BUILD WINDOWS CONFERENCE 2011 – Keynote 1

By nunogodinho

Steven Sinofsky’s – Windows Division President @ Microsoft

The World of Computing is changing

  • Form factor and User interaction models
  • Touch is important, and not only for small devices
  • Connectivity is very important

Windows 8

  • Makes Windows 7 even better. Everything that runs in Windows 7 runs in Windows 8
  • Reimagines Windows from chipset to experience
    • Ex. SoC – System on a Chip – Support ARM
    • Ex. Full new User Experience – New Touch first experiences
    • How
      1. Windows 8 Experience
      2. Metro Style Platform and Tools
      3. Hardware
      4. Cloud-based services
  • Everything available on ARM and x86
  • Delivering fundamental performance gains
    • Windows 7 SP1– About  404 MB / 32 processes
    • Windows 8 today – About 281 / 29 processes

1. Windows 8 Experience  (Julia Larson Green – Corporate Vice President @ Microsoft)

    • Metro Style Experience
    • Touch First
    • Start Screen similar to Windows Phone 7
      • Composed by tiles that represent the applications
      • Represents the unification of the project launching and notifications
      • Customizable Start Screen
    • Internet Explorer 10 with Metro Style
    • Fast ad fluid
    • Immersive and full screen
      • enables you to write apps that can get the most attention from the users
    • Touch first with full keyboard and mouse
    • Web Apps working together

2. Windows 8 Platform and tools

    • Windows 8 Platform
      • App Development
        • XAML with C, C++, C#, VB.NET
        • HTML5 and JavaScript
      • Windows Runtime APIs (WinRT APIs)
      • Bases / Fundamentals of the operating system – Windows Kernel Services
    • Windows 8 Tools
      • Visual Studio 2011
        • Support JavaScript, VB.NET, C#, C++
        • Store Menu in Visual Studio
          • Creates a package and releases the app for the Windows Marketplace
            • Possibility to allow trial licenses and so on
      • Windows Marketplace will certify and validate the apps, similar to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace validation process, to validate your app.
        • The requirements and tools to check the compliance will be available for developers to validate them prior to the marketplace validation
      • New App Package
      • WinRT APIs available to all languages
      • Blend
        • Now support XAML and CSS and JavaScript
        • Preview integrated in Blend
      • WinRT Controls available for the several languages and runtimes
      • Existing Win32 Apps will also be listed in the Windows Marketplace
      • Existing Silverlight Apps still work in Windows Marketplace
      • Migrating existing the Silverlight apps to Windows 8, are normally just:
        • change Namespaces
        • change the Networking API
        • add App Launchers instead of Browser launch
        • Everything else just works
      • Developer and Platform Tools
        • New APIs and tools to build Metro style apps
        • Rapid and scalable development of Metro Style apps
        • Choice of world class development tools and languages
          • XAML, C#, VB.NET, HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, C, C++  both on ARM/x86/x64
        • Business Opportunity is the world of Windows 8 Customers

3. Hardware (Michael Angiulo – Corporate VP in Windows Planning and Ecosystems)

    • Windows 8 supports a hard range of systems for and hardware, from big servers to small pcs)
    • Booting in 8 seconds without any Boot Screen
    • Taken Defender and enhance it with Spyware, and so on, even in securing in booting from USB drives
    • New state called “Connected Standby session” that allows a better system power management, with using only the power when it’s needed and when shutting down it will give the system to save state and after that just drop to almost.
    • Big partnership with Intel for SoC and some low power hardware
    • Windows 8 is all built using hardware acceleration for graphics, and so every app that has “metro style” will be hardware accelerated.
    • Display resolutions
      • 1024×600 to 1920×1080
      • if you have lower resolution you won’t be able to have the apps side by side.
      • Completely full windows experience with 1366×768 without no compromise
    • Sensors
      • Accelerometer
      • Gyro
      • Magnetometer
      • NOTE: Sensor Fusion API. Single API combines all the information from the 3 sensors in 3 lines of code. It’s part of the WinRT APIs so is shared by all languages.
      • NFC – Near field communications – for interacting with objects or other machines.
    • USSD it’s a protocol very important to avoid roaming but still have connectivity
    • Samsung Windows Developer Preview PC given
    • New Windows Task Manager
      • Apps can be suspended it they aren’t being seen, and so they don’t use CPU and enhance
      • New Performance tab with all information about the resource usage
      • App History
      • Startup
      • Users
      • DetailsView with all processes
    • Control Panel
      • New feature – Reset and Refresh
        • Refresh = Only the PC Settings will be reset not the files and apps
        • Reset = Take the system to the new state, and lose all the apps
    • Windows Assessment Console
      • Allows you to test the several tests to analyze your app to prepare it to be packaged
    • New Metro-Style Remote Desktop
      • Capability to use Touch even on a remote machine
      • Live Preview of the machines we are being remoted into
    • Hyper-V running on Windows 8
      • Enhanced Hyper-V manager
      • ability to grab and open a vhd or iso and mounted in Windows without any other software
    • New Windows Explorer Ribbon based
    • Ability to have 1 background that fully spans to several monitors
    • New options for Multiple Monitors
      • Possibility to have the same elements on both start bars
      • Possibility to have only the elements that are in a specific monitor appear in the monitor start bar
    • Full use of the Keyboard and mouse even on the Start Menu, with the full power of running commands
    • IE 10
      • Fullscreen and immersive, so no chrome on it.
      • All the keyboard shortcuts used in IE are available also in the IE in Windows 8 version
    • Magnifier was enhanced to support the Metro-style and even more accessible.
    • Includes Ink input
      • Not using only a pen and a stylus
    • Sync PC Settings
      • If you sign up with your liveid every settings that you have will be roamed. All powered by Windows Live

4. Cloud based services for Windows 8 (Chris Jones – Senior VP for Windows Live @ Microsoft)

    • every live app was redesigned for the new metro-style
    • Metro-Style mail that is built using HTML5 and JavaScript using the WinRT APIs
      • All my mail accounts managed in one single place and roamed using Windows Live
    • Metro-Style Calendar also using HTML5 and JavaScript using the WinRT APIs
      • All my calendars and all other calendars that were shared with me
    • Metro-Style People/Contacts Manager also using HTML5 and JavaScript using the WinRT APIs
      • Combining all my contacts like from Exchange, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. (Just like in Windows Phone 7)
    • Metro-Style Photos also using HTML5 and JavaScript using the WinRT APIs
      • Combining all my photos from SkyDrive, Facebook, Flickr, …
    • Connect to devices through Windows Live
    • Access to other machines through Windows Live for sharing Files and access to other machine resources

All the apps presented were build by 17 teams of volunteers during the summer as interns.

Path to RTM

    • Windows 8 Developer Preview
      • Including Visual Studio 11 Express, Expression Blend 5, SDK, Apps Developer Pre-Release
    • Next milestone is Beta, Then RC. Then RTM. Then FA
    • Updates along the way
    • Learning more

Still today it here http://dev.windows.com we’ll be able to Download Windows 8 Developer Preview for x86 and x64 bits version. 2 options that are with VS Express 11 or only with the samples apps. No Activation needed, and also no support. Smile

From what I’ve seen Windows 8 appears very cool, and the development ecosystems sounds great both with XAML and C#/VB/C/C++ and HTML5 and JavaScript. Currently needing to watch some more sessions about the subject to really understand more the WinRT APIs, and their connection and integration with .NET.

From the Windows 8 business ecosystem view, also very interesting to view the Windows Marketplace/Store being created and making us able to better market our apps.

From the User Experience perspective, Windows 8 looks like being very interesting and fully touch focused, but still allowing us to use Keyboard and Mouse even on the more Touch focused areas, and after that having also the Desktop mode to when we’re developing have a better User Experience with our Keyboard, Mouse, and other devices.

Bottom line: Windows 8 appears really, really cool and opens up a huge opportunity for both developing apps and sharing them across several devices, and market those. So, good job Microsoft. Having said that, I still need to see more about those development aspects to be even more impressed.

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