Editor’s note: Muhammad is attending the Microsoft BUILD conference this week. When he shared the following Windows 8 highlights internally, we knew we had to share his observations with Bamboo Nation.
Windows 8 highlights:
- The new Windows 8 is excellent! It’s all about touch screens and a rich/fluid user experience. The focus is on content and not the application.
- The new metro style (tile UI) completely blurs the desktop and web/mobile boundary.
- Microsoft mentioned XAML throughout the talk without any mention of Silverlight.
- JavaScript/HTML code works the same way as C#/XAML.
- Introducing a new concept, The Windows Apps, downloadable from Windows Store.
- Vigorous use of Windows Live ID and SkyDrive to manage roaming profiles and other connectivities.
- The WinRT (the Windows core) will drop support for the GDI API, so there will be no more message boxes or message loops. UI is rendered DirectX engine.
- Visual Studio 11 (express) makes writing code for Windows 8 a snap.
And one more thing: Microsoft gave away Samsung tablets (similar to the Galaxy model) with the Windows 8 preview pre-loaded, and AT&T 3G service for a year to all attendees. Now that’s awesome!
Tomorrow I will attend a few hands-on sessions to try out some cool features.
Lam
re: Windows 8 Highlights, Live from the Microsoft BUILD Conference
Couple of hints if you are trying out the preview version:
1. if you are trying the preview using a virtual image, you should use either VWare Workstation version 8 or VirutalBox. VMWare Workstation v7 does not support ACPI 2.0 and you will not be able to run Windows 8.
2. The first thing you should do after installing Windows 8 Preview is to enable .Net 3.5 (via Control Panel > Programs and Features. Many applications still use this .Net version and if you try to enable it after you install a program (like Office 2010), you will most likely receive a 0x800F0906 error trying to connect to Windows Update.
Have fun!
