InfoQ Homepage Windows 8 Content on InfoQ
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Windows 8 ARM Marches Forward
Reports indicate that Windows 8 for ARM is now stable and headed for developers in February.
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Introducing Windows New File System: ReFS
For the first time since 1993 Microsoft is posed to offer a new file system architecture. ReFS or Resilient File System is designed to both improve reliability and as a chance to drop obsolete features offered by NTFS.
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Universal Password Storage in Windows 8
Furthering their commitment to ubiquitous access, Windows 8 plans on offering universal password management. Windows 8 credential storage is intended to tie all other usernames names and password into a single account that will travel with the user. And this feature will be usable from all applications.
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Windows Store Requires Processor Types to Be Treated Equally
Microsoft has released the certification requirements for Metro style apps sold at the Windows Store. They range from technical specifications to strict controls on content. Not even processor types can be discriminated against.
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Silverlight Has Had a Bumpy Road. Will It Have a Smooth Transition to WinRT?
Microsoft had a great vision for Silverlight, a framework and a set of tools that would dominate the web development landscape, but it fell short of that. There are rumors there won’t be any Silverlight 6. If that happens, how easy is for the Silverlight developer to transition to WinRT? Some numbers show that it is pretty easy.
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A Standardized Printing UI for Windows 8
Windows 8 Metro is bringing with it a lot of changes and printing is no exception. Building upon the charm concept, there is a new API and extendable user interface for printing. This API is available for both XAML and JavaScript-based applications.
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Windows Server 8 Marks Shift Towards GUI-Less Future
Microsoft has alerted Windows Server developers and administrators that the platform's future will be one in which the traditional GUI applications will no longer be supported. The Server Core installation option, originally debuting in Windows Server 2008, will become the preferred installation option for Windows Server 8.
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There Will Be No Metro UI for Mono
Miguel de Icaza said that Xamarin won’t port Metro to other platforms, one of the reasons being Linux’ failure on the desktop. .NET developers interested in writing cross platform apps will be able to do so using Mono for the business code and rewriting the UI code for each platform.
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Design Details of the Windows Runtime
The Windows Runtime (WinRT) was created to provide a fluid and secure application experience on Windows. WinRT was influenced by both .NET, C++ and JavaScript. WinRT does not replace the CLR or Win32, but rather provides unified support for applications written in different languages to run on Windows using the new Metro UI.
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Designing Loosely Coupled Metro Applications with URIs
Protocols allow applications to launch other applications using URIs much as you would launch a website. This allows you to build a collection of small work-flow centric applications that work together seamlessly.
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Windows Azure News: Support for Windows 8, SDK 1.5, Storage Replication and Others
Microsoft has announced at the BUILD conference a number of new tools for developing applications that interact with the cloud: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8, Windows Azure SDK 1.5, Windows Azure Marketplace, Replication for Windows Azure Storage, Service Bus September Release, and Windows Azure Service Management API.
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Microsoft has Abandoned Silverlight and All Other Plugins in Metro IE
Though it has been hard, we have been trying to avoid reporting on rumors about the death of Silverlight for quite some time. As in all things, rumors tend to be exaggerated or out-right false. Unfortunately the end of Silverlight is no rumor; if Microsoft doesn’t change course it, as well as Flash and other plugin technologies, will be effectively unusable when Windows 8 is released.
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C++ Component Extensions: The New Face of COM
COM Programming is alive and well on the Windows platform and a new variant of C++ makes it much more approachable. Known as C++ Component Extensions, this new language was used to create the new Windows runtime, WinRT.
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Build Sessions to Watch For
With 274 sessions at the //Build/ conference it is hard to predict which are going to be important and which are just filler. Here is a rundown of the sessions we think are going to be important to enterprise developers.
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WinRT: An Object Orientated Replacement for Win32
WinRT is a modern OS-level API that is built upon the Windows kernel. It isn’t just a layer on top of Win32, it is a replacement for it. Built with Object Orientated concepts such as a unified type systems and reflection, it is equally usable from C++, .NET, and dynamic languages such as JavaScript.