes an API layer that "mirrors a traditional compiler pipeline" and offers a glimpse at planned Workspace, Services and Scripting layers. The compiler services include a Syntax Tree API, Symbol API, binding and flow analysis API and emit API. The Roslyn CTP is an extension to Visual Studio 2010 SP1 that requires Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 SDK.
Head of the Microsoft Developer Division, "Soma" S. Somasegar explained the post-Visual Studio 11 technology in his blog:
With these compiler rewrites, the Roslyn compilers become services exposed for general consumption, with all of that internal compiler-discovered knowledge made available for developers and their tools to harness. The stages of the compiler for parsing, for doing semantic analysis, for binding, and for IL emitting are all exposed to developers via rich managed APIs.
The compilers as a service technology introduces language services and APIs that will have full fidelity with C# 4 and Visual Basic 10, according to Microsoft, but many of the language features did not make it into the October preview. The Interactive window for scripting, similar to F# Interactive, supports C# in the October preview. Visual Basic support is planned for a future release, according to Hejlsberg.
Some of the scenarios envisioned by Microsoft for the Roslyn technology include embedding C# code snippets in Domain Specific Languages, creating Read-Eval-Print-Loops (REPLs) for interactive programming and building third-party dev tools using the new language object models.
Microsoft is working hard on technology beyond C# 5.0 and Visual Basic 11, which are the latest versions supported in Visual Studio 11. Both languages have been updated to support more asynchronous programming (Async previews) and the new Windows Runtime (WinRT) for Metro style apps.
Express your thoughts on the .NET compilers as a service. Is this a good sign for the future of .NET? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 10/25/2011 at 7:41 PM4 comments
Remember Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Professional, also known as "Data Dude," which got rolled up in Visual Studio 2010? Microsoft provided an update on the latest evolution of Data Dude at its 2011 SQL PASS Summit last week.
With the release of SQL Server 2012 ("Denali"), Data Dude in Visual Studio 2010 is essentially replaced by SQL Server Developer Tools (codenamed "Juneau"). Microsoft announced last week that SQL Server Developer Tools is now named SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT). SQL Server Data Tools with SQL Server 2012 is integrated with the Visual Studio shell, according to Microsoft, and can function as a standalone environment for DBAs for example, or used with Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Professional. That means that developers can work on database projects alongside application development projects in Visual Studio.
With the upcoming Visual Studio 11, SQL Server Data Tools will replace Visual Studio Database Projects with SQL Server Database Projects. However, some "Data Dude" features such as data generation and database unit testing are not part of SSDT. The tools, at least in the first public preview, also do not support Entity Framework, which is on the product roadmap, according to Microsoft.
Announced in November 2010 at PASS, SQL Server Data Tools is designed to help developers and DBAs migrate schemas and maintain hybrid database environments. The tooling targets on-premise SQL Server 2005 and up, as well as SQL Azure cloud services.
SQL Server Data Tools is expected to ship as a free component alongside SQL Server 2012, which is slated for release in the first half of next year. Microsoft released the first public SSDT Community Technology Preview (CTP3) in July. CTP4 is expected in Q4 2011. After the SQL Server 2012 RTM, the SQL Server Data Tools will be updated in conjunction with SQL Azure services, according to Microsoft, which is roughly every 4 to 6 months.
Factions within Microsoft have toyed with the idea of merging SQL Server Management Studio and Visual Studio over the years, but the management tool will remain separate with the 2012 release. SQL Server Management Studio has been integrated with the Visual Studio shell since the release of SQL Server 2005, and Microsoft introduced more Visual Studio functionality such as IntelliSense for stored procedures in the management tool with SQL Server 2008.
If you haven't checked out the tooling, you can download SQL Server Data Tools CTP3 here. You can also get a glimpse of what's coming in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview.
The impact of data and how businesses can leverage it is the major theme of the Web 2.0 Summit 2011 in San Francisco this week. Express your thoughts on Microsoft's approach to SQL Server development. Is this the end of the line for Data Dude? Drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 10/18/2011 at 7:13 AM1 comments
With Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" starting to reach end users phones, Microsoft is releasing tools and sample code to help developers port their iPhone and Android mobile apps to the updated Microsoft platform.
On Monday, Jean-Christophe Cimetiere of Microsoft, blogged about a new mobile database conversion tool called SQLite2CE. Available on CodePlex, it converts your mobile app database to SQL Server Compact and creates the default classes necessary for running it on Windows Phone, according to Cimetiere. Microsoft is also offering a free utility, SQLiteQuery2LINQ on CodePlex to convert SQL queries into Microsoft's Language Integrated Query (LINQ).
With Steve Jobs's death, interest in Apple products is higher than ever. I was at the Apple store in Boston over the weekend and a sizable crowd was outside the store photographing the memorial of heartfelt notes, bouquets, apples with bites out of them and the like.
Apple didn't create the app store concept but Steve Jobs and company definitely created the consumer market for mobile apps. I covered the launch of the Apple App Store in a Mobile Revolution cover story in Redmond Developer News in the summer of 2008 and asked, "Will a paradigm shift rock the mobile application industry if the iTunes App Store strikes a chord with users?" At the time, many of the Windows Mobile developers I talked to thought that it would, despite comments about the strength of Microsoft's developer tools, including SQL Server Compact versus SQL Lite.
Back then, Apple had about 1,100 apps versus 18,000 Windows Mobile apps but people didn't realize it, said Ellen Craw, the general manager of longtime Windows Mobile app development company Ilium Software. "There were MP3 players way before the iPod, but nobody made it big until Apple," she told me in 2008. "Research in Motion was looking at the PDA market and thinking, 'Yes, this is what it should be,' and then Apple showed people how huge it can be. We always believed it could be huge."
"Nobody made it big until Apple" is an apt description of the company's phenomenal success in the MP3 and music industries, App Store and smartphones, and now tablets. It will be interesting to see what happens with iCloud.
At the end of a commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs noted a motto of his that came from the back page of the final issue of The Whole Earth Catalog: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." Thanks for following your dreams Steve.
Express your thoughts below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 10/11/2011 at 5:16 PM1 comments
Microsoft ruffled more feathers last month when it announced that the Metro style version of Internet Explorer 10 would not support any plug-ins-- its own Silverlight, Adobe Flash, ActiveX and even common add-ins that people use to personalize their browsers. Metro style Internet Explorer 10 is part of the Windows Developer Preview, released at the company's BUILD conference.
The "no plug-ins" approach certainly hasn't hindered sales of the iPad. Apple's iPad has attracted 29 million users in 15 months, according to the New York Times. But Microsoft's story so far, isn't as cut and dry.
As consumers (and business users) flock to simple devices that enable them to consume all kinds of content and download simpler apps designed for specific tasks; Windows 8 devices apparently will offer up a mix of classic Windows apps, touch-first Metro style apps that may not work that well with a mouse and keyboard--and two browser modes.
Will Metro style apps interoperate with classic Windows apps and share data? Or only with other Metro apps using contracts and charms? Who is going to explain all this to end users?
On many form factors, Windows 8 end users will be able to select "Use Desktop Mode" in the Metro style Internet Explorer 10, and switch to desktop IE10, which supports Silverlight and Flash, according to Microsoft. The head of Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch offered some insights into the IE10 code and its behaviors in a recent Build Windows 8 blog, Metro style browsing and plug-in free HTML.
Developers can also migrate their Silverlight apps fairly easily to Metro style apps, which support XAML and C#, according to BUILD keynote demonstrations by Microsoft.
Microsoft developer Robert W. Evans, who specializes in Silverlight blogged about an early workaround for the IE 10 modern browser and Silverlight in his Silverlight Shinobi TechNet blog on Thursday.
"Mitigating factors for existing Silverlight sites are that it is easy to convert Silverlight applications to Metro Applications and visitors to a site using the MoBro [Modern Browser] will get an install indicator if a Metro App is available to install," explained Evans. "For a small percentage of existing Silverlight Apps this may be a viable alternative to forcing the user to switch to Desktop Mode and would not require the more substantial dev investment of redesigning in HTML5."
It's early in the Windows Developer Preview cycle. It's still unclear how everything is going to work together and how the Visual Studio tools are going to support that effort. At BUILD, Microsoft released Visual Studio Express for Windows Developer Preview (Metro Style apps only), Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview (Metro HTML/JavaScript apps only) and Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview (Windows 8 and Windows Azure). Like the new Windows, different flavors support different types of app development.
Jensen Harris, Microsoft director of program management, Windows User Experience, offered an excellent overview of the thinking behind Metro style apps, the new animation libraries, unique touch language and other basic app design principles in his session at BUILD, 8 Traits of Great Metro Style Apps. His explanations are straightforward and offer some insights into Microsoft's reasons for the Metro style design and the company's focus on "fast and fluid" applications.
Early demonstrations of Metro style apps show great promise for a Windows tablet audience. Microsoft's initial story, however, is focused on coexistence with Windows "desktop" apps and how that's going to play out for app developers (and their customers) remains unclear. Express your thoughts on the new Metro style apps and classic Windows "desktop" apps. Have your development plans changed based on Windows 8 announcements? Comment below or drop me a line.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 10/04/2011 at 6:31 PM2 comments
Microsoft launched a Web version of its Windows Phone Marketplace on Tuesday as mobile operators started a phased rollout of the first major Windows Phone 7.5 software update for customers.
"Watch for another blog post tomorrow from Cliff Simpkins with an update on the SDK and developer builds of Windows Phone 7.5," advised Todd Brix, senior director of Windows Phone Marketplace, in a Windows Phone Developer blog post on Tuesday.
If you count the initial Windows Phone 7 release and the minor "NoDo" software update, we are unofficially at "version 3." And that's good news because from most accounts, Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" offers competitive smartphone features. This release could finally create some traction for Windows Phone and its 30,000 plus apps.
Last month Microsoft started to test and certify Windows Phone 7.5 apps/updates. At that time, the company indicated plans to freeze Windows Phone 7.0 apps (no more updates) as soon as the "Mango" versions of the applications were published.
The immediate transition from 7.0 to 7.5 apps caused concern among developers because the release schedule of the Windows Phone updates has varied dramatically by carrier. Microsoft indicated on Tuesday that it is using a phased rollout strategy to prevent any widespread problems with the operating system updates. The Mango update could take four weeks to reach 100 percent of customers, according to the company. (Some Windows Phone customers had still not received "NoDo" months after the initial rollouts started in March.)
Based on developer feedback, Microsoft announced last week that it is changing its initial app update policy in the Windows Phone Marketplace. By the end of October, according to a Sept. 20 blog post by Brix, Microsoft will provide functionality in its App Hub that allows developers to publish updates to 7.0 versions of their apps. The company is also providing "New for 7.5" screenshots and text overlay graphics that developers can use to help consumers identify Mango applications. The graphics and screenshots meet app certification requirements, according to Brix.
Windows Phone "Mango" and the new Web version of the Windows Phone Marketplace look promising for developers. Express your thoughts on the latest developments and what's needed to ramp up the market for devices and applications. Comment below or drop me a line.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 09/27/2011 at 4:27 PM0 comments
Last week Microsoft indicated that it was releasing an Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview as part of the tooling for the Windows Developer Preview of Windows 8.
What Microsoft officials forgot to say, at least during the Day 1 keynote, is that the Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview supports HTML only for Windows 8 Metro style apps. The preview does not support XAML, the XML-based declarative language used extensively in Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight. The four previous versions of Expression Blend focused on UI design and development with XAML and other .NET technologies.
When a reader of Microsoft Developer Division Senior Vice President S. Somasegar's blog--highlighting many of the exciting CSS3 and client-side JavaScript features in Expression Blend for HTML--asked about a preview of Blend for XAML; Christian Schormann, director of product management for Expression Blend, responded in the comments section:
At this point, we unfortunately cannot talk about any releases or features beyond what we have introduced here at build. Stay tuned for future announcements. A good place to look is our new team blog, where the latest news will be posted: http://www.blendinsider.com.There is a visual XAML designer for Metro-style apps as part of Visual Studio Express in the Windows Developer Preview. As we unified our designer code bases, this visual designer is now based on the same code as Blend.
Schormann also pointed to several sessions at BUILD including a deep dive session on Visual Studio 11 Express for designing Metro style apps using XAML.
Does this mean that Blend for HTML is replacing Expression Blend for XAML going forward?
Schormann gave a session on Expression Blend for designing Metro style apps using HTML at Build and stressed that the preview tooling supported native HTML; it was not a XAML tool that exports to HTML and CSS. He described Blend for HTML as "a new flavor of Blend." (Expression Blend for Windows Phone, part of the free Windows Phone Developer Tools, is another "flavor" of the tool that supports Windows Phone 7 APIs based on Silverlight and XAML.)
He also acknowledged that the Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview was for HTML only. Schormann is the only person at Microsoft who has actually said that publicly as far as I can tell. "We have not released a preview of Blend 5 for XAML yet," he said.
Why not call it Expression Blend for HTML instead of Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview? It may be a matter of semantics but glossing over the absence of XAML and related .NET technologies in the Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview has resulted in many people, including prominent developers and analysts, mistakenly assuming that HTML and XAML are supported in the preview tools. Was this a slight of hand or another communication blunder by Microsoft?
Tell us what you think. Is Expression Blend for XAML likely to get updated or is XAML now relegated to Visual Studio 11 and the updated XAML visual designer? Does it matter? Express your thoughts below or drop me a line.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 09/22/2011 at 6:00 PM5 comments
Microsoft is releasing the first Developer Previews of Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5 in conjunction with its BUILD conference for developers this week. The Visual Studio 11 SDK is included in the Developer Preview.
The IDE adds support for HTML5 and Windows 8, according to Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jason Zander, who highlighted some of the new features outside of what's available in Visual Studio 11 Express during the Day 2 keynote at BUILD on Wednesday.
Zander took a spin through the new visual image editor and graphics tools in the Visual Studio 11 Developer Preview, which include debugging capabilities for 2D and 3D games based on DirectX. He also showcased a new Code-Clone Analysis Tool and explained how it works in his blog:
The Code-Clone Analysis tool in Visual Studio 11 examines your solution looking for logic that is duplicated, enabling you to factor this code out into one or more common methods. The tool does this very intelligently; it does not just search for identical blocks of code, rather it searches for semantically similar constructs using heuristics developed by Microsoft Research.
.According to Zander, .NET 4.5 focused on improvements requested by developers such as state machine support in Windows Workflow and asynchronous programming in C# and Visual Basic, which was previewed in the Async CTPs. He blogged about the key improvements:
Across ASP.NET, the BCL, MEF, WCF, WPF, Windows Workflow, and other key technologies, we’ve listened to developers and added functionality in .NET 4.5. Important examples include state machine support in Windows Workflow, and improved support for SQL Server and Windows Azure in ADO.NET. ASP.NET has increased investments in HTML5, CSS3, device detection, page optimization, and the NuGet package system, as well as introduces new functionality with MVC4.
A Developer Preview of Team Foundation Server 11 is also available this week. Among the highlights, according to Zander, is enhanced unit testing with an agile tool called Exploratory Testing – no formal test planning required. A new workflow feature in TFS saves project state for code reviews with Team Explorer. Microsoft also showcased Team Foundation Services hosted on Azure, and invited BUILD attendees and their co-workers and friends to register for the first public preview of TFS in the cloud, which went live on Wednesday. Outside of 250 first-come first-serve "bharry" code activations, you need to know someone who attended BUILD in order to sign up for the preview.
The Developer Previews are slated to be generally available on Friday at 10 a.m. PDT. MSDN subscribers had access to the previews on Wednesday. You can get the downloads here.
Are you optimistic about developing apps for Windows 8 after all the announcements at BUILD this week? Express your thoughts below or drop me a line.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 09/15/2011 at 7:35 PM0 comments