Month: September 2011

Windows 8 for the Keyboard User

By peterritchie

What we’ve seen so far of Windows 8 is that it’s all about touch.  We’re looking at really early bits and they were effectively delivered on a tablet; so, that’s to be expected.  But, for many people they’re going to be using Windows 8 Developer Preview on hardware that doesn’t have touch.  So, how do we navigate around Metro apps and the Metro UX when we don’t have touch? Fortunately, the Windows team didn’t forget about keyboards and mice and recognized there are still scenarios that involve keyboard and mouse even when using at tablet. My contention is that touch … Continue reading Windows 8 for the Keyboard User

Windows 8, What Does It Mean to Me?

By peterritchie

Well, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard about Microsoft Build conference that happened in Anaheim last week.  It was during this conference that Microsoft finally released details about the successor to Windows 7.  This event is solely developer-focused and, in my opinion, tablet-specific.  It went into a lot of detail about the added APIs and usability changes in Windows 8 to better support tablet and touch-based computers. First off, the new touch-first usability changes are called “Metro” and applications written for touch are called “Metro-style apps”. The term “touch-first” is used because it’s not touch-only.  Metro … Continue reading Windows 8, What Does It Mean to Me?

Enterprise Service Buses, Brokers, Message Queues, Oh My!

By peterritchie

Continuing on my theme of message-oriented, I thought I’d get into a bit of detail about the various middleware options and some details about these options. Regardless of what type of middleware is chosen, one thing is common to all types of message-oriented middleware—the fact that they broker messages from producers to consumers. Impetus Before I get too far into the options, let’s look at a couple of the common reasons behind moving to a message-oriented architecture. One impetus towards MOM is to integrate various legacy or third-party systems into a new or exiting enterprise system.  This type of MOM … Continue reading Enterprise Service Buses, Brokers, Message Queues, Oh My!