Location: The Elephant & Wheelbarrow
94-96 Bourke Street, Melbourne
When: Jan 25th 6:30pm

http://www.nerddinner.com/5288

Register here: http://sddn-sep-2011.eventbrite.com/
Date: Tue 27 Sep
Time: 5:30 networking & pizza. 6pm presentations start

A tour around Windows 8 – David Burela
Windows 8 has been announced to the public and is being branded as “Windows reimagined”. This introductory session will show some of the new features coming with Windows 8.
A touch first interface, user account syncing via the cloud, “charms”, app to app data sharing, and the ability to use a picture password to log into windows will all be demonstrated.

Getting started with Windows 8 development – David Burela
So you’ve heard that Windows 8 has a new way of applications known as “Metro styled immersive apps”, but what does this actually mean? What is WinRT? Is Microsoft really making developers use HTML5 to create desktop apps? What about your previous investments in Silverlight?
Join David Burela as he helps clarify what the new programming model is and what impact it will have on you. Explanations of WinRT and how to create basic applications will be shown.

• Windows Server 8 Developer preview released. Available for download
• Windows Server 8 “is the most ambitious server release since Server 2000”. Lots of streamlined features for multiplex NICs, virtualisation, storage, etc.
• Visual Studio 11 developer preview Web installer here: http://static.withinwindows.com/files/uploads/2011/09/en_visual_studio_11_developer_preview_web_installer_x86_x64_735607.exe
• TFS as a Service, hosted on Azure https://tfspreview.com/
• ASP.NET MVC4 developer preview http://haacked.com/archive/2011/09/14/asp-net-mvc-4-developer-preview-released.aspx
• .Net framework 4.5 developer preview also available for download
• The async framework is built into the Visual Studio 11 preview
• Can select a HTML DOM element, and visual studio will show you the code that generated it
• ASP.Net is smart enough to combine the .css files and run minification on combined file
• Visual Studio productivity tools is now built into Visual Studio 2011

Articles

• Mary Jo foley on Windows Server 8 details http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-server-8-taking-the-cloud-to-the-operating-system/10643
• highlights of Server 8 http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/203199/windows-server-8-highlights-upcoming-server-os

Thoughts:

If you plan on watching it yourself, skip all the sections with Satya on stage. The bulk of the content is in the first sections with Scott Gutherie & Jason Zander. And then the preview of the new Server 8 stuff. The rest of the keynote after that is lots of talk with nothing said.
Skip to the end when Ballmer makes an appearance and talks about the Windows developer ecosystem.

The keynote

Satya comes on stage – President of windows server & tools

Going to talk about the "backend windows platform. Windows Server 8, Azure & Visual Studio
Yesterday they talked a lot about connected services. All of the apps deployed to Win 8 are constantlyhitting services in the cloud
This means web back ends need to be able to scale (Azure)
Identity federation is important
Hybrid infrastructure, Windows Server 8 + Azure…

Just A LOT of waffle manager speak on why services and scale are important

Jason Zander comes on stage. President of Visual Studio

Going to build a game that connects to cloud services

Demos the game by loading It up on the PC
Sends a game request to his friend
Friend is on a Windows Phone 7 and gets the game request
Plays the game together, with the game commands going through Azure

Going to show how he built it with Visual Studio.
Is just using Visual Studio 2010 for the Azure services

New Azure publish window to help with testing cylces

New profiling tools / advanced diagnostics

Opens Visual Studio 11 to show the Immersive app

Can search for code that is duplicated

Then shows a version of the game written in C++ and using directx

Can see models from within visual studio

Modifies the texture from the properties window

But the alpha blending isn’t working
Runs it in debug, and manually captures some frames to debug why
Then dives into the steps taken to draw the individual pixel

Jason zander comes back on stage

Being released are Visual Studio 11 dev preview
Windows Azure SDK 1.5
Windows Azure toolkit for Windows 8

Enhancements to messaging, data, asp.net, etc. for .net 4.5

But how does ALM come into this? (hint TFS)
Putting TFS into the cloud on Azure

Scott guthrie comes on stage

Going to walk through how to build an ASP.Net app that can hook into the same services that the game did.

Opens VS 11.
File -> project.
Creates a new MVC4 site

New default template

A lot of the same immersive app HTML dev tools work in asp.net pages also

Hovering over html, shows you the code that created it
Works in it/else statements, etc

He replaces the .CSS file to make it more like the tank game
But the site.css is gone, and only added 2 new .css files
ASP.Net is smart enough to combine the .css files and run minification on combined file

Adds a leaderboard page to the site
Just connects to a JSON service hosted on Azure
Uses the await keyword

The final site is ok. But it is built for desktop screen. Won’t look too good on a mobile device,.

Proceeds to create a mobile enabled version
He adds a jquery mobile NuGet package
Jquery mobile will be shipped with MVC 4

Due to it being MVC, he can just create a new mobile view and still have the model created the same way

He re-runs the site and it works fine on desktop. The original page still loads. But on mobile it looks a lot better

Next he wants to integrate chat support
Wants to use web sockets to do that.
Adds some methods so that people can join and leave the chat

Adds some jquery code so that it connects to the web socket

New web socket api in .net 4.5
Connects a console app to it and spams it with messages

There is a new visual studio menu to create the azure package. So now you can do it after you have a site running

Jason Zander comes back on stage

Going to talk about project management by using TFS
Is now a software as a service.

Product backlogs, can drag work items around

Satya back on stage

Announcing Windows Server 8 Developer preview
Took a lot of the learnings from Azure and bring them back into Server 8

UGH, Satya just waffles on for another 10 minutes with buzzword waffle. I am just tuning out again

Bryon Sauce on stage to talk about Windows Server 8

Going to focus on storage, networking and vitualisation

Traditionally used to take some very specialised skills to manage big storage file servers
No need for special RAID drives, etc.
He has 16 SSD drives connect configured as a JBOD. All managed by windows.

You don’t need a phd in storage. Just connect them all and add the role.
The files are shared with the new SMB2.2 protocol
NIC can now be multiplexed and combined together.
Demonstrates it by creating 2 virtual machines
Show the performance of a single 1Gb ethernet connection, vs. multiplexing many of them

Virtual machines have live migrations
Can move the executing host from one machine to another, as long as the VHD is in a shared place.
Now you can migrated the VHD to a different location

Under the covers it de-duplicates the data.
Multiple VHDs that are stored on the server wil be de-duplicated. Makes them go from multiple GBs each, to just a few KB each

Satya back on stage

*braces self for the Satya buzzword rant*

Going to focus on Azure now
Satya announce that you can build AND consume data *gasp*

Seriously, if you watch this feed later, just fast forward past any time he comes on stage
Summary: devs need to write a lot of code. Azure services help you now write it.

John Shewchuk comes on stage

Going to talk about Azure Identity, data market, etc.

Shows a demo application for a "travel site"
But the user needs to create a new account. But who wants to create "yet another account"?

Why not let users log in with their other credentials (google, facebook, etc)
The list of supported providers come from the Azure ACS (Access Control Service)

Windows 8 has a new credential vault.
With 3 lines of code you can support single sign on.
If the user has previously provided a credential, you can just sign them in

The credential vault is syncable.
So you sign in on your PC, then pick up your tablet. The credentials have been synced across, so the tablet just logs straight in.

All of the demos are available in the Windows Azure toolkit for windows 8 download

Satyr back on stage

Geo replication for data storage

Invites 2 Channel 9 guys on stage to demo Viper

Viper Smart start for your car. http://www.viper.com/
Allows you to locate, start, lock, unlock all from the cloud
Can get telemetry on your car

Behind the scenes it is using Azure table
Http REST calls, etc

CEO of West Coast Customs comes on stage

Microsoft & west coast customs are going to build the ULTIMATE car together.
Will be documented on the Discovery channel in December.
Heads up display, augmented reality, etc.

Satyr back on stage

Steve Ballmer comes on stage

Already been 500,000 downloads of Windows 8 in the last 24 hours
Lots of good buzz around Windows 8 already

Microsoft is trying to reimagine itself. Shifting its direction.
New hardware platforms, cloud services, new dev opportunities
They are still very early on in the transition to the cloud

Reimagining Windows
Windows at the centre, the other products pivot around it

Windows Server 8 is the most ambitious server release since Server 2000.
Lots of excitement about it in the IT pro sector

Windows Phone 7
Lots of technology is shared between phone and Windows now (XAML, DirectX, XNA, etc)

Office 365 is a dev opportunity. Extending Sharepoint, etc.
Extending Bing

Microsoft is in 7 businesses. Phone, pc, tablets, tv devices, cloud platform, productivity, search, ERP and CRM
Each of the businesses are moving to the cloud
Retooling everything to take it to the cloud

Is a time of unprecedented developer opportunity
Never been a better time to have software development as a skill

"There’s nothing on the planet that will ship 350 million units of anything (this year), other than Windows"

"it’s the day and age of the Microsoft developer"

• You can download the developer preview of Windows 8
  http://dev.windows.com/
  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/09/13/welcome-to-windows-8-the-developer-preview.aspx
• The confusion around HTML5, xaml and Jupiter is finally cleared up.
  The new immersive apps (full screen, metro style apps which are launched from the tile based interface) can be built in either C#/XAML or HTML5/JS. Under the covers it reflects into the WinRT APIs. Apps built like this will run on ANY Win8 machine (x86, ARM, etc)
  
  
• Silverlight & WPF are "legacy". They put it onto the slide for show. The Win8 xaml looks to be 90% compatible with Silverlight. Demos are shown where they take a Silverlight app, copy/paste the code into a new Win8 XAML app, and only a few namespaces need to be changed. A silverlight grid is then changed to use the native WinRT grid to make it touch enabled and "Metro-y"
• The Win8 XAML app is ported to Windows Phone 7 with only 1 line changed.
• New version of Visual Studio available to help build apps for Win 8 "Microsoft Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Developer Preview" (got to love Microsoft product names)
• Expression blend works for editing the HTML5/JS apps
• The native WinRT controls work in XAML and HTML5
• New windows 8 app store. Store & submission process VERY similar to Windows Phone 7. Can submit via Visual Studio
  Paul Thurrott: "Biggest point of Windows Store: Microsoft is NOT taking a 30 percent cut. It will take a ZERO percent cut."
• Win8 machines can be easily restored back to a "clean base image" that developer can specify. Keeps all files, just reverts apps. (Reset/Refresh)
• Windows Live application integration. Nice support for photos, calendar, mail, people. Very similar to Windows Phone 7 built in features.
  Windows user account settings Synced across PCs via the cloud (profile photo, etc)
• Win8 specs are the same as Win 7. Consumes less memory after startup.
  Boot times have been massively reduced. Cold boot demo shows the PC almost starting faster than the monitor can turn on.

Useful articles

• Brief analysis of Metro on Windows 8 by Long Zheng http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/an-analysis-of-metro-on-windows-8-developer-preview/
• Windows 8: 101 tips & tricks for the new start experience http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/windows-8-101-tips-tricks-for-new-start-experience/
• Summary of Metro vs. Desktop apps by Mary Jo Foley http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-developers-metro-is-your-future/10611
• Mary Jo Foley on "what we do & don’t know about WIn8" http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-windows-8-heres-what-we-now-know-and-dont/10608

Conference notes

Steven Sinofsky comes on stage

Today we are going to be talking about Windows 8
We are launching a new opportunity for developers. No matter what the size or shape of the PC.

Starts off by talking about Windows 7
Approaching 450mil copies of Win7 sold.
Win7 usage is FINALLY greater than WinXP
Delivered over 1,500 product changes to Win7 (through patches) since RTM

Form factors for PCs have been changing.
Win7 started delivering touch.
Steve thinks that once you start using touch in Win8, that you will want touch on EVERY PC you own.

"What is Windows 8?"
Everything that was great with Win7, they took that and made it "better"
"you get to build on top of all of that success of Windows 7, with Windows 8"
"Windows 8 reimagines what windows should be". In reference to quick boot, better touch, system on a chip.
Win8 reimagines what hardware windows can run on.
Everything they are showing today work on x86 and ARM

They are going to do 4 main demonstrations today

• Basics of starting windows, switching programs, etc.
• How to build Metro style applications from the ground up.
• What is the hardware platforms that Win8 can run on
• Then showing how all of it works and connects with "cloud based services" like Windows Live

They are going to have big session later on the day with deep dives into these features

To show off that Win8 is more efficient, he brings on stage a 3 year old netbook with 1GB of ram.
He first shows it with Win7 SP1 installed

And then demonstrates what the task manager looks like with Windows 8. A lot less memory usage

It is important to understand that everything they are showing is a part of windows. It is all built natively in windows, and not as "layers".

Steve invites Julie on stage – Corporate Vice President, Windows experience

Shows the new "lock screen"
Has all of the "at a glance" information
Next calendar appointment.
Battery level, messages, etc.

The new login screen
It is a "picture password" to save you from having to type passwords in a "touch centric" interface.
She touches her daughters nose, then the lemonade, then draws a line along the railing to log in.

The new start screen.
Live tiles EVERYWHERE!
Can pan to the left and right to see more tiles
Each tile represents an application.
Can see calendar, rss feed, paused music

The start screen is an integration/unification of all application functionality.
One place to integrate your applications in with.
Can drag tiles around (like WP7)

Can pinch zoom out to see all the groups quickly

New "users" section in the control panel

Immersive applications

Applications have a new menu bar along the bottom

System settings while inside an immersive application. Swipe from the right hand side

Multi tasking applications by docking them

IE10. Chromless viewing

IE10: Tabs

IE10: Frequent / pinned

IE10: text selection similar to how Windows Phone 7 does it

When in an application you have application "tasks" you can do, called "Charms"

She clicks "share" and it then shows all the applications that support that function

The content that she had selected, has been copied into the "Friend Send" application.
Spellchecking is integrated into windows, so EVERY application gets it

Built in search. Can search inside applications or bing

Earlier in the demo she changed her user profile.
They picked up another PC, and showed that ALL of the changes that she’d made to her profile (changed her user pic, etc) was synced across to the other PCs on stage!

Julie leaves. Steve back on stage

All the apps that you can create are "Metro and full screen". These are the "immersive apps"
When you add applications to your PC, your machine will be getting "richer and richer" as the apps add their functionality to the machine (share, etc.)

How apps are to be built.

Standard desktop apps can be built with the traditional stack.
The new Metro style apps let you choose the development platform you want to use.
All of the fundamentals are built into the kernel. (multitasking, memory management, etc.)

Windows Runtime (WinRT) 18,000 objects for you to use. Use of "objects" here means modern C++. Trumps Win32′s C API.
The WinRT APIs are the new low level libraries built into windows. All the languages on top reflect onto WinRT to invoke them.

Steve invites Antoine Lebond on stage to build an app. Senior Vice president of Windows app store

Opens Visual Studio Express 11

Can select which language you want. Under the covers it is all the same as they all reflect into WinRT

Writing an app with HTML5/JS

The application template has a CSS file to define the styles, etc

Adds some "HTML5 code". That would also run in a web browser.
The code lets him draw lines in a canvas

Adds a javascript click event to the button. Wants it to display a file picker dialog.
Under the covers it is a native control, but Javascript can call into it

Adds functionality to integrate "share" into his application, so that other apps can share files into it. So that you can retrieve photos from Facebook.
The entire app is 58 lines of code

Expression blend

He then opens the application in Expression blend.

Prebuilt controls with "metro looks"
The same set of controls work with XAML based applications

The "app bar" is just a DIV in the HTML application
Using the CSS layouts with grids, etc. allow all of the additional system features. Like screen orientation.
Expression blend allows you to see what your app looks like with different screen resolutions, orientations, etc.

Windows Store

Now that the application is built, he wants to upload it to the Windows store.
There is a menu built into Visual Studio that lets you upload directly to the store

He then loads the store to show one that he submitted earlier.
It looks a lot like the Windows Phone 7 store

(Note: Notice that there are Windows Phone 7 games in the games store!)

What about Win32 apps?
Win32 apps are able to be listed in the store. An example is Quicken

XAML based applications

Moves onto talking about XAML
He took a sample Silverlight app and compiled it on Windows 8.

IE10 launches. As it is still just a Silverlight app

He then takes the app and creates a Windows 8 XAML based app.
He pastes it all into Visual Studio and it almost works without any modifications.
He just needs to make some namespace changes and it all works.
Win8 has a LOT richer networking functionality than Silverlight has.

The application does not look "Metro"
So he modifies the grid to use the native WinRT grid instead

He then enables the charms through a few lines of code

This is all mostly compatible with Windows Phone 7.
Took all of the code, changed 1 line of code, and it compiled and worked

Steve comes back on stage

If you build your app in C#/XAML or HTML5/JS, then it will run on ALL hardware that Windows 8 supports
If you want to write native code…. You can… they will help you cross compile it.
Every Windows 8 PC is your target customer (Desktops, laptops, netbooks, slates, etc.)

Steve invites Michael Angiulo – Windows ecosystem

Note: there are lots of cool hardware demos given, like per pixel touch. But they don’t translate well when written down, so were mostly skipped in there notes)

Win8 supports the widest range of hardware.
UEFI helps windows boot quickly
A cold boot takes less than 8 seconds. The demo they showed, it almost booted quicker than the monitor could turn on.

Win8 has a LOT lower power requirements for SOC (System On a Chip). There is a new super low powered state that leaves the network connected, and instantly turns on.
There are now ARM SOC systems, and a new Intel Atom based SOC.
All the application transitions, transforms, etc. are all hardware accelerated

Once you go 1024×768 resolution, you can have metro apps run
Once you get up to 1366 then you can dock

Has a new "sensor fusion" api that combines all of the sensors together. Takes 3 lines of code

NFC (Near Field Communication) lets you tap computers or cards to share data. He taps a BUILD card onto his PC, and it launches the BUILD website.

Built in functionality for 3G connectivity

New "Ultra books" have desktop chipsets in it. But are thin


http://www.flickr.com/photos/longzheng/6144647726/sizes/z/in/photostream/

It is thinner than the ethernet & VGA ports. They had to let those 2 ports bump out
Machines are now mostly batteries

Every attendee gets a developer tablet PC
More details about the device can be found at http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110914/build-attendees-take-home-samsung-windows-developer-preview-pcslate/
http://www.winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-developer-preview-samsung-700t-photo-gallery-140547

Steve back on stage, giving a demo of how a dev can use win8 day to day

No more constant popup nagging about restarting for security patches

Task manager

Immersive apps can be put into a suspended state where they don’t take up any CPU cycles (sounds like Windows Phone 7 lifecycle. Except they stay in memory)

Refresh / reset

Ability to clean a system and restore it back to a clean state.

Can create a baseline for your PC after you have installed Visual Studio, etc. Then you can restore your PC to that state easily.

Can create performance benchmarks. Then you can watch the health of your PC over time and see if it degrades.

Hyper-V is now built into Windows 8

Remote desktop

Remote desktop allows all of the touch centric interaction. Steve was able to easily pan around the new tile based start screen with the touch screen on the tablet, to control the remote desktop

Demonstrated how a tablet could remote desktop into a desktop.

Personally this excites me. You can take your new Win8 tablet around with you, and easily remote into your home PC and interact with it directly with your built in 3G connections. With all the touch features working.

Multi monitor support

Desktop backgrounds can now span over multiple monitors

New multi monitor support for the task bar.
You can make it so that the taskbar on each monitor just shows the apps that are on that monitor

Typing in the live tile view, automatically brings up search

Application bar

You can run IE10 chromeless in an "immersive app" but you can also run it in a standard window

New accessibility options

Different keyboard layouts

Sync

Personal settings Syncing. If you log into your windows 8 PC with a Windows Live account, then your account settings can be synced.

Steve invites Chris Jones on stage to talk about Cloud based services with windows 8 & Windows Live

They rewrote all the Live applications to have a metro experience for Windows 8
Once you sign in with your LiveId, then it is all integrated in

Live Mail

Written in HTML 5 and Javascript.

Calendar

Written in HTML5 + JS
Can see multiple calendars that are shared with you

People

Photos

Written in HTML5 + JS
Is like Windows Phone 7, brings in all of the services that you have linked in to your LiveId

Sky Drive

Every Win8 user has a skydrive for cloud storage.

Connect your PCs together via live

You can browse the photos from another of your PCs, in another location, behind firewalls, directly from within the application. Live does some funky network routing for you.

Can go and browse all of the files on your remote PC via skydrive.com in a web browser

Steve back on stage

Driven by "quality and not by date".

No activation. Just download and install

Early years:

My geek origin story definitely starts at school. My school was very forward thinking and every student was given an apple laptop, with a 4 grey scale screen! During school hours I’d be making Hypercard animations and games. I also got started with writing Quake 2 and halflife mods for fun and eventually moving on to homebrew on the SEGA Dreamcast. In my later school years I would experiment more and more with the school’s computers and networks. Every time they put up new restrictions, or installed new software like “Mac Admin”, it would only take me a few days before I was able to circumvent them. I was sent to the high school office on more than one occasion for this, and nearly expelled twice. This is also the origin of my gamer tag: xp3ll3d.

Those early years of “Burela vs. the admins” is probably what made me very vocal about computer freedoms such as internet filters (and also why I don’t get along with corporate IT in organisations very well).

University years:

I’ve always been a geek at heart, and the need to spread the knowledge has always been with me. University was a brilliant place to be who you want to be. This was definitely the origin of my love for participating in the developer community as I ended up running a lot of community events for geeks during these years.

It started off with me being nominated to be president of the University’s “school of computing society”, I found I had a knack for organising people and events and it all snowballed from there.

During one university year I:

• Was president of the http://www.tucs.org.au.
• Was a Microsoft Student partner https://www.microsoftstudentpartners.com/
• Became a student ambassador to the Australian Computer Society http://www.acs.org.au/.
• Took over the Hobart .Net User Group http://hdnug.wordpress.com/.
• Was then invited to be apart of ‘Young Tassie Scientists’ which went around promoting science & technology to primary school students http://www.youngtassiescientists.com/2006/scientists.html.
• etc.

This resulted in me becoming a Tasmanian finalist for “Young Australian of the Year” http://www.australianoftheyear.org.au/pages/page265.asp.

Because of those early origins as a community geek, to this day the early I am still running community events and participating every chance I get!

Summary

• Windows 8 supports applications being built in C# / XAML / VB.Net / C++ / HTML+JS.
• The new UI framework ‘Jupiter’ allows applications to be written in your language of choice. This is similar to how the .Net framework allowed people to code against the framework in their language of choice.
• Jupiter seems to be a ‘Next generation’ XAML based framework
• I’m more excited about the new possibilities coming in the new Jupiter XAML programming model than the misconception that HTML+JS is the only way to create apps.

History

In the last few weeks, the internet has been in frenzy over the newly released demo video of Windows 8. In the video there is only mention of the new “Immersive applications” being created in a mixture of HTML + Javascript. People took this as more evidence that WPF & Silverlight are dead. Which hasn’t helped after the lack of attention which caused events like Silverlight Firestarter to be needed, or the http://FixWPF.org movement. It also doesn’t help when Microsoft have remained tight lipped even after an outcry from developers. The famous thread on the Silverlight forums has seen over 13,000,000 views. Which is more than the forums usually see in a single month.

The windows 8 UI demo video

Digging into the Windows 8 leak

A few people have been digging into the Windows 8 Milestone 3 leak and peeking into the UI framework and .dlls that exist. The most vocal of these have been @JoseFajardo and people in this forum thread http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak

What people have found so far is that while yes it is possible to create applications using HTML + Javascript, there is a whole new framework laying underneath that can be programmed against by almost any language / framework.

The first piece of the puzzle comes from the new application model for creating applications. There are a number of codenames here that need to be sorted out

• DirectUI: The underlying framework that creates, draws the visual elements on the screen.
• Jupiter: The new packaging format of applications on Windows 8. Allows apps to be written in language of choice.
• Immersive applications: Current theory is that these are apps that execute within the ‘new shell’ in windows 8. And are aware of being split paned and resized. Like was shown with the RSS feed reader.

Direct UI

Direct UI has been around since Windows Vista days. Previous is seemed to be focused around UI basics for the OS such as theming app windows in the ‘new vista style’ vs. classic theming in WinXP. http://blog.vistastylebuilder.com/?tag=directui

Now it seems that Direct UI is being overhauled to have additional functionality to load XAML applications, new animations, etc.

Xaml loader

http://i54.tinypic.com/330fv43.png
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26357-Findings-in-M3-Leak-discussion-and-questions?p=421391&highlight=silverlight#post421391

Evidence of new animation properties

http://pastebin.com/S1XtkQid

Jupiter

interesting rumor fact : WP8 rumored to be codenamed Apollo, and Apollo is the son of Jupiter Jupiter being the new UI framework of Win8
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/78826337250451457

…Jupiter is shaping up to be a very very lean SL/WPF implementation
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/79423110755008512

…your SL/WPF skills will be invaluable for DirectUI apps, and you get a new framework that is seriously lean!!!
http://twitter.com/#!/josefajardo/status/79425349938712577

DirectUI.dll is basically Silverlight (agcore.dll) ported to Windows/WinRT
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=441627#post441627

Jose Fajardo has been a great source of information on Windows 8 leaks. From information he has dug up, as well as information on the forums, it seems that the new Jupiter programming API is a mashup between WPF & Silverlight.

As far as I can see, Jupiter is not Silverlight nor WPF, its another kind of framework that kinda similar or compatible to Silverlight/WPF code.
So Sinofsky is right, that ‘Silverlight’, as we know it, is still a Browser/Desktop thing.
What he didn’t say is, the ‘Jupiter’ framework will enable you to leverage your Silverlight/.NET skills to write Immersive (or desktop) applications in XAML/C#/VB/C++, its very very similar, but not exactly the same thing.
The situation is similar to the relationship of Silverlight and WPF and Silverlight for Phone, you need to create different project in VS, then you can write very similar UI/code, even sharing most of your portable code in a common library, but the underlying technology are still very different.
https://channel9.msdn.com/Forums/Coffeehouse/Jupiter/e7960a6237024c1598639efc00d8e394

While the new Jupiter programming model may not be a direct continuation of WPF or Silverlight it does seem to have a lot of code from both technologies. Jupiter instead seems to be a ‘Next generation’ XAML based framework. A framework that can be targeted against by all main current languages used by the typical .Net developer (C#, HTML, etc)

*speculation* This could be because of the calls from the development community to make WPF & Silverlight more aligned. Perhaps we’ll see an updated ‘Silverlight’ framework when Windows Phone 8 is released that is compatible with Jupiter.

Creating applications with Jupiter

As further evidence that Jupiter applications can be created with your language of choice, and that it has roots in Silverlight, here are some examples of how to create applications.

C# & XAML

Here is an example of using C# to invoke a new Jupiter based application. The really interesting thing to notice here is that the loading screen has the iconic Silverlight loading animation!

http://xs.to/photo/4437
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=444628&viewfull=1#post444628

Here is a second example where they were able to get XAML content to load within a Jupiter application

http://c592786.r86.cf2.rackcdn.com/anonym/2011/06/11/5196.png
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=445016&viewfull=1#post445016

*update* Naive User was able to get simple databinding working

http://c592786.r86.cf2.rackcdn.com/anonym/2011/06/14/9126.png
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=446590&viewfull=1#post446590

C++

Example of an application being created in C++ with a single call to CreateImmersiveWindowFunc

http://xs.to/photo/3852
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=444200&viewfull=1#post444200

HTML + Javascript

There are some initial attempts at getting HTML working with the new frameworks. The apps and manifests have been created, but a few more hooks may be required to get a fully working version

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=446552&viewfull=1#post446552

There are mentions that you can hooks into Direct UI through the COM hooks from Javascript. And also that you may be able to use Direct UI XAML + Javascript. Similar to how Silverlight was done in the original Silverlight version 1.

Immersive applications

There is some confusion over the distinction between a “Jupiter app” and an “Immersive app”. Immersive apps require a call to CreateImmersiveWindow and can make calls to the new immersive namespace

http://c592786.r86.cf2.rackcdn.com/anonym/2011/06/13/6941.PNG

Immersive applications are ones that were shown to live inside of the new Windows 8 shell. Examples of functions that an immersive app can do can be seen with the RSS reader app. When it was docked and resized, it knew to display its data in a different format.

• Classic / Jupiter applications will run in the ‘classic windows’ desktop view that was seen when they fired up excel
• Immersive applications will be embedded within the new shell

Will this work for existing applications?

There is evidence that existing applications can be wrapped up in the new packaging format.

WindowsStore is basically written in C++ and leverages Windows Runtime. HTML5/JavaScript is just a (very very) thin layer for the interface
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-(7955)-Findings-in-M3-Leak?p=442463&viewfull=1#post442463

So while existing applications may not run with the new Direct UI framework, it seems they will still be able to be packaged and distributed through the Windows 8 App store. This was discovered by Long Zheng a few months ago.

The AppX format is universal enough so it appears to work for everything from native Win32 applications to framework-based applications (WPF, Silverlight) and even *gasp* web applications. Games are also supported.
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20110405/first-look-at-the-future-of-application-deployment-on-windows-8-appx/

Conclusion

While Microsoft only showed off the HTML hooks into Jupiter, I am a LOT more excited about the upcoming XAML based framework.

If you are an existing WPF, Silverlight or Windows Phone 7 developer, it seems that your XAML based skills will carry across fine to the new development framework on Windows 8.

My thoughts are that Microsoft announced that applications can be created in HTML in the same way that they announced it in WindowsXP with active desktop, and then again in Vista with “HTML based sidebar gadgets”. It was a way of saying “hey you can use your existing web skills to create applications on Windows 8.
And that Microsoft plans on unveiling the new Jupiter SL/WPF hybrid framework for all of the “Real developers” at BUILD in 3 months.

The second session was Steve Godbold talking about continuous delivery and how to improve your process of delivering software
We’ve heard the story of Flickr’s multiple production releases in the same day. It sounds like a lofty goal, which may be attainable via the right charms, chants and dance moves done at the stroke of midnight on the second Tuesday of April. In this session Steve Godbold will walk you through what constitutes continuous delivery and just how you can work your way towards a more pleasant release experience.

Unfortunately standard custom validators that you put into a .shared.cs file will not work. As any database logic that you wrote, while working on the domain service side, would not be able to compile on the Silverlight side.

After a LOT of research,  my team came across this blog post by Nikhil Kothari (@nikhilk) that describes how you can write custom validation code that is ONLY executed server side. This allows you to write code that access databases, etc. that cannot be executed client side.

Nikhil also then goes into more details on how you can get client side UI notifications, by adding Asynchronous Validation to the UI.

Here is the link to Nikhil’s blog post http://www.nikhilk.net/RIA-Services-Validation.aspx

The talk I put together was titled “New development workflow”. In it I decided to explore and demonstrate a new way you could build a website using newer tools & methodologies. Here is the blurb:

In the last few years there have been a number of new technologies released, which when used together can greatly simplify a developer’s life. For this session, I explore what kind of workflow we could create for the modern .Net developer. The session will show an end to end example of creating a new project: Modern ways of using source control, managing assemblies, testing, pushing to the cloud, etc.

The order of things demonstrated in the video are:

• Overview of the ‘current way’ people develop software
• Overview of how it could be done with newer tools
• What is DVCS
• How to use Mercurial with TortoiseHg
• Create a new ASP.Net MVC3 HTML5 semantic app
• The evolution of going from a coupled data service to using IoC/DI (Inversion of Control / Dependency Injection)
• What is NuGet
• Using NuGet to install Ninject to enable DI throughout the MVC3 framework
• Using NuGet to install nSubstite to create mocks to enable unit testing
• Hosting source code in http://BitBucket.org
• Hosting the application in http://AppHarbor.com
• Enabling continuous deployment to AppHarbor

The slides for my talk can be found here DDDMelb – New development workflow slides

Here are the updated slides from the DDDSydney talk: DDD Sydney – New development workflow slides

Introduction Data binding in WPF seems to be much like skinning a cat (although hopefully a lot less painful… for the cat at least), there is usually more than one way of achieving the result you want.   The purpose of this blog is to quickly detail some of the many ways you can bind data to a WPF application. If you want to go into more detail about the concepts behind WPF data binding and it’s inner workings here are a couple of great articles; … Read More

via RoMiller.com