Last night was the first day of Microsoft's Build conference, which runs from 13 to 16 September. This is the conference that software engineers and companies working with Microsoft technologies had been waiting for like manna from heaven. The "big picture" of the future of Windows and the technologies around it became clear on the very first night. A developer preview of Windows 8 was released at the conference yesterday, and the future of XAML was settled as well. Interesting things such as native JavaScript, picture passwords and WinRT (the new Windows runtime) were also announced. Another important point is that the Metro design from Windows Phone will be central to Windows 8.
Summary of the first day of the conference
Let me try to summarise the main things that became clear on the first day of Microsoft's Build conference in a few bullet points:
- There are now more people using Windows 7 than Windows XP.
- Windows 8 uses half as much memory as Windows 7.
- Windows 8 boots in under 10 seconds (with the Metro design).
- Windows 8 PCs with a touch screen will be unlockable by tapping on a picture.
- XAML will live on and is even being developed further. It will be native to the operating system.
- The new Windows runtime (WinRT) will support Metro applications written in XAML or in HTML plus JavaScript, .NET or native code.
- There will be an Expression Blend 5, which will work with HTML and CSS, not only with XAML. A preview version is already available.
- A Windows Store, which will make it easy to deploy applications directly from Visual Studio.
- Microsoft Visual Studio 11 - there will be a new version of the best IDE in the world. A preview version is included in the Windows 8 developer preview.
- All the demo applications for the Windows 8 preview were written by students: 17 teams of two to three people, over 10 weeks. Nice.
- WinRT provides a unified API for JavaScript, .NET and native code applications.
- The Metro style, familiar from Windows Phone 7, will be everywhere in Windows 8. It is not yet clear when, or whether, Microsoft Office and other important Microsoft applications will be redesigned in the Metro style.
Tonight we expect more details on cloud computing, on Silverlight as part of web sites, on a new Office suite, and a more detailed look at Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 8.
Windows Developer Preview
As I mentioned, the developer preview of Windows 8 was released at the conference, and you can play with it from this link: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516. It contains the Windows SDK for Metro applications, Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express, Microsoft Expression Blend 5 Developer Preview and 28 Metro applications. The requirements are not high: you need at least a 1 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM for the 32-bit version, and twice that for the 64-bit one. You also need at least 20 GB of hard disk space for the 64-bit version. It is best if you can test it on a touch device, so that you can fully enjoy what is new in Windows 8. Have fun!