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Windows 8 Roundup
There has been no shortage of Windows 8 news today. MrSeb writes: "Earlier this morning, at the Build Windows conference in Anaheim, California, Microsoft made it patently clear that 'To the cloud!' is not merely a throwaway phrase: it is the entire future of the company. Every single one of Microsoft's services, platforms, and form factors will now begin its hasty, leave-no-prisoners-behind transition to the always-on, internet-connected cloud." netbuzz pointed out that even the famous Blue Screen of Death will get a new look. Lastly mikejuk writes: "While everyone else is looking at the surface detail of Windows 8 there are some deep changes going on. Perhaps the biggest is that Metro now provides an alternative environment that doesn't use the age old Win32 API. This means no more overlapping windows — yes Metro really does take the windows out of Windows."
So we're back to Windows 1.0 with no overlapping windows? How am I suppose to quickly look at two open applications? or drag and drop items?
That's what most people said about XP when Vista was on the horizon.
So here's what everyone is hearing in the Windows world about Win8: "We're changing Windows. A lot. It's gonna look completely different. It's gonna act completely different. A lot of the things you do today probably need to be thought about differently".
Here's how IT management is interpreting that: "We might completely break Windows again. A lot. It's gonna confuse users. It's gonna make them less productive. Don't even think about using this product in a business environment without considering all of the extra support they're going to need."
Guess what? Based on what I've already seen, there's no way I'm even bringing this product into our environment for even a test basis until it's been out for over a year. If we're gonna have to completely retrain users how to do something, we're going to consider other things. That new Motorola Bionic with it's full screen dock and keyboard is looking more and more like something I want to own.
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http://i.imgur.com/vd2WA.jpg
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
True, I might have to look at it again around Windows 9 or 10.
Windows X with Magic Mouse. Think Differentlier.
Because Microsoft is changing the default behaviour in the new product. And the new default behaviour will be LESS effective for the users of the traditional Windows systems (desktops and laptops).
Here's an idea. Why not leave the DEFAULT behaviour as it is already and add a new OPTION to change it to the tablet-friendly format for those who want it that way?
And most of those people stayed with XP till Windows7 came out... A lot of businesses did the same thing, simply stayed on XP and skipped Vista entirely. At work we are already making plans to skip Windows 8 unless Microsoft gives us ability to make our workstations more business oriented rather then having them look like a bunch of touchscreen home PC's.
and I thought Microsoft was irrelevant before.
Ah, the internet, where 90% market share means you just don't matter.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
The problem is that cloud computing tantamount to slavery computing, turning users into slaves. It takes away all control and concentrates it in the hands of large corporations.
I'm all for ubiqutous computing, but unless I own and control all of the devices I use, and the software running on them, what's the point?
I'm tired of being a slave. A slave to the dollar, a slave to the government, a slave to the company I need to work at to survive in this pitiful existence. I don't want some big corporation to take away my personal computing experience.
I don't see how people are so blind as to think cloud computing is an improvement.
> Windows 7 works just fine. It's the new XP - didn't you know?
It's sad, but you're probably right. Microsoft today is kind of like a rock star who's made so much cash, he's just going to be weird and do whatever the fsck he feels like doing from now on. If Microsoft is hyping "Metro" in an effort to generate developer excitement, they're having the exact opposite effect. Everyone *I* know is like, "WTF, has Microsoft gone completely batshit insane?"
It's almost like Microsoft's entire developer elite just hit their mid-40s, had a midlife crisis, realized they have enough cash to spend the rest of their lives coding for fun, retired en masse, and handed over the company to a marketing department that thinks making Windows look like a tablet UI so it can run phone apps better is somehow a good idea.
Vux - I completely agree. It's more the point that it forces you to. If you hit F3 to search, you're taken to the Metro search interface. You're now forced to pick one of their search "targets" and to use their interface. You can't even see your application as you're now in a full-screen Metro interface, so it's going to take at least three clicks to get back to your program (one in the lower left corner to bring up the Start screen, then one on Desktop to open the desktop "gadget", then one on your application).
If, heaven forbid, you use Internet Explorer (which sadly, many users still do as the default browser on their PCs), it's also now a full-screen metro "app". If in the above example, you followed search to a Wikipedia link, you're now in a full-screen IE session with your original application several clicks away (and several clicks to get back to your IE to make sure you read something correctly, etc).
I understand it's for tablets. That's great. But forcing it on desktop users as at present is asinine. I hope to be shown in beta that we have the option to not use Metro at all. That hasn't been mentioned yet. What we've been told is that we're going to have to "change the way you do a lot of things" and that we need to "interact with the screen" more. That suggests they are going to force this Metro crapware on top of everything.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Regarding the new improved BSOD: "After expressing emoticon-style sadness"
Windows catches up with 1980's mac.
Well, I guess it's a start.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I'm at the BUILD conference, and my impression is that Windows 8 will be very competitive. The re-imagining effort is sweeping, and touches everything from the back end to Consumer devices. The big news is that HTML 5 is now a "native" programming platform for the client UI. There are two JS libraries, a pure JS library that implements the new Metro look-and-feel (WinJS), and a Windows/JS bridge library that exposes the Windows API (and hence the Windows-controlled hardware such as the camera) in Javascript (WinRT). Tooling improvements include terrific new debugging scenarios and a major upgrade to Expression Blend to be able to edit HTML/CSS as well as XAML.
Basically, MS has taken the best ideas of the web development world, and leveraged them to massively improve the development experience for their next OS. If I wanted to write Windows-specific apps, Win8 is a huge improvement. It's an open question, however, whether people want to write Windows-specific apps as opposed to web-centric apps. Even then, Win8 will definitely shorten and simplify the transition from a web app to a Windows app.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
The article linked from TFA has got quite a few things regarding WinRT wrong. Point by point:
Windows Run Time, WinRT- a C++ object-oriented API.
It's not a C++ API. It's a COM-based API/ABI that can be accessed from any language that knows what a raw function pointer is. It's relatively easier to do that from C++, because COM vtables map nicely to C++ vtables. But WinRT ABI itself is intentionally designed to be projected to different languages, adapting along the way. C++ has its own projection, but so do .NET and JS.
Applications can choose to use either the old Win32 API or the new WinRT but not both.
Wrong. You can use Win32 APIs in Metro apps - some of them are not available (largely because they are pointless in the sandbox, or deal with the old UI concepts), but some are. If you open windows header files - "windows.h" and friends - they now have blocks of code that look like this:
Desktop partition is what's available to non-Metro apps running on the classic desktop. App partition is what's available to Metro apps.
Furthermore, classic apps can actually use WinRT (while retaining full access to Win32 APIs). Not all of WinRT will work - specifically, most of UI stuff won't - but huge chunks of WinRT are not UI-related and are accessible. Examples include I/O and networking libraries, XML parser, XSLT engine, new device and multimedia APIs etc.
Of course WinRT is delivered to the programmer via XAML (or HTML)
WinRT is not "delivered via XAML", and most definitely not "via HTML". WinRT includes a UI library (Windows.UI.* namespaces), which allow you to use XAML as a declarative markup language for your UI (but you don't have to, strictly speaking). This is what is normally used by Metro C++ and .NET apps. JS apps don't use WinRT for UI at all - they use HTML5/CSS3, rendered by chromeless IE. They do get access to non-UI parts of WinRT, but they don't have to use it, and in any case it's completely orthogonal to their (HTML5) UI.
There is also no more need for P/invoke. As Win32 isn't being used there is nothing to invoke. There is no API lurking beneath the covers. So anything that you used to do via P/Invoke you will now have to find a way to do via WinRT.
You absolutely can P/Invoke from a .NET Metro app. For one thing, you can P/Invoke to call any of Win32 API functions that are available to Metro apps, as described earlier. Furthermore, you can write a C++ DLL (e.g. for perf), bundle it with your app, and call it from C# as usual via P/Invoke.
Now, in practice, you probably won't, for the simple reason that pretty much everything that a Metro app can do is covered by WinRT APIs. So why would you mess around with P/Invoke declarations when you already have an object-oriented API that can be used directly? Mixed C#/C++ scenarios are also better supported that way - you can make a private WinRT component DLL in C++, and reference it from C#. Your WinRT C++ classes automagically become visible as .NET classes, no P/Invoke declarations needed.
In fact, you could even go the other way around - write a WinRT component DLL in C#, and reference it from C++. And then both of those can be used in JS, so you can really mix all three if you want.
When you create a Page object with WinRT and run it then it expands to fill the entire screen real estate
By default, yes, but you can have two Metro apps run side by side.
If you want overlapping windows and dialog
Resisting change, did you even test it or try to see the good and bad points? You know, get a balanced view ...
I've got a high UID, so I'm not crusty in my ways: I know what works for me, I've been working on my computer for 25 years, so I damn well know how I work. I know that EVERY single other PC OS or DE has window overlap as a default behavior for a damn good reason. I'm not sure what was broken about it. I'm not even convinced its easier for "normal" users, both my Mom and Dad have no problem with windows overlapping, and neither of them are at all close to being expert.
Earlier today, using my computer for fun, I had over 6 windows open. I had a torrent client open, and squeezed down so I could just see the progress bar, I had iTunes open, I had Steam open, I had both a Firefox and two Chrome windows open, I had three explorer windows open as well. This is normal use. I'm sure Microsoft knows what best though, obviously I meant to buy a tablet and not a desktop. Yes, I have the option of not using a gimped interface, but why should I jump through hoops? When I'm actually working this will be infuriating, I don't need extra steps, I don't need Microsoft telling me how to do things, I just want to forget all about my OS and focus on the task at hand. Sometimes that task requires tons of extra windows arranged in such a way that suits my work flow, which might not be a way that MS approves of. I'm imagining this in a corporate environment, where using multiple windows is the norm, as is users of all abilities and experience levels.
Hell, I don't understand why I can't have a start menu. Whats wrong with being able to quickly access another program without losing focus on whatever task your doing? I don't understand why a tablet interface makes any sense on a desktop, either. I have a large monitor, plenty of real estate, so I don't need to focus on one thing at a time. A tablet is a toy, I use a real computer. If I wanted the tablet experience, I'd be using a damn tablet. I have nothing against tablets, or OSs on tablets, but they don't work for me.
I've noticed that the trend in OS design of late is to try to kill the idea of multi-tasking, and try to force the user to focus at single tasks. This is all well and fine, but it doesn't match many peoples actual work flows. Sure, I'm doing one task, but this generally leads to needing to have multiple other things working at the same time. I'm editing a file, thats my single task. For this I need an email program open to see what the customer/boss wants, I might need a chat window or Skype to actually communicate, I need a PDF viewer or browser to see documentation, I need some music to keep me sane, I need a text editor to scribble notes and documentation, I need multiple file browsers to keep track of other files and documents, etc... Rarely can I do my job with a single, or a few, windows.
But marketing departments decided that ALL computers should now be toys made for mere media consumption, and not tools.
I don't need to test it, just watching the videos and reading the reviews tell me that I get to skip a version of Windows.
If it isn't broke, don't fix it.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey