It’s 8am and it’s day two of the Microsoft PDC. Today we’re expecting the announcement of Windows 7 as well as the announcement of what exactly is in the next version of Windows. It looks like Wi-Fi is working just fine this morning – well at least until the rest of the thousands of developer drones walk into this hall. In any case, I’ll try and get you the latest updates as fast as possible. Pictures will probably have to wait till I get a chance to upload pics to my trusty little netbook. BTW – I now officially need a lighter SLR camera. Now that I have a netbook that’s under three pounds, I need a camera that’s lighter… then life would be perfect as a blogger. OK.. time to conserve battery..

Oh.. and I do believe we get “the goods” today… (for those at the PDC, this will occur at 1pm).

8:08am – Darn it.. just as I thought – too many users in one location and now Wi-Fi is practically useless. Oh well – guess you’ll have to wait for the info till after the keynote is over with

8:26am – they’re asking us to sit down now.. soon.. oh so soon.

BTW – excuse the typos – I’ll clean this up when I get out of the keynote (and add pictures).

8:30am – they’re starting up the keynote on time today – opening things up with a video of various vendor applications running on what I presume is Microsoft Windows Vista.

And now.. here’s Ray Ozzie (cue in applause)

Ozzie begins by recapping yesterdays announcement of Windows Azure (Windows in the Cloud) and the Azure Services Platform. Yesterday it all about the computing foundation for services – the backend tier. Today, Microsoft will be showing the outside in view – the user interface, the front end innovations, the new client platforms, the applications, Microsoft’s take on the current era of personal computing.

Ray – “Its hard to imagine a life without a PC.. I mean what would you do all day?” (laughs from the audience) (slightly paraphrased too).

Time for a little reflection on the PC and Windows and on how it has adapted  according to our changing needs.

Today the PC is adapting once again. According to Ozzie, we’ve barely scratched the surface on how the PC can improve what we do on the net and how the net can improve the value of the PC. Ozzie brings the phone into the mix now and has a call to action for developers to help improve the PC, phone, and web and make it more valuable collectively.

Application development for the PC is still very relevant. People build apps to bring an experience closer to the user – closer to the hardware. The key to a Windows PC is how it richly enables the way we edit and consume content. A PC is a personal information management device.

So what about the web? What makes it so special? According to Ray, the web lets us communicate with people. It allows us to find access share and transact information; it allows us to connect to devices, services and activities; and it assembles the worlds people and information.

And the phone? It’s similar to a PC in terms of development. However, the key to the phone is – it’s always with you wherever you are. Its unique value is how it enables an app spontaneity.

Thus the PC, phone, and the web all of their unique roles and values and when taken together, they’re far more valuable than taken apart.

Microsoft wants to build the best apps for all three tiers and wants to help developers build the best apps by providing tools, platforms, and services to make this all possible.

And now, Ozzie goes over who will be coming on stage.

• Steven who will introduce Windows 7 and talk about Windows Live Wave 3
• Scott and Dave will talk about development for PC phone and web
• Takeshi will come out to talk about Office and software + services

And now, let’s talk about Windows 7 – Steven comes out and starts things off by showing all of us a demo.

A demo of Windows 7 now..

Here are the key notes thus far:

• Windows 7 has a new taskbar. The quick launch buttons that we all love has been enhanced greatly and merged with the open windows buttons.
• Hover over a button and it will show you all the instances of apps running through thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail to open up the app. Close the app by clicking on the X button on the thumbnail.
• If no app is running then no thumbnails will appear
• Right click a button and a new “Jump List” feature will pop up showing documents, actions etc specific to the app.
• Finally, you can move open windows around and organize it the way you want it (The crowd applauses)

 

Open windows can now snap to either side of the desktop simply by dragging the window to the side – makes opening up side by side windows very easy.

They’re now talking about the changes to Windows Explorer.

First off, there’s a new feature called Libraries which are collections of digital content – whether it’s on your PC, across other PCs or network devices. You can have multiple libraries which you can then import and have accessible from a single location. You can browse and search for content through Windows Explorer.

 

 

Improvements to Windows Networking – All Windows 7 PCs can automatically find each other in a home network and automatically configure devices. Plug a PC or notebook into the home network and the right printers will get attached immediately.

There’s a new HomeGroup feature. All printers, wireless devices, documents, music etc are made automatically available once you connect to the HomeGroup network. This makes it easy for a PC to connect to one another.

HomeGroup also ties in nicely with the Libraries feature – you can easily find, access, and control content – whether it’s on your PC or some other device on the network. You can search for songs on your PC or search within the HomeGroup and see if a song exists on other PCs. Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, and Windows Explorer all share the same Libraries technology.

Speaking of Windows Media Player, there’s a new version coming out – they demo a feature where WMP controls a Sonos media player by directing a file that is located on a different PC to be played through a Sonos music player. This is all done on a separate remote PC. Basically control content playback on different devices from different PCs

There’s a new Windows 7 feature called “Device Stage” which shows capabilities of devices. Here’s a picture of a Motorola handset and all the things you can do with the device once it’s connected to your PC:

Nice feature of Windows 7 – especially for work/home laptop users. You can now automatically switch printers depending on whether you are at work or at home (more applause). Go to work and Windows 7 will automatically select the work printer. Go home and the OS will select the home printer – all done automatically..

Personalization Time – Change themes and preview them by going to the lower right corner of the desktop.

 

System Tray time – The system tray is FINALLY customizable (again more applause). You can control and customize notifications from the system tray (those darn balloon messages stink)

There’s a new “Action Center” which brings together security and maintenance into a single view.

Windows 7 has been retooled with major touch enhancements

Finger presses can bring up items within the Jump List – There’s also 25 % more space between items for easier navigation.

All your familiar mouse commands have been retooled and repowered with touch support – which means even if your application isn’t touch enabled you can still use it using your finger gestures.

There’s a new on-screen keyboard with predictive touch. Internet Explorer supports zooming and flicks and gestures for easier navigation.

 

Windows Explorer and Microsoft Paint have been retooled for touch. Now a joke about how once every 15 years, Microsoft updates tools in Windows Yes Paint has a new ribbon – hahahhaha

Now they’re talking about Windows Live.

Windows Live services extends your experience from the PC to the web – it’s of course optional and downloadable. Bring your content and sync it to Live services which you can then access via the web. Windows Live Essentials now available in Beta.

And now.. Microsoft wants to talk about the transition from Windows Vista. First, what did Microsoft learn from Vista (laughs from the audience) Yes.. they acknowledge that the company received some feedback from various sources including vendors, some blogs (snickering in the audience), from users, and oh yes.. even some commercials here and there (much more laughter here).

Now as a result of the feedback, Microsoft went back and wanted to improve the performance and reliability of Vista resulting in SP1. They’re certainly happy with SP1 but more work could be done,

Some key lessons learned from Windows Vista:

• Readiness of the ecosystem – The ecosystem is the elements that bring a PC to life – from hardware to software vendors. Vista changed a lot of things that required a lot of work from the ecosystem,. Microsoft really wasn’t ready at launch when Vista came out,. They needed to do a better job with Windows 7 hence it has the same kernel as Vista and 2008 which means no changes need to be done for the ecosystem
• Standards –Developers want Microsoft to support standards. Microsoft is aiming for better standards support in Windows 7 – it shows up in IE8 with better CSS support and of course trying to pass those acid tests. Wordpad has even been updated to support XML – again – more tools updates!
• Compatibility – Changes in Vista made compatibility challenging to say the least. The best example is the UAC (which people laugh at again). They acknowledge that they probably went a little too far with UAC. Despite the changes introduced, Windows is more secure than ever before for users
• Scenarios  – Microsoft needs to do a great job in delivering a better end to end experience. They’ve always seem to miss that “last mile” to making Windows just right. Windows 7 hopefully changes all of that.

New features for developers to play with

• Ribbon User Interface
• Jump Lists –the little menus on the task and start menu
• Libraries – brings together search and content across multiple PCs
• Multi-touch, Ink, Speech – ways to augment the user experience.
• DirectX family – extended to 2d, animation and text

And now a demo from AutoDesk to show how the Touch APIs have been integrated into their application.

 

 

Microsoft now switches to talking about “Fundamentals” which encompasses compatibility, security, reliability, performance

Thing they are trying to decrease include memory usage (reduce the memory and disk footprint of a core Windows 7 installation), disk I/O (less registry reads and indexer), and power usage (increase DVD playback, panel, reduce resolution of timers which greatly increase power efficiency)

Things they’re trying to make faster include speed (faster boot, device ready etc), responsiveness in the start menu, task bar, and scale of Windows (up to 256 processors).

Another demo of Windows 7 development – hey shows off the Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook,

Other improvements coming to Windows 7 include:

• Bitlocker encryption comes to memory sticks

• You can create native virtual hard drives (VHDs) within Windows now – dynamic and fixed sizes. You can natively boot from a VHD! – great for developers, Mount and boot from the same VHD.

• Supports setting custom DPI settings
• Enhanced multimonitor support

• Improved magnifier – great for UI developers

• New Windows ‘P’ shortcut – hold down and P to select monitors and projectors. Remote desktop supports multi-monitor too!

Multimonitor across two presentation screens

• Customize shutdown button – change location of task bars – change sizes and buutton sizes etc

• Complete control of messages from various apps etc. Added a slider to control how much the UAC will interact with you.

Now the road to RTM

• Everyone here at PDC gets a copy of pre-beta Windows 7 (this is the M3 build) – a build that meets the design criteria from Microsoft and which is currently running internally within Microsoft, Not all feature complete – the UI is not all there yet.
• Read the E7 blog
• The Beta will be feature complete – no performance benchmarking though but it is the complete product. Beta will be delivered early next year. Beta will also be opened to a broader audience
• There will be a new Feedback Tool in the beta with a link in every window. Doubleclick it, and add comments etc to provide direct feedback back to Microsoft,.
• Customer Experience Improvement Data (CEID) – turn it on to allow Microsoft to see what is and is not working – as well as performance information.
• Release Candidate to RTM phase – No info on when the product will come out. Sticking to three years of when Vista comes out generally

Developer Action Items

• Install and use the prebeta of Windows 7
• Microsoft wants you to write 64 bits
• Focus on fundamentals in code
• Integrate with Windows 7 desktop
• Evaluate the new APIs in Windows 7
• Code to web standards in IE8
• Download Windows Live Beta

NOTE – the following will be edited later on in the day- I have to run to classes now.

Introducing Scott Guthrie now – tools and platforms

Windows 7 Client Development

You can take advantage of Windows 7 regardless of what programming language you use. Bring together

Win32 and C++

• New Windows 7 APIs – ribbon, jump lists, libraries, multtouch etc
• MFC for Windows 7
• Visual Studio 2010 – IDE support for large code bases and multicore development

Windows apps with .NET

• .NET 3.5 SP1 improvements
• Built into Windows 7

Now a demo of writing code using WPF

 

A new WPF release being announced today – new DataGrid, DatePicker, Calendar, Ribbon controls.

Now talking about .NET 4

* New WPF improvements like multitouch, deep zoom etc.

* Fundamentals and interoperability – build better apps – client and server – Load CLR2 and CLR4 in the same process/address space. Making it easier to integrate managed and native code

* Improved tooling with Visual Studio 2010 – multi—monitor support and VS2010 will be built on WPF

– write tests first and then design classes from them

- PDC folks will get CTP version of VS2010 – new visualizer code in IDE

- VS 2010 extensibility

Now talking about WPF and .NET client momentum

* demo from Tesco.com – they;re entirely powered in .NET,. These guys are the largest grocery shopping vendor in the country

 

ah yes – an integrated bar code reader so you can read it from a webcam within the tesco application and then add it to a shopping basket.

 

Now back to .NET programming.. I’ll just show you slides. Also – Silverlight is going to be coming to the desktop – not just the web.

 

David Treadwell comes out to talk about Windows Live Services. Again – here are digital stills of the slides being shown.

 

And now, we have information about Office 14 and what’s in store for Office for the web. The key talking points about Office 14 for the web:

• There will be Office web app versions for Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote
• Seamless collaboration of documents between online and offline versions – with changes automatically synchronized within the same document opened by different users
• Office Live will be usable in IE, Firefox and Safari. Silverlight will enhance the experience of Office Live

Wow.. this was one long keynote – in fact it ran overtime and into the other keynote address which I probably will not be attending now. Time to clean this up and post it up on the web (also need to recharge the netbook!)

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