To me, WinRT is a series of native, "Win32" if you will, components that all have suitable managed wrappers that run on the CLR4. WinRT itself is a framework that hosts the CLR4 (rather than having a separate CLR fork) and includes the BCL4 assemblies in addition to the new Windows 8-specific ones (such as the sensor framework).

It explains a lot: the JS stuff most likely uses the DLR - which means it's possible someone will add the ability to use Python and other DLR languages. The presence of C++ was probably referring to CLI/C++ rather than pure native C++ on account of how the "XAML" box overlapped both the C# and C++ blocks.

I believe the source-level compatibility with Trident is a coincidental with the fact the DLR JS runtime strictly complies with the ECMAScript specification. I don't believe the native JS JIT engine makes any appearances in WinRT. This is further evidenced by the support of the HTML+JS platform in Blend, which is just a design-time host for XAML and presumably a similarly .NET-derived HTML+JS platform.

Off-topic, if this means Microsoft has developed a managed HTML+JS platform, it's possible we'll see a decent web-browser made available for the Xbox 360.

Any thoughts, speculation, or evidence otherwise?

JS runs on Chakra, not DLR.

and the the ie engine exposes those winRT components directly to js, not via the clr

It was also very clear that cross platform support between x86 and ARM wasn't available in the C++ world (which was very clearly referred to as native code), so I doubt that's really a C++/CLI world either - partly because it's never gained much traction but mainly because the cross platform issues would undoubtedly have been ironed out of C++/CLI if the aim was for everything to run everywhere.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011?t=windows%2Bruntime

@felix9: Wait...  I can't  wait I must know now

One must wonder if Microsoft is pushing HTML5 or is HTML5 pushing Microsoft. I know at my workplace web apps have pretty much displaced everything else (other than IDEs, I guess) - this trend started a long time ago.

I'd be interested to see what extensions WinRT provides to JavaScript and if any of these extensions can be standardized in the W3C. That might not be Microsoft's strategy though.

i think the reason for showing off so many html apps is to hammer home the point that html+js is an equall player amoing the development models. i think the point is that you're supposed to be able what ever platform you perfer and it will work well in win8

so i dont think its about a perferred platform at all. if they'd not shown html apps, people would blame them of not going all in on their own platform

microsoft wont be modifying javascript as such, they'll just expose another js object next to the dom that will expose winRT services. i very much doubt that they'll even try to standardize that though.. html+js apps written for win8 will be just that, apps for win8.. they wont really work in the browser [im pretty sure anyway]

um.. because we're nerds? do you know us niners at all?

I think there is most certainly a preference for HTML5 going on. We already knew Windows 8 apps will be written in HTML5/JavaScript. This was known like 4 months ago. Besides the early demo of Windows 8, it was one of the few things explicitly mention in the blurp for the Build conference itself - .NET nowhere to be found.

.NET developers were intentionally left in a butthurt speculation mode of the continued relevance of their platform for months. Maybe it wasn't even in their original plans to support C#/.NET but all the complaining on the Internet had a effect.

Some of them are, some arent.. the mdl folks have found plenty of each

why didnt they talk about .net/sl/xaml eariler? who knows, but presumably because to they wanted to suck upp tp html devs.. there was a whole lot of other stuff they didnt show in that first win8 preview as well

build did show that xaml applications are a first class member in win8 and the leaks show this as well.

if you think they just put in .net support as an after thought you really havent been paying attention.. hmtl+js is just another application model, its not the application model.. just look at the sessions, they are pretty evenly devided among the diffrent models

People do use web apps so much these days, hell I'm using a web app right now - it's called Channel 9. Microsoft really has no choice but to be all in with this technology and make it a first class citizen in Windows. It's really the developer community and ultimately the users who decide, and the whole developer community is much larger than the .NET developer community.

Windows 8 is a great advancement for web developers, with huge new API available to them to do RIAs that weren't easily possible before, as well as native HTML5 and fast JavaScript support built preinstalled into Windows for the first time. The difference between webdev in Win7 and Win8 is practically revolutionary.

I don't see the same advancement there for .NET, other than "I'm still here". That's great I guess. You guys can celebrate that, you are not completely dead in the water. But I wouldn't be surprised if WinRT is a net regression over WPF and .NET proper.

'Web applications' like C9 are really a different kettle of fish, they have a place but rarely seem to be a user's preferred choice given the option. And developers in general will prefer to stick to the tools they already know, it's not like they gain anything by going down the HTML route. As you say, time will tell, but I don't expect to see every developer suddenly jump on the HTML bandwagon just because they now can.

..ookay so why does it matter if microsoft is perferring html5, as you claim, at all?

yeah, there are alot of web apps, but compare the prevelance of webapps on phones compared to native phone apps? for phones its pretty safe to say people perfer native apps compared to browser experiences.

you put it best yourself, WinRT is an advancement for web developers on win8, but its some thing that xaml developers are already used to, so its no huge advance for them (may be even a regression?) remember that winRT is the same for all the app models..

we'll see, as you say, developers will decide. its a very interesting time since for the first time the web application model is at a direct competition level with other app models, as opposed to beeing the "default" and having no competitors as is the case on the web.

There are frameworks like PhoneGap and Sencha Touch that make it very difficult to tell if some app is written in HTML or in the native widget toolkit of the platform. The advantage of the HTML5 approach is the same app can be share code between multiple phone platforms, of course, and with desktop apps as well.

if you need a external framework to write html apps for mobile i woudnt really call it "native" but whatever

who cares really, time will tell. now we can choose whatever model we prefer when developing for win8 and i think thats pretty cool

And even now I believe Microsoft (the only company I know of that doesn't explicitly do HTML5 apps yet, even Blackberry does) is sponsoring PhoneGap development so that it will work with WP7 Mango. So really HTML5 is the universal mobile phone development environment, if you want to write an app that works everywhere you do it in HTML5. C# is close (thanks to Mono, not Microsoft).

yeah.. in theory.. all those platforms have their own quirks and so does all the browsers (yes even ff and chrome) so its not really the case that you can write the app one way and it will work everywhere.. you almost can though.

I don't find that to true. For instance if I code directly to ExtJS or jQuery my app will work with IE6 even, because they did all the work to get their stuff working on multiple browsers I get to take advantage of that.

The browsers anyway are very much converging in web standards support so writing cross platform web apps has never been easier, even without libraries.

While the language and markup will be familiar to all web developers, you won't be able to fully-exploit the Windows OS with your application unless you use the Windows-specific namespaces. That means you can forget about running the same "immersive" application on anything but Windows 8. So the purpose of HTML+JS in Windows 8 isn't about "write once, run many". In fact, Windows 8 makes XAML the more likely candidate to truly realize the write once, run many utopia (at least within Microsoft's ecosystem: Windows 8, Xbox, and Windows Phone).

As with native mobile phone development, developers are going to have to decide which ecosystems that they want to target. From a market-size standpoint, it's going to be difficult to ignore Windows 8 as a target market. The ability to leverage HTML+JS will make it all the more appealing to target the platform since the learning curve is greatly flattened. And once Microsoft has these HTML+JS developers as a captive audience within the Microsoft ecosystem, I think they're going to push them hard toward XAML + C# development.

The cynic will call this embrace, extend, extinguish all over again, but from a developer's standpoint who wouldn't want to be able to write once, run many?

yeah, js might work, but css sure wont.. input fields anyone? and even if new browsers are getting better at standards, old one will be with us for a long time, especially on phones

certinly for windows 8 apps developed using the web model will not work anywhere but in win8, so the cross platform argument seems a little weak

30 seconds ago,Bass wrote

The thing is Microsoft's ecosystem is not sufficient. Microsoft's business model of developer lock-in only works if Microsoft has a virtual monopoly over the software industry platforms. But seriously Apple and Google changed that. If you live in some la-la land where everyone uses Microsoft and only Microsoft, XAML is great stuff. But I don't think most do.

You don't have to "live in some la-la land where everyone uses Microsoft and only Microsoft" for XAML to be compelling. The target market just needs to be sufficiently large for your investment in that platform. That's why a large percentage of mobile developers target both iOS and Android and leave WP7 out of the picture. That's why some mobile developers exclusively target WP7. While the target market is small (for now), the investment is small (for them).

yeah because apple never tries to lock in developers or anything.. get real dude

the RDF is strong in this one..

1 hour ago,W3bbo wrote

Having now sat through the keynote and had a look at the WinRT stuff, I'm unconvinced that "WinRTis Windows" as the presenters claim.

 I guess the proof will be in the pudding, and we don't have to wait too long for a download.

To me, WinRT is a series of native, "Win32" if you will, components that all have suitable managed wrappers that run on the CLR4. WinRT itself is a framework that hosts the CLR4 (rather than having a separate CLR fork) and includes the BCL4 assemblies in addition to the new Windows 8-specific ones (such as the sensor framework).

Everyone seems to throw all native development into the "Win32" bucket. Strictly speaking I'd put things like Window classes and the Message Pump in this bucket, and other things under the Windows (base) API. Windows Forms is directly built on top of Win32, and WPF to a lesser degree.

It explains a lot: the JS stuff most likely uses the DLR - which means it's possible someone will add the ability to use Python and other DLR languages. The presence of C++ was probably referring to CLI/C++ rather than pure native C++ on account of how the "XAML" box overlapped both the C# and C++ blocks.

There has been a version of Silverlight with XAML for Windows Embedded for a while now. XAML is really just a format for specifying object graphs so it could be used "natively" if you can express the concepts in a language like C++. Many people confuse it with markup languages that operate differently.

People often complain about the performance of .NET client applications. One of the biggest problems (that gets talked about less that memory bloat, graphic perf etc) is startup time. This is a big issue for anyone building a utility type app that you want to spin up quickly without a noticeable delay.

It is so bad that the IronPython team at one time had a workaround that interpreted scripts on the first run to give instant results. On subsequent runs jitted code was used. This is sad in a lot of ways because the performance of subsequent runs is amazing. Their users needed the scripts to support quick editing and iteration. For windows client developers the only way to get this rapid startup performance is to trying NGen, or write a native app. 

I believe the source-level compatibility with Trident is a coincidental with the fact the DLR JS runtime strictly complies with the ECMAScript specification. I don't believe the native JS JIT engine makes any appearances in WinRT. This is further evidenced by the support of the HTML+JS platform in Blend, which is just a design-time host for XAML and presumably a similarly .NET-derived HTML+JS platform.

Following on from my last point, embedding trident in a native app is a great way to get quick startup and a simple programming model. With IE9 graphics acceleration was the icing on the cake. For the reasons of startup performance I don't think you'll see anything other than trident.

Off-topic, if this means Microsoft has developed a managed HTML+JS platform, it's possible we'll see a decent web-browser made available for the Xbox 360.

I doubt you'll see any managed browser, although Microsoft's efforts to port newer IE versions to Windows Phone might offer something in the future.

Any thoughts, speculation, or evidence otherwise?

6 minutes ago,Bass wrote

I think Microsoft's days of monopoly are over, so they can embrace+extend all they want - it will fail and probably get them sued to hell anyway.

If you look at any of the non-browser-based HTML+JavaScript development platforms, you'll most likely see platform-specific script libraries and direct access to native APIs through "plugins". Why would Microsoft get sued for "embracing" HTML+JS and not HP/Palm for WebOS or Samsung for its Smart TV SDK?

2 minutes ago,section31 wrote

The real question is why would one program Windows specific  HTML5/JS when he could use superior XAML/C#?

I wouldn't, but you might want to in order to get up to speed quicker if HTML+JS is all that you know.

indeed.. i've used both pretty extensivley and i'd pick xaml in a heart beat

4 minutes ago,cbae wrote

*snip*

If you look at any of the non-browser-based HTML+JavaScript development platforms, you'll most likely see platform-specific script libraries and direct access to native APIs through "plugins". Why would Microsoft get sued for "embracing" HTML+JS and not HP/Palm for WebOS or Samsung for its Smart TV SDK?

Because HP and Samsung don't have a long history of anti-trust convictions?

yeah! who says the law should be equal for everyone! oh wait...

On the flipside, are all apps eventually (we're talking long term Windows 9-10+ here) expected to be full screen "Metro Style" apps built on WinRT, even if they have a decidedly non-Metro UI, with lots of toolbars/ribbons and panes?

30 minutes ago,Bass wrote

It's very likely anything Microsoft does will be more legally scrutinized because of their history. Just recently Microsoft had direct government overseers to ensure Microsoft's pre-release software is in compliance with the law and the terms of anti-trust settlement. No other corporation that I know of has anything like that, not since AT&T at least.

That's not because of history. It's because Microsoft is still in a position to have monopoly power, which you earlier claimed Microsoft no longer has.

'The next major release of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.5, allows you to easily use Windows 8 technologies, like Windows Runtime, directly from .NET 4.5'

So I would hope yes.

9 minutes ago,Bass wrote

I don't think so, but anything is possible. For instance, Apple went from close to bankruptcy to the #1 company in the world by market capitalization in something like 10 years.

If anything is possible, Apple could be on the verge of bankruptcy again in another 10 years. People are fickle when it comes to gadgets. Nokia and Motorola are well aware of this.

5 minutes ago,cbae wrote

*snip*

If anything is possible, Apple could be on the verge of bankruptcy again in another 10 years. People are fickle when it comes to gadgets. Nokia and Motorola are well aware of this.

Or Microsoft could be on the verge of bankruptcy in 10 years. Which one do you think I believe is more plausible?

13 seconds ago,Bass wrote

*snip*

Or Microsoft could be on the verge of bankruptcy in 10 years. Which one do you think I believe is more plausible?

Plausibility and hope are two different things. 

its just xaml/html so i guess we can do whatever for games and stuff like that you'll probably want to branch out a little bit. there are some very interesting sounding sessions about directx too that im going to check out

33 minutes ago,blowdart wrote

The WinRT documentation is up.

"The Windows Runtime packs core functionality for building Metro style apps into a small API surface. Your Metro style apps can also use the subset of traditional Win32, Component Object Model (COM), and .NET Framework APIs that is included in the Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) for Metro style Apps."

"In some cases, a type that you used in a .NET Framework application does not exist within the .NET APIs for Metro style apps; instead, you must use a type from the Windows Runtime."

"By default, Metro style apps cannot access user data or system resources in a way that may compromise a user's privacy or the reliability of the system."

So it's like another Silverlight, living its separated hermit life. Somebody tell me how I should feel about that. 

pretty interesting.

it deffinatly looks like the WinRT xaml stack will be the stack for windows phone in the future..

i think i can be pretty cool, silverlight had focus areas that arent really needed for the deskop:smalldownload size, cross platform considerations, but for winRT you want to max out the utilization of the hardware

i think silverlight and willl phase out and be replaced with winRT, but its all xaml so its not a huge jump.wpf willprobably stillbearound for though heavy applications like VS, but we'll see... perhaps even better would be if winRT encompases wpf functionality as well

So looks like if you want to make a graphics intensive game you have to write it in C going forward, seems sort of bizarre.

xaml is not for managed apps any more though.. native xaml apps have been spotted

i think we'll see more in the day2 keynote

I'd say this has been usually the case regardless of the platform. I'd say it goes as far as, if there's a cross platform c++  toolkit and a OS native c++ toolkit, rarely the resulting app from the cross-platform solution feels native to the OS even if it's in "native code". I'm tempted to say this can also lead to the perf of the app dropping but there's so many unknowns in play that all I can say is that when switching from native to cross platform toolkit, profiling should be done to see if there are some new surprise bottlenecks.  

Random comments on the keynote touch/swiping demos... Huge latency between swiping the screen and stuff happening + lot of glitches. The "robotic finger" demo did not seem to have such latency. I hope they work a lot more on this area as it's the most important thing next to having a good display in the table. At very least, the latency should match the competition.

12 hours ago,Royal​Schrubber wrote

Of course WinRT is turing complete, but that's not everything

Umm really? It's an API not a language. It doesn't, for example have any constructs that would support repeatability.

Just to state the obvious - WinRT supports Turing complete languages (so it's not like SQL..). But having said that I've explained the obvious which is that despite the fact that you can compute everything that is computable and reach all kinds of inputs and outputs, you can still be very much limited if the surrounding framework lacks some until now taken for granted fundamental features.

Web applications are a perfect example of this - you can't write IDE, CAD or professional photo editor applications in JavaScript, despite it being Turing complete. Similarly, you can't write id Tech 4 equivalent game in Silverlight or an OS in straight Java. The fact that WinRT supports C++ does not mean that it will automatically become as powerful as the legacy system, from what we know now it could be just as limited as Silverlight and thus useless for great many application types that shouldn't otherwise be discriminated in Metro interface. 

Is that a limitation of the language? or is that a requirement by Microsoft to keep the look/feel the same or is it just easy for the programmers in the pre-release versions of the apps.

For example, I find that the scroll bar contrast is usually so low I can't find it without squinting and while the text size is probably great for a tablet, on my desktop the fonts are much larger than they need to be, limiting the amount of the info on the screen.

I would provide this type of feedback on the apps, but I don't know if it is just a waste of time or not.

Mark

If you ask WinRT for a scrollbar, it'll look like the scrollbars you currently see in Metro. If you're willing to write your own (or link against code from somebody else that decided to) then you can make your controls look however you want to - subject to the restrictions imposed on the UI by Windows8 AppStore.

Providing feedback on the apps - particularly the UI of common controls is best done now if you'd like to see a change. Once Windows goes RTM there won't be any turning back, and the scrollbars will look the same until at least Windows9.