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Windows 8: .NET Versus HTML5 Metro App Development

Posted by timothy on from the don't-fence-me-in dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Will Microsoft take advantage of .NET's Java-like CIL and allow .NET code to run on Windows 8, or force developers to switch to HTML5 Metro apps instead for porting apps to Windows 8? This article brings up important insights into both paradigms' advantages and disadvantages, and even correlates the options with Microsoft's past NT-era support of MIPS and PPC, as well as Windows CE's way of supporting embedded architectures."

6 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Intel will not allow MS a free hand... by jkrise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    as the article suggests, to port .Net apps to the ARM architecture. Arm-twisting both ways in the Wintel duopoly, first it was the turn of MS, now it's Intel's turn.

    --
    If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
    1. Re:Intel will not allow MS a free hand... by slack_justyb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      First the Compact Framework is crap and pretty limited in comparison to what WinRT is suppose to offer. So I dare say (and this is me just guessing so don't take it as the honest truth, because what do I know?) that developers are going to want to target the option that has the most options with the most platforms, and thus they are going to really look at WinRT (ARM and Wintel + most options in common compared to everything else) as opposed to CF.

      Don't get me wrong CF will still have a lot of uses. Just not consumer based, CF will become mostly a industry thing, much like Java has become (the platform, not the language).

      Second, legacy applications are going to have a pretty rough transition and the desktop version of Windows 8 is suppose to be there and help this out. This is why I think tablet Win8 is dumb. We all know that it is going to take a lot of time before vendors can really bring their wares to WinRT, most likely some won't make the jump at all. That's always going to put a divide between desktop and tablet. That's going to make their unified concept look mighty dumb. I hate to say it, in fact if you see me you can have a free punch, but Apple is correct. Desktops and Tablets are different and need different platforms. WinRT will make developers fume with anger as they find that they want to target as many people as they can but suddenly they can't find parity with tablet and desktop Windows versions. Developers are going to ask, why even have this unified looking OS to begin with?!

      I know for a fact that native isn't dead. I think the better way to state it is, native isn't consumer anymore. I think any tech company that forgets this has doomed themselves. Business is still going to need (if not in fact demand) native code. I think tablet focuses heavily on consumer, and aiming the OS to be tablet and desktop second is aiming the OS to be consumer. XP was such a great hit because it aimed at business first and brought some consumer added features. It was build on NT which was the "business" OS, it had business features with friendly polish.

      In the end I think that tablet has been blown out of the water. Desktop isn't dead, neither is native code, but with more and more non-tech users moving onto the Internet and using computers, there has been a growing demand for consumer friendly devices. The tablet has the right mix to be this, but let's face it, it was a big uh-oh to think Joe six pack needed a full blown out computer. However consumers and businesses are all going to need stuff for consumers to consume, that's your desktops, that's your native code. That stuff isn't going anywhere, it's just not hot at the moment.

      That' why I say that WinRT is going to be the target for most on Win8 and it's going to fail hardcore for legacy applications. CF is just another niche thing that Microsoft will eventually kill off, just like Silverlight (yeah I know they didn't kill it but have come as close to it as they can.) The fact that most vendors are going to be hitting native and WinRT for most of their products is going to make this whole unified Win8 think look dumb in the end. Also, the fear that Microsoft may very well kill off the Metro thing too at some point if they get bored with it. I wouldn't put it pass them, that if they see Win8 becoming a flop, that this whole Win8 fiasco disappears come Win9.

    2. Re:Intel will not allow MS a free hand... by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just proving once again old Sinofsky doesn't have a damned clue and Win 8 is gonna suuuuuck, WOA was a good name because WOA is it gonna blow.

      In the end there is a damned good reason, a few actually, while Apple could pull this kinda stuff off and MSFT can't. 1.-When Apple switched from PPC to X86 they were switching to an arch that was powerful enough they could have emulation without a severe penalty. this is the opposite of what MSFT is facing, where the best ARM chips simply can't compete with a modern X86 in terms of performance so emulation would probably be roughly the speed of a Pentium II, not good enough to be useful. 2.-Frankly there wasn't nearly as huge a market for third party programs at Apple, many of the most popular programs being built by Apple itself. Again the opposite of MSFT, where other than office frankly all of the software, we are talking millions of programs, are made by third parties that will most likely completely ignore WOA for the much much larger X86 base. 3.-Finally with iOS Apple made it clear it was NOT OSX, and made sure to keep the branding separate between their desktop and mobile OSes. Again the exact opposite of the fucking retarded move by Sinofsky and Ballmer of using the Windows name on WinRT, which will mimic Win 8 X86 right down to the dumbass metro UI. this will of course in all likelihood cause a MASSIVE amount of consumer backlash, as the average consumer don't know ARM from arm&hammer so will simply look and go "hey a tablet with Windows! I can run my stuff!" and when they get it home and find out they can't they WILL return it. I saw this first hand over the holiday with a local retailer selling "Windows tablets" that had WinCE clearly listed on the box but the consumer saw a WinXP desktop and believed it actually run windows.

      All in all the more info we receive about Win 8 the bigger the stench of failure that comes wafting up from it. The ARM version won't run X86, the X86 won't run ARM, so right there every damned dev will have to build two of everything, its UI is NOT intuitive or discoverable, as you can see from this video which I can tell you from the Win 8 CP running in the shop is a pretty typical user session with Win 8, and by both reusing the Windows name AND the metro UI they expect consumers to know the difference between arches and to know they can no longer trust their eyes but instead like WinCE look for a label they most likely won't understand if they were staring right at it.

      I'm so glad that other than the test bed in the shop me and my family will be sticking to Win 7, because i have the feeling for a year and a half i'm gonna be wiping this damned thing for 7 like I wiped Vista for XP. I have to wonder if the reason Sinofsky, who was never really in the spotlight that much before, is being shoved out there now is to be the fall guy for Ballmer when this thing bombs? Let us just hope that sooner or later the board gets tired of the monkey wiping his ass with billions and they fire his ass, because frankly this is gone past funny and into sad, hell even the pepsi guy at Apple wasn't this pathetic as CEO.

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      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
  2. Re:No brainer by Riceballsan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While it is true, Microsoft may just be hoping for a foot in at this point. HTML5 is touted as the one stop shop to port an app to Android, IOS and windows. Microsoft is entering the mobile phone war late in the game and way behind, interchangeability at this stage of the game is a plus for them. They just need plans to mess that up late in the game if they take the lead.

  3. Re:Idiot by Anthony_Cargile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This guy is a complete moron. First, it's called the CLI, not the CIL. Second, it's called the Windows Runtime or WinRT and it runs .NET apps and HTML5/js apps. This is all quite plain to anyone that has even a tiny understanding of the system. This architecture diagram has been posted for quite some time, and clearly shows C# and VB as well as C/C++ apps running under WinRT/Metro.

    Hi, I'm the "complete moron" who wrote the article. I most definitely meant CIL and not CLI, as I was referring to the Common Intermediate Language, and not the Command Line Interface. One is used to interact with an operating system through mostly text (curses and cursor-based terminal graphics being a stark exception), and the other allows multiple human-written programming languages to be compiled to a common bytecode form for interpretation by a .NET virtual machine runtime, and the basis of this article was that the same VM can be ported to Windows 8 on ARM in place of Metro apps. And your diagram does not clearly note anywhere that it is valid for Windows 8 on ARM as it is for x86/x86-64. Next time, don't be so quick to jump to conclusions and throw the words "moron" and "idiot" around. Thank you in advance.

  4. Re:Metro eh..? by Xest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The fundamental problem is that it's all entirely backwards.

    The web is moving more towards apps so rather than continuing to butcher HTTP and HTML into supporting apps, we'd be better off creating a new protocol handler (is app:// taken?) and creating a set of technologies better meant to facilitate that.

    XAML may not be the best option, but it illustrates the concept - it would make much more sense to have something like this built for the web/desktop than it would badly butchering HTTP/HTML.

    I agree with you on where HTML5 is going but it frankly scares me, it's a throwback to the bad development practices that came around in the 90s, culminating in Visual Basic 6 being used for actual commercial apps.

    I get the feeling it's a new generation of developers pushing all these things, one that hasn't learnt from the mistakes of the previous generation. All the problems with HTML5 have long be solved, but for some reason the solutions have been ignored, and so the problems are merely being repeated. I get the feeling we've got a decade of really bad software ahead of us. Time will tell I guess.