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Making Sense of Our First Look at Windows 8
- Flemlord 15y agoLive rollout: http://allthingsd.com/20110601/up-next-at-d9-microsoft-windows-president-steven-sinofsky-live-at-d9/ http://allthingsd.com/20110601/up-next-at-d9-microsoft-windo...
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- hmottestad 15y agoSounds like HP (Palm) WebOS, apps are built in html and javascript. Of course, WebOS isn't built on IE. Not that I know if Windows 8 will be, but just guessing.
- sriramk 15y agoBiggest part of announcement was the HTML+JS part. Let that sink in- HTML+JS is now the premier way to write Windows apps. Who would have thought this day would come?
- teilo 15y agoDon't for a minute think this means that this means platform-neutral apps. HTML+JS calling into Windows APIs, is more likely what this is, rendering rich widgets ala ASP.NET controls. I'm willing to bet money on it. And at that point, who cares? Different development toolset. Same lock-in.
- blntechie 15y agoI'm sure they're not going to use ASP.NET controls. If WebOS is universally accepted as developer friendly I don't see why Windows which is planning for a similar toolkit will not be considered so. And let me know when the day arrives when you can develop and run platform-neutral apps in Mac,iOS or in fact Linux. Don't be unreasonable. Thanks.
- bonch 15y agoApple actually tried to introduce HTML5 as the development platform for the iPhone, and developers didn't want it.
- tomlin 15y agoNot quite. Safari for iOS is crippled when compared to the desktop versions. You have to write a native app over a web app if you want to allow the user to upload images or video, for example.
- mullr 15y agoThe world was pretty significantly different at that time: in 2007, we hadn't even seen 280slides yet. It wasn't obvious to everybody that you could write really great javascript-based webapps. Nobody was even calling it html5 at the time.
- teilo 15y agoNothing I wrote is unreasonable. The only real advantage of HTML5 on the desktop is that it has a shallow learning curve vs., say, iOS. I didn't say it wouldn't be developer friendly. I'm saying that it really makes no difference that they are using HTML+JS if, like WebOS, they have tight coupling to the native OS API. Also, I didn't say they would use ASP.NET controls, but something similar - rich controls backed specifically by the OS. My point stands: Different developer toolset - same vendor lock-in.
- Uhhrrr 15y agoQt, GTK, Tcl/Tk - for Tcl/Tk that day is at least thirteen years ago. For Java that day is sixteen years ago.
- 27182818284 15y agoDashboard (HTML & JS) for OS X never really caught on. I wonder if this will do better.
- josephcooney 15y agoNor did sidebar widgets for Vista/Win7 (also HTML + JS).
- kenjackson 15y agoI agree. Why didn't ppl drill on this (and impact on Silverlight) in Q&A rather than meaningless questions like is this a skin?
- desigooner 15y agoPretty sure that was Joshua Topolsky. While being a self-proclaimed fan of WebOS, he's been ranting about Windows a lot lately in his podcasts at thisismynext.
- Apocryphon 15y agoOkay, okay, okay. Forget rumors that Microsoft is going to buy Nokia or RIM. Looks like MS is going to buy Palm from HP.
- bonch 15y agoMicrosoft's API churn must be disconcerting for developers trying to figure out what to standardize on going forward. This is yet another API for writing Windows apps. WPF? Silverlight? HTML5? I would always have a fear that something else would come along and supplant the API I was working with.
- blntechie 15y agoI'm guessing bringing HTML5 support for their APIs is only going to bring more developers to their platform. I may be proven wrong as time goes.
- trustfundbaby 15y agoIts a tangential example to be sure, but it seems to have worked out really really well for Google Chrome and their extensions. I haven't been this excited about a windows release in a long long while ... I hope Microsoft doesn't botch this
- william42 15y agoI wouldn't say it's a tangential example as much as that Chrome extensions have a very good reason to be written in JavaScript--they're effectively contributions to the JavaScript of the page, and use the same DOM. It remains to be seen if the other benefits of JavaScript carry over to Windows 8 enough that it's worth using it to code desktop apps. As for botching it, I suspect that Windows 8 will be a not-very-good «experimental» thing like Vista and Windows 9 will be what Windows 8 should have been in the first place.
- maxxxxx 15y agoYeah. It has been a mess for a long time. In the end, though, C/C++ is still the main API and it will probably stay like that.
- teyc 15y agoAbsolutely. I hope they have a tooling story around HTML5. I wonder if that chart in the demo was done in canvas or photoshop.
- maheshs 15y agoThere is a video on youtube for user interface of windows 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I
- lukencode 15y agoI think it looks a lot nicer in motion. Though switching between desktop and tablet modes could be a bit jarring.
- kklimonda 15y agoOk, just to be sure I understand that correctly - Microsoft has invested quite a lot of money into developing Silverlight and WPF and then promoting those technologies among developers as the best thing since sliced bread (not to mention the only way to write applications for WP7) and now they are doing that? How is that for the coherent vision and a clear message to people who'd like to write for their platform?
- jacques_chester 15y agoMicrosoft invest lots of money into lots of different technologies, then dump them later. OLE, COM, Win16/32 and many many others have fallen by the wayside over the years.
- robryan 15y agoAnother good examples is connecting to a database on the MS stack, so many different ways of doing it.
- jacques_chester 15y agoThe canonical example, in fact. They've gone through something like 10 different APIs/frameworks in the last decade, IIRC.
- mullr 15y agoAll of the above are still used pretty heavily, even by new work coming out of MS. You're RIGHT though, it's just the examples aren't so good. In recent memory: WPF, Windows Forms, MFC, .NET Remoting, DCOM... They actually had a session at a recent dev conference (I saw the video) where they told you all about the underwhelming list of new features coming in WPF. The main message: WPF isn't dead! But it made things pretty obvious. The trouble with a company the size of Microsoft is that there are so many people creating so much STUFF that it's nearly impossible for them all to work together. It may be better for them, as a company, to allow their various branches to function independently while exposing an inconsistent API story to the outside world. The alternative would be to make everybody talk to everybody else, causing all work to come to a grinding halt.
- petercooper 15y agoLooks like OS X and Linux have nothing to worry about here. It's the Microsoft Bob idea wheeled out again with a trendy minimalist feel instead of a dog.
- mtogo 15y agoIt's Windows, there isn't going to be a change in userbase no matter what MS does. Windows users will not switch to Linux (but it's the year of Linux on the desktop!) because of the usual issues, but serious (non-VS-using) developers will never use Windows either. As for OSX, Apple hipsters aren't going to spontaneously start using Windows, and Windows users aren't going to start spending 2x as much on their computers any time soon.
- joshes 15y agoYou managed to pack a great deal of trolling into this post. Kudos for this one.
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- Apocryphon 15y agoSide question: we're going to see the debut of OS X Lion soon this summer, as well. How often does this happen, when we have a year when both MS and Apple reveal their upcoming operating system?
- rkudeshi 15y agoTechnically, Apple showed off Lion last year and is going to release it this year. Microsoft is showing off Windows 8 this year and is going to release it next year. Nonetheless, this near-overlap happened around the time of Win 7 and Snow Leopard too (both released late summer 2009).
- r00fus 15y agoThis looks like a tablet OS rather than a desktop OS. The elephant in the room is Office. How is Office going to make the transition to a Windows 8, touch-based UI and still be usable to the dozens of millions of current users? The age-old desktop vs. touchscreen conundrum arises. Apple has two versions of it's OS: OSX for desktops, which is (currently) not a touch-based UI, and iOS for it's small and large tablet devices which is touch-based.
- Flemlord 15y agoI wonder if they're keeping it quiet but plan on Office vNext being fully integrated into the new UI. I recall some leaked screenshots that seem to be leaning in that direction. Mmmm... here: http://www.redmondpie.com/microsoft-office-15-leaked-photos-suggests-metro-based-ui/ http://www.redmondpie.com/microsoft-office-15-leaked-photos-...
- JulianMorrison 15y agoLooks to me like MS just declared the desktop to be dead.
- kenjackson 15y agoI think they intend to eat it while it is still breathing.
- code_duck 15y agoApple's experiences with iOS are giving most everyone that general impression, including Apple...
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- jfoutz 15y agoBut how do you make things? This is a fantastic way to present information. it's beautiful. I would love this on a tv, or a bunch of displays in my house. especially with an epaper non light generating kind of display. But... but... how do you make stuff? how do you design a house? how do you write code? It seems so very very consumer.
- saturdaysaint 15y agoYou open a CAD program or code editor?
- billybob 15y agoIf they don't have a ship date yet, why are they showing this off? It seems like they're just asking for any of their good ideas to be stolen before they launch. Apple's approach seems to be to develop in secret and show something off just before it hits the shelves. Is Microsoft just seeing to see how people react to this, leaving room to backpedal if necessary?
- smackfu 15y agoSo that people can get all their outrage out of the way and get used to it.
- tomelders 15y agoWhen Steve Jobs said that touch interfaces on the desktop/laptop sucked, I think that opinion was based on some thorough testing. Looks like Microsoft are gonna go ahead and do it anyway.