8 ms·

Windows 8 Developer Preview is Live

112 points by acak 15y ago

equark 15y ago
I still have not seen a clear explanation of where .NET and the CLR are in this WinRT story. Anybody have a good sense for what's new, renamed, and deprecated?
- barista 15y ago
  One easy way to find out. Download! The code samples were all in .Net.
  - latch 15y ago
    Seems like asking is an easier way to find out.
    - barista 15y ago
      Maybe it is but that's not what hackers do. They just do it.
      - latch 15y ago
        laziness impatience hubris
- pcj 15y ago
  Here you go - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464947(v=VS.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46494... From the article: The Windows Runtime is exposed using API metadata (.winmd files). This is the same format used by the .NET framework (Ecma-335). The underlying binary contract makes it easy for you to access the Windows Runtime APIs directly in the development language of your choice. The shape and structure of the Windows Runtime APIs can be understood by both static languages such as C# and dynamic languages such as JavaScript. IntelliSense is available in JavaScript, C#, Visual Basic, and C++. Edit: Updated the link and added snippet
Qz 15y ago
Anyone have any idea how the new UI works with multiple monitor setups?
- xtacy 15y ago
  You should check the BUILD telecast; they showed how the new UI works seamlessly with multiple monitors!
- rmassie 15y ago
  It works on it, but it doesn't seem to span both monitors. You have to choose one or the other. It's a bit disappointing.
  - Qz 15y ago
    Great, so they fix the taskbar and break the thing that matters most :(
    - sukuriant 15y ago
      Eh? What do you mean? Disclaimer: MS Employee. I did not write the new UI.
      - Qz 15y ago
        Well, it's a bit early so who knows what the plan is, but as a dual monitor user, it seems like that configuration is being left out of consideration for a complete Metro experience (as someone else mentioned you could have Metro on one monitor but there was no option to use it across both monitors). At the same time it seems that in the desktop itself the taskbar has been updated to work on multiple monitors, which is where I was going with the above post - sure they fixed the taskbar, but windows 8 is all about Metro!
        sukuriant 15y ago
        Oh, okay :) Thanks for clarifying
acak 15y ago
Has anyone installed this as a virtual OS?
- gabbo 15y ago
  I installed this on a Hyper-V VM - everything went pretty quickly except after install, the first time I tried to log in it sat there a while. I shut it down (cleanly) then it booted up fine the next time. Everything pretty much works now, I've been playing around with it mostly via Remote Desktop. You'll probably want to disable some of the animated window switching transitions if you do because they don't seem to remote very well (yet?).
- raminf 15y ago
  Just installed it under Parallels 7 under Lion on a MBPro. Installed OK, logged in and explored a bit. Performance was decent, but the Mac trackpad gestures are not relayed to the OS. After installing Parallels tools and running one of the sample apps the screen froze with no way to get back in. Currently reinstalling. Will try it again this time without Parallels tools.
- malbs 15y ago
  Yeah I'm keen to try it out when I get home tonight but don't exactly want to hose my home machine, hoping vmware player 64bit will play nicely with win8, if no one else has tried it by tonight I'll let you know how I went
  - pointyhat 15y ago
    I tried it on VMWare workstation 7. Works fine for me.
    - malbs 15y ago
      Thanks - I ran out of time last night, reading bed time stories to kids took priority
      - pointyhat 15y ago
rkalla 15y ago
Anyone that played with it yet or watched the presentations have a quick-hit list of the things that look cool about Windows 8?
- shriphani 15y ago
  New ie + apps by interns (I didn't work on Win8 so these aren't my creations).
- mattmanser 15y ago
  I've only watched the first hour and 3/4 so far as I've work to do, but here are my notes, they are rough but you asked: Architecture - ARM and X86 - Uses less resources than windows 7 according to screen shots (280Mb RAM footprint) - Startup time is incredible, as well as shutdown - Rootkit protection - Mentioned encrypted drive while it's running? Not sure if this is default UI - Touch centric interface - Heavily influenced by the phone UI, the 'start' screen is a panel of apps and things. - Heavily built around windows live and sharing - If you're in support you'll be saying 'swipe to the right' a lot. Opens context start menu - Seems to switch to a normal desktop view with a bar down the bottom when you open something like visual studio - Actually seem to be able to switch between panel and desktop view. The panel looks like the app launcher, you'll probably be able to disable it Development - You can use HTML5/Javascript OR .Net/C++/C + XAML to write apps. - App store (see below) - CSS is extended for windows using browser specific extensions - They also seem to have written some default APIs for things like facebook - Pushing Blend again, still poo, but now supports windows html - little apps are called 'metro style' apps - Seem to be making a deal about how rich the APIs are - Put a lot of effort into the APIs for hardware addons such as accelerometers - Don't have to do anything to support ARM - Everything you write will have baked in hardware accelerated graphics - Making a big deal of 'charms', makes apps content aware and kinda embeddable in the interface elsewhere in the system. You kinda have to see this to understand them -- They're context aware so if you're copying text ad your app is marked as accepting text then they'll appear as a charm for that. -- They also appear in the search system if you've flagged them App store - Unsurprisingly closed - Trying to make the process more transparent, shows waiting times for each review step - Will test security, technical and content (for copyright?) - You will be able to run the auto testing tools yourself (e.g. technical compliance make sure not abusing API) - App store baked into the OS - Old apps are going to be listable too (Win32) - Sounds like it's going to be available on windows 7 too - Will this get immediately overwhelmed with old programs? First thoughts - It's really bloody good. I started a skeptic on it being overly touch centric, ended impressed. - They've made some very bold choices and it seems to have paid off - This might be a bad thing for html5, it's possibly going to fragment standards as MS are having to push ahead some features to handle the UI without acceptance. I guess we'll see. p.s. Looks like the other PC manufacturers are finally copying the Macbook air form factor, they look really good p.p.s. Crowd shots are weird as everyone is a bloke! (see 2:33ish) p.p.p.s. Windows developers are still clueless about javascript. Using null in one of the examples.
runjake 15y ago
It's pretty speedy and responsive on my 2.4ghz C2D ThinkPad X200. Being a Developer Preview, it's also pretty useless. But, it does work as in today's keynote presentations. You can install apps on it.
- josephcooney 15y ago
  Why do you say "it's also pretty useless"?
  - runjake 15y ago
    Many of the included apps aren't configurable, and there's just not much to the Metro side of things yet. It's good for an hour of poking around, though.
- edkennedy 15y ago
  It works as in today's keynote... Does that mean it's a bit hard to navigate, and not all the apps work? They seemed to have a lot of technical problems in the keynote. My favourite was when they are holding a tablet up to the screen early on and he states "We're going to open the Bing app..." and a woman whispers over his shoulder (on a mic that everyone can hear) "No don't do that!"
  - runjake 15y ago
    The navigation is pretty easy, but as a WP7 user, I'm used to Metro paradigms. Not all the apps work, some are just mockups and don't have any functionality (though they seem to be legitimately pulling data from the network, according to Wireshark). It's not ready for regular use by anyone's standards, for sure. But it's very promising, very speedy, and has a pretty low memory footprint. I'm OK with the demo goof ups.
Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago
desperately needed: Solarized color theme applied to Metro.
Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago
desperately needed: Solarized color theme applied to Metro.
leon_ 15y ago
Oh, the win8 app store looks really great. 0% cut, transparent review process and support for trials. I guess I will be writing some windows app in the future. (I'm a Mac developer.) And I hope this will force Apple to improve their app store developer experience a little bit.
- zhwang 15y ago
  Well... maybe not - http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110915/windows-store-to-provide-7030-revenue-share/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110915/windows-store-to-p... Then again, a lot of people think the 30% is worth it when compared to implementing your own way of selling things.
beaumartinez 15y ago
It's downloading at a ridiculously slow rate—230 kbps. Why didn't they make torrents for them as well? The load would be shared on all the developers downloading it.
- robgough 15y ago
  If you download through the "Download Manager" then I believe that is a p2p system. Not sure this is available via non-MSDN means though.
- mdaniel 15y ago
  There are burnbit links for at least the two 64-bit ISOs: http://burnbit.com/torrent/177079/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64bit_English_Developer_iso http://burnbit.com/torrent/177079/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64... http://burnbit.com/torrent/177080/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64bit_English_iso http://burnbit.com/torrent/177080/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64...
wundie 15y ago
Has anyone had an issue on Virtual Box where you're only able to click on certain icons? For example, I can launch the control panel or desktop with a single click but when I try the IE tile it just moves and nothing happens. I can go to the desktop and launch IE without issue. Not sure what to try…. [Win7 x64 host running VB 4.1 attempting Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)]
- watmough 15y ago
  This is likely because you don't have your network setup correctly. You need to be licensed, sorry activated, to run much other than control panel or desktop. I used NAT and had to reboot a few times to get it going in Virtual Box. Eventually, someone then worked out that it could talk to Redmond, and stuff started working. It is definitely kinda frustrating to not know why the tiles are not worked, even though they 'move'. The Native install picked up my Broadcom wireless, wired connection, and connected no problem.

112 points by acak 15y ago

I still have not seen a clear explanation of where .NET and the CLR are in this WinRT story. Anybody have a good sense for what's new, renamed, and deprecated?

barista 15y ago
One easy way to find out. Download! The code samples were all in .Net.
- latch 15y ago
  Seems like asking is an easier way to find out.
  - barista 15y ago
    Maybe it is but that's not what hackers do. They just do it.
    - latch 15y ago
      laziness impatience hubris
pcj 15y ago
Here you go - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh464947(v=VS.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh46494... From the article: The Windows Runtime is exposed using API metadata (.winmd files). This is the same format used by the .NET framework (Ecma-335). The underlying binary contract makes it easy for you to access the Windows Runtime APIs directly in the development language of your choice. The shape and structure of the Windows Runtime APIs can be understood by both static languages such as C# and dynamic languages such as JavaScript. IntelliSense is available in JavaScript, C#, Visual Basic, and C++. Edit: Updated the link and added snippet

Qz 15y ago

Anyone have any idea how the new UI works with multiple monitor setups?

xtacy 15y ago
You should check the BUILD telecast; they showed how the new UI works seamlessly with multiple monitors!
rmassie 15y ago
It works on it, but it doesn't seem to span both monitors. You have to choose one or the other. It's a bit disappointing.
- Qz 15y ago
  Great, so they fix the taskbar and break the thing that matters most :(
  - sukuriant 15y ago
    Eh? What do you mean? Disclaimer: MS Employee. I did not write the new UI.
    - Qz 15y ago
      Well, it's a bit early so who knows what the plan is, but as a dual monitor user, it seems like that configuration is being left out of consideration for a complete Metro experience (as someone else mentioned you could have Metro on one monitor but there was no option to use it across both monitors). At the same time it seems that in the desktop itself the taskbar has been updated to work on multiple monitors, which is where I was going with the above post - sure they fixed the taskbar, but windows 8 is all about Metro!
      - sukuriant 15y ago
        Oh, okay :) Thanks for clarifying

acak 15y ago

Has anyone installed this as a virtual OS?

gabbo 15y ago
I installed this on a Hyper-V VM - everything went pretty quickly except after install, the first time I tried to log in it sat there a while. I shut it down (cleanly) then it booted up fine the next time. Everything pretty much works now, I've been playing around with it mostly via Remote Desktop. You'll probably want to disable some of the animated window switching transitions if you do because they don't seem to remote very well (yet?).
raminf 15y ago
Just installed it under Parallels 7 under Lion on a MBPro. Installed OK, logged in and explored a bit. Performance was decent, but the Mac trackpad gestures are not relayed to the OS. After installing Parallels tools and running one of the sample apps the screen froze with no way to get back in. Currently reinstalling. Will try it again this time without Parallels tools.
malbs 15y ago
Yeah I'm keen to try it out when I get home tonight but don't exactly want to hose my home machine, hoping vmware player 64bit will play nicely with win8, if no one else has tried it by tonight I'll let you know how I went
- pointyhat 15y ago
  I tried it on VMWare workstation 7. Works fine for me.
  - malbs 15y ago
    Thanks - I ran out of time last night, reading bed time stories to kids took priority
    - pointyhat 15y ago

rkalla 15y ago

Anyone that played with it yet or watched the presentations have a quick-hit list of the things that look cool about Windows 8?

shriphani 15y ago
New ie + apps by interns (I didn't work on Win8 so these aren't my creations).
mattmanser 15y ago
I've only watched the first hour and 3/4 so far as I've work to do, but here are my notes, they are rough but you asked: Architecture - ARM and X86 - Uses less resources than windows 7 according to screen shots (280Mb RAM footprint) - Startup time is incredible, as well as shutdown - Rootkit protection - Mentioned encrypted drive while it's running? Not sure if this is default UI - Touch centric interface - Heavily influenced by the phone UI, the 'start' screen is a panel of apps and things. - Heavily built around windows live and sharing - If you're in support you'll be saying 'swipe to the right' a lot. Opens context start menu - Seems to switch to a normal desktop view with a bar down the bottom when you open something like visual studio - Actually seem to be able to switch between panel and desktop view. The panel looks like the app launcher, you'll probably be able to disable it Development - You can use HTML5/Javascript OR .Net/C++/C + XAML to write apps. - App store (see below) - CSS is extended for windows using browser specific extensions - They also seem to have written some default APIs for things like facebook - Pushing Blend again, still poo, but now supports windows html - little apps are called 'metro style' apps - Seem to be making a deal about how rich the APIs are - Put a lot of effort into the APIs for hardware addons such as accelerometers - Don't have to do anything to support ARM - Everything you write will have baked in hardware accelerated graphics - Making a big deal of 'charms', makes apps content aware and kinda embeddable in the interface elsewhere in the system. You kinda have to see this to understand them -- They're context aware so if you're copying text ad your app is marked as accepting text then they'll appear as a charm for that. -- They also appear in the search system if you've flagged them App store - Unsurprisingly closed - Trying to make the process more transparent, shows waiting times for each review step - Will test security, technical and content (for copyright?) - You will be able to run the auto testing tools yourself (e.g. technical compliance make sure not abusing API) - App store baked into the OS - Old apps are going to be listable too (Win32) - Sounds like it's going to be available on windows 7 too - Will this get immediately overwhelmed with old programs? First thoughts - It's really bloody good. I started a skeptic on it being overly touch centric, ended impressed. - They've made some very bold choices and it seems to have paid off - This might be a bad thing for html5, it's possibly going to fragment standards as MS are having to push ahead some features to handle the UI without acceptance. I guess we'll see. p.s. Looks like the other PC manufacturers are finally copying the Macbook air form factor, they look really good p.p.s. Crowd shots are weird as everyone is a bloke! (see 2:33ish) p.p.p.s. Windows developers are still clueless about javascript. Using null in one of the examples.

runjake 15y ago

It's pretty speedy and responsive on my 2.4ghz C2D ThinkPad X200. Being a Developer Preview, it's also pretty useless. But, it does work as in today's keynote presentations. You can install apps on it.

josephcooney 15y ago
Why do you say "it's also pretty useless"?
- runjake 15y ago
  Many of the included apps aren't configurable, and there's just not much to the Metro side of things yet. It's good for an hour of poking around, though.
edkennedy 15y ago
It works as in today's keynote... Does that mean it's a bit hard to navigate, and not all the apps work? They seemed to have a lot of technical problems in the keynote. My favourite was when they are holding a tablet up to the screen early on and he states "We're going to open the Bing app..." and a woman whispers over his shoulder (on a mic that everyone can hear) "No don't do that!"
- runjake 15y ago
  The navigation is pretty easy, but as a WP7 user, I'm used to Metro paradigms. Not all the apps work, some are just mockups and don't have any functionality (though they seem to be legitimately pulling data from the network, according to Wireshark). It's not ready for regular use by anyone's standards, for sure. But it's very promising, very speedy, and has a pretty low memory footprint. I'm OK with the demo goof ups.

Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago

desperately needed: Solarized color theme applied to Metro.

Qa8BBatwHxK8Pu 15y ago

desperately needed: Solarized color theme applied to Metro.

leon_ 15y ago

Oh, the win8 app store looks really great. 0% cut, transparent review process and support for trials. I guess I will be writing some windows app in the future. (I'm a Mac developer.) And I hope this will force Apple to improve their app store developer experience a little bit.

zhwang 15y ago
Well... maybe not - http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110915/windows-store-to-provide-7030-revenue-share/ http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110915/windows-store-to-p... Then again, a lot of people think the 30% is worth it when compared to implementing your own way of selling things.

beaumartinez 15y ago

It's downloading at a ridiculously slow rate—230 kbps. Why didn't they make torrents for them as well? The load would be shared on all the developers downloading it.

robgough 15y ago
If you download through the "Download Manager" then I believe that is a p2p system. Not sure this is available via non-MSDN means though.
mdaniel 15y ago
There are burnbit links for at least the two 64-bit ISOs: http://burnbit.com/torrent/177079/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64bit_English_Developer_iso http://burnbit.com/torrent/177079/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64... http://burnbit.com/torrent/177080/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64bit_English_iso http://burnbit.com/torrent/177080/WindowsDeveloperPreview_64...

wundie 15y ago

Has anyone had an issue on Virtual Box where you're only able to click on certain icons? For example, I can launch the control panel or desktop with a single click but when I try the IE tile it just moves and nothing happens. I can go to the desktop and launch IE without issue. Not sure what to try…. [Win7 x64 host running VB 4.1 attempting Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)]

watmough 15y ago
This is likely because you don't have your network setup correctly. You need to be licensed, sorry activated, to run much other than control panel or desktop. I used NAT and had to reboot a few times to get it going in Virtual Box. Eventually, someone then worked out that it could talk to Redmond, and stuff started working. It is definitely kinda frustrating to not know why the tiles are not worked, even though they 'move'. The Native install picked up my Broadcom wireless, wired connection, and connected no problem.