PDC08 Keynote Day 2
Microsoft is determined to bring the most combined value of investments on different devices, PC, phone and web.
- Windows 7
- Internet Explorer 8 / Silverlight 2 / Live Mesh
Life services is the key component to build bridges between these different devices.
Windows 7
- Introduction to windows client
- Software + services
- Transition from vista
- API's
- Fundamentals
- Path to RTM
- Call to action
With a clear focus on these major theme's:
- Personalized
- Connect to devices and storage
- Bring together the functionality of all devices
Windows 7 Client
Application preview when you hover over the taskbar. Tabs as well as individual windows for Internet Explorer.
The taskbar also displays recent opened document for word instances through jumplets.
Search box also filters on file types. It makes it "super easy" to find the things you want to get to.
Network sharing is vastly improved to connect your different devices. Restrict individual folders.
New media player which enables you to send and play music, video and pictures all over your house.
New feature device stage to see all capabilities of a certain device.
Glass interface is now pulled down all over the interface.
Only you now have control over the system tray. So no annoying pop ups anymore.
Cool touch improvements. Scroll, zoom basically everything you can already do with your mouse is now available as touch. My tablet PC is one happy puppy :) and pen flicks are there too. Applications that currently aren't touch enabled are now touchable through the mouse functions.
Paint now has the (new) ribbon interface.
New wordpad interface.
Software + services
Windows 7 is the core PC platform enabling a communication and sharing experience through live essentials and live services. Offline synchronized mail and calendar are embedded in the operating system. Live essential is already in beta and available for use/download today.
Transition from Vista
Microsoft focused on the following customer feedback.
- Windows server 2008 and windows vista sp1
- Ecosystem readiness
- Standards
- Compatibility
- Scenarios
Good to hear that there will be changes to the standard user mode with it's annoying pop ups.
Feel free to discuss Windows 7 on the engineering blog.
API's, develop for Windows 7
- Ribbon user interface
- Jump lists
- Libraries
- Multi-touch, ink, speech
- DirectX family
Fundamentals
Decrease memory (reference set, graphics), disk I/O (registry reads, indexer), power (DVD playback, panel, timers).
Increase speed (faster boot, device ready), responsiveness (start menu, taskbar), scale (256 processors).
Windows 7 will be deliverable on smaller notebooks such as the EEE PC models due to speed increase and less memory consumption.
Bitlocker encryption on the memory stick. Also possible to really control the mobile users through policy management.
Natively in windows disk management you can create a virtual hard disk. you can boot natively from a Windows 7 virtual hard drive. Cool!!! Keep mounting and booting from the same VHD.
Hi DPI adjustments are far more easier to configure.
Much improved magnifier. Hold down the Windows key and the plus/minus button. It follows the mouse.
Connecting to external projector is much easier by switching through Windows P feature.
You can now move applications from your remote desktop to another monitor. Cool!
You can customize the shutdown button.
You can turn all messages of for spyware, security, etc. Also customize UI notifications with an easy to use slider.
Path to RTM
All PDC attendees will get a pre beta copy of Windows 7 at noon today. The steps Microsoft planned to move Windows 7 into RTM:
- Pre-Beta
- "E7" blog
- Beta (early next year)
- www.microsoft.com/windows (opened up the beta broadly)
- Feedback tool
- Customer experience improvement data
- Release candidate to RTM phase
According to Microsoft 3 years of general availability is the right moment to release Windows 7.
Call to action for developers
- Install and use Windows 7 pre-beta
- Developer for 64bit
- Focus on fundamentals in your code
- Integrate with Windows 7 desktop
- Evaluate new APIs in Windows 7
- Code to web standards with Internet explorer 8
- Download windows live beta @ download.live.com
Windows client development
lol, surprise ;)
VS.NET 2010 will see a lot of IDE improvements for very large code bases and multi-processor support.
This summer .NET 3.5 SP1 will be released. (thanks Sander)
- 40% performance increase
- WPF improvements
WPF gets the new ribbon, datagrid control.
Visual Studio.NET 2010 shell is being rebuild using WPF. Multi-monitor support and rich code editing, refactoring and test driven first development features.
They have some pretty cool visualization demo's showing very rich comments and team foundation server bug tracking information directly into the VS.NET IDE.
Many, many improvements in WPF and Silverlight. It's clear that Microsoft is betting on these technologies moving forward.
Live Services & Live Mesh
We'll be able to use the live framework and live mash platform to synchronize your user data and content over multiple devices. Very cool!
Office web applications
Following Google's Document initiative Microsoft is also enabling their office applications online. On stage they show some pretty cool integration demo's between a mobile phone and OneNote on a desktop.
Office live workspace let's you edit documents in the browser (IE 8, firefox) with a slick ribbon based interface.
That's it for the keynote on the second day of the PDC. Full of "insanely important", "super easy" quotes.