BUILD 2011

BUILD Conference Notes #4 – Keynote, part IV – Windows Live

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BUILD conference keynote, part IV.  Windows 8 and Windows Live.  13 Sep 2011.

Chris Jones.

  • InBox, multiple accounts

  • Share calendars

  • Connected address book

  • Photos – photos from various places

  • SkyDrive – accessible to developers
  • Connect devices via Live – e.g. navigate hard drive
  • Tunneling via Live ID
  • Sharing photos via mail

  • Connected contact list

  • SkyDrive via web site, access to all connected devices

  • Windows Phone 7.5, SkyDrive stuff

  • New Acer touch screen PC with Touch

  • Live apps are all written as new HTML5 Metro apps

  • Hundreds of other features in Windows 8 we haven’t yet seen
  • Sample apps

  • Teams built apps in 10 weeks
  • 17 teams, 2-3 devs per team, 10 weeks
  • College interns built all of the sample apps
  • Here are some of the interns

  • Hmm, intern said “turn on their Slate”
  • Steven, with more to say

  • Windows 8 Developer Preview – pre-release – Visual Studio 11 Express, Blend 5
  • Next milestone Beta.  Then RC, RTM, GA (General Availability)
  • Driven by quality, not by a date
  • Developer Preview will also receive updates
  • Customer Feedback will drive fixes that they make
  • http://dev.windows.com, can download preview, 10PM CST
  • No activation

BUILD Conference Notes #3 – Keynote, part III – Windows 8 Hardware Etc

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BUILD conference keynote, part III.  Windows 8 Hardware and other new features in Windows 8.  13 Sep 2011.

  • Michael Angiulo, Corp VP, Windows Planning and Ecosystem

  • Super fast boot times
  • 8-sec bootup on current in-market laptop

  • Service automatically checks for root kits – tons of new security features

  • New power state – Connected Standby – very low power
  • One-click power switch on tablet – instant on/off

  • Killer feature – instant on/off, just like iPad
  • ATOM and ARM-based systems

  • USB 3.0 – much faster than 2.0

  • Windows 8 supports 256TB drives
  • 4.7 TFlops computing power on killer 3-graphics card system.  (2500x original Cray)

  • Unreal engine and DX11

  • All of Windows 8 is built hardware accelerated graphics
  • Only 1 pixel of chrome around the outside of apps
  • Touch working across wide variety of systems
  • If a screen can run Windows 7, it can automatically run Windows 8

  • 1366 x 768 – can do side-by-side in Metro
  • Sensor API in Win 8

  • NFC (Near Field Communication) built-in (sensor), to recognize objects
  • HD web cam app

  • Win 8 tablet with 3G

  • Resume from Sleep as fast as you can open the lid
  • Thin laptops

  • PC is mostly battery

  • Samsung table PC – 5,000 in warehouse

  • Everyone at BUILD gets one of these
  • “Samsung Windows Developer Preview PC”

  • 2nd generation Core i5
  • Dual monitor
  • 11.6″ diagonal
  • Loaded with Developer Preview of Windows 8
  • Comes with tools, apps

  • Win 8 smaller/faster on widest range of hardware
  • Windows 8 on “professional platform”

  • New Task Manager

  • Apps go into Suspended state when you’re not looking at them

  • New Startup mods in Task Manager
  • Services tab
  • Run command line tool to make current set of settings a baseline for restore
  • Standard performance benchmarks; run suites of tests; compare over machines or over time
  • Remote Desktop

  • Touch enabling on remote session
  • Hyper-V, can run on Windows

  • VHDs, can mount as drives
  • New ribbon in Windows Explorer; new Up button

  • Desktop background can span multiple monitors
  • Can customize taskbar for each monitor separately – i.e. show icons only for apps on that monitor

  • Swap monitor, e.g. run Metro on one monitor, app on another
  • Type “cmd” in Metro, search opens automatically, shows you cmd.exe

  • Weather app

  • IE10 in Windows 8

  • All the normal keyboard/mouse works as usual
  • Can open app in either Metro panel or with normal Windows desktop frame
  • Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 3
  • Mulit-touch in IE10

  • Magnifier

  • Ease of Access – can make everything bigger
  • Thumb-by-Thumb keyboard layout

  • Ink / Pen

  • All personal settings roam

BUILD Conference Notes #2 – Keynote, part II – Building Applications

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BUILD conference keynote.  13 Sep 2011, 11:30AM CST.

  • Today

  • Windows 8 platform for Metro apps

  • Windows kernel – brought forward – robust, scalable
  • Windows Runtime – Win RT – APIs
  • WinRT – over 1800 objects
  • Application Model – natively built into Windows; all native code
  • Is .NET Framework gone?  Where does it live in this picture?
  • You pick the language that you want to use
  • Antoine Leblond – building apps

  • New Project, pick language

  • Templates are fully-functioning metro-style apps

  • Adding some HTML5 elements

  • Writing some code (Javascript)

  • Run the app – browser launches

  • Ugh, back to procedural code.  Step backwards, if you talk to a XAML developer

  • Sharing to social network

  • Blend 5 has support for HTML5

  • Using new CSS layout Grid

  • Previewing app at different resolutions and screen orientations

  • 58 lines of code for basic little HTML5 app

  • Packaging app into app store

  • Set price for your app

  • Built-in licensing model, including trialware option
  • App certification process.  Shows you where your app is in the process

  • Technical Compliance – developers can run tests in advance using MS-supplied tools
  • App Store, Spotlight section

  • Games in App Store

  • App Store is itself a metro-style HTML5 app
  • Steven is excited

  • App listing page in App Store

  • What about Win32 apps?
  • Start screen can list Win32 apps as well (e.g. Quicken)

  • Developers are NOT forced to use new Microsoft licensing model
  • Old apps can just be listed in App Store
  • XAML – where does it fit in?
  • Silverlight apps can run in new browser in Windows 8
  • Works the same way as in Windows 7, but not Metro app
  • Converting Silverlight app into Metro-style app
  • Converting from Silverlight environment to Windows 8 – only requires a handful of changes (e.g. namespaces)
  • Ported Silverlight now allows touch, full Metro app.  But it’s still XAML.

  • Change view in XAML to Windows 8 GridView.  Still XAML.
  • And can connect to Search Charm in Windows 8
  • We now can run Silverlight app with new Windows 8 grid view

  • New APIs/tools to build Metro apps
  • Rapid/scalable development
  • Your choice of languages and development tools
  • Apps automatically run on all the hardware that Windows 8 supports

BUILD Conference Notes #1 – Keynote, part I – User Experience

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BUILD conference keynote.  13 Sep 2011, 11AM CST.

Prior to start of keynote, live stream wanders through the crowd.

  • Tagline – “Do what you’ve always imagined”


  • Steven Sinofsky

  • Launching Windows 8 today
  • Over 450,000,000 copies of Windows 7 sold
  • Windows 7 consumer usage is now greater than Windows XP usage
  • Over 1500 product changes to Windows 7 since RTM
  • IE9 – gave us hardware acceleration; showed that HW acceleration does matter for browsing
  • Over 542,000,000 users of Windows Live
  • IE9 + Windows Live = foundational elements of Windows 8

  • Touch – will become a huge part of interaction
  • Once you’ve used Touch on PC with Windows 8, you’ll want it on all devices
  • Mobility – you want devices that you can use while carrying around
  • Developers want more connectivity between users
  • Services are intrinsic part of all software
  • Windows 8 is at Developer Preview stage
  • Everything great in Windows 7 – even better in Windows 8
  • Everything that runs on 7 runs on 8
  • Full compatibility from Windows 7 to Windows 8
  • Goal of Windows 8 is to reimagine Windows, from the chip set on up to the user experience
  • E.g. Windows 8 running on ARM

  • Windows 8 can run on new hardware, as well as ARM and x86
  • Demo #1 – user experience
  • Demo #2 – Building metro style platform and tools
  • Demo #3 – hardware platform, range of form factors
  • Demo #4 – how everything connects to cloud-based services with Windows Live
  • Over 100 sessions at BUILD
  • Fundamental performance gains
  • Small Lenovo Netbook – 1GB memory, Atom processor.  It’s now running Windows 8
  • On Windows 7, 404MB, 32 processes
  • On Windows 8, uses 281MB memory, 29 processes
  • Better performance on Windows 8, using the same hardware
  • Showing off User Experience – Julie Larson Green, Corp VP of Windows Management

  • Lock screen

  • Login screen

  • Start screen

  • Start Screen is not just a launching.  Also provides notifications, gadgets, etc.
  • Dragging tiles around

  • Pinch to zoom out and see everything

  • Onscreen keyboard

  • Control Panel

  • Games group

  • News reader

  • App settings

  • Docking apps

  • IE9 in Metro, chromeless  (“chrome-free”, ha-ha)

  • Swipe to get app bar with IE options

  • Use Touch to select-drag text

  • “Charms”

  • Spell-checking throughout Windows 8
  • Searching applications

  • Playing music

  • Pictures

  • Photo Fedr – shows photos from the cloud

  • Tweet@rama

  • On tablet (ARM-based machine running Windows 8)

  • Fast / fluid user experience
  • Applications are immersive and full-screen
  • Touch-first; keyboard/mouse works just as well
  • Web of apps, working together – apps know about each other; work together
  • On various hardware platforms

Notes on Office 365 Launch

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Office 365 launch.  28 Jun 2011.  Ballmer introducing it, plus a couple demos.

  • Ballmer introducing Office 365
  • Office + Cloud = Collaboration
  • “Office meets the cloud”
  • Office 365 being announced today
  • Collaboration scenarios, target to small businesses

  • Accessing Office 365 using mobile devices, e.g. Windows Phone 7

  • Real-time collaboration–as one user updates, other user sees changes immediately
  • Outlook in Office 365

  • Online Meeting button – automatically sets up online meeting/conference

  • Realtime collaboration in whiteboard

  • Collaboration using SharePoint
  • New SharePoint design surfaces, with Ribbon

  • Service plans for Office 365 – monthly subscription, or connecting existing Office apps to Office 365 service
  • Touting their SLA, but no numbers
  • Example of company planning to host all their documents in Office365
  • $100k/yr savings for sample company
  • Touting – improve collaboration between offices
  • “Global partner ecosystem” – partnering with various partners that already provide SLAs
  • Partner can package Office365 with services that partners already provide to small businesses
  • Our friend Steve

  • “Bring benefits of Office to the cloud”