Speak up. For Windows 8 feedback and questions, go here: http://win8.ms/forums ( Pretty impressive who's monitoring the threads there )

C

edit: what do i think?

see other posts - top would be global startbar option - so it doesn't disappear going to metro

 = there is always a start-bar  -  one is shaded cool - one is flat colour... but it's THERE 

Haven't downloaded the dev bits yet, only the OS preview; it's a VERY large download for a 1Mbps connection!

Herbie

@felix: way to go! Keep it up

C

In the forums you pointed out, there is no place to post questions or issues about how our LOB apps written on these pre-Metro platforms will work on Windows 8. Case in point: it appears that all request for web pages (i.e. links embedded in documents in Word) are fulfilled by Metro IE. If the link was intended to take you to a video you are SOL since Metro IE doesn't support Flash and Silverlight video. It feels like Microsoft is assuming it's dominance with Windows will force people to convert their video to HTML5 standards (I'm sure Apple is just loving that strategy).

Look (with an open mind) at your forums for Windows 8. It's all about Metro...

2 hours ago,DeathBy​VisualStudio wrote

I went to BUILD. I got my tablet. I spoke with many Microsofties about the strategy, the technology, etc. and came away with the feeling that Windows 8 has nothing for LOB app developers. It's all rich media, games, and fart apps for Windows 8. Maybe I'm just ignorant but it seem like Microsoft has little to say to the LOB app developer other than to say "just keep on using WPF, Silverlight, WinForms, or whatever -- we'll still support you." Remind me again what big improvements are coming down the pipe for WPF in .NET 4.5?

• Asynchrony
• Asynchrony
• Ribbon licensing
• Itemscontrol scaling
• MVVM improvements
• Asynchrony

Skip to around 0:32:00 here.

Firstly, and being completely selfish for a second, I was pleased to see the concept of the store. 

Secondly, I was encouraged that much of what I have learned in the last 18 months or so of WP7 development (and prior to this with pure Silverlight) has put me in good shape for Metro style development on Win8. (I am less excited about HTML5 from a dev perspective but understand the desire to maintain the legacy thread while at the same time apealling to the widest possible audience).

I have used Win8 on the Acer 1640p from the PDC and found that I adapted to the two interfaces quite quickly. As a developer I can live with the "schizophrenic UI" of the preview (I would like to be able to fire up the old start menu on occasion without resorting to hacks).

In an ideal world I would use the preview as my main development platform but the fact that I can't build for WP7 makes that impossible and probably means that I will spend less time in it than I would otherwise like.

Pleased that MS is still capable of doing 'brave things'- IMO absolutely necessary in the face of the competition and the speed of technological change.

Consumer thoughts

I guess there will be 2 hardware camps for some time to come (traditional PC and new style slate/touch devices) and I do have concerns that MS is trying to cover both with one product.  (for most users this is going to result in a lot of confusion)

The actual release should maybe market the same product (Win8) targetted/focussed on the different hardware devices: Phone*, Slate, PC etc.)?

WinRT itself is undoubtedly the right strategy going forward. In many ways it fulfils the .NET promise of giving Windows a much simpler and more modern API interface, without compromising what can be achieved. Many of the other concepts that are being embraced here such as contracts, system managed application lifecycle, sandboxing, asynchrony and task rather than thread focused multitasking are going to really help produce better applications. I really hope these will be extended into the desktop space in future, although I can see how that presents some difficult challenges.

As far as the Metro user interface goes, it's exceptionally good and capable of a lot more than I think some people are currently giving it credit for. It does still need work on defining the "language" for mouse/keyboard use as they are still a bit clunky in places where they don't really need to be. Having to use a scrollbar on the start screen, rather than treating the entire tile area as a dragable entity feels unnatural, for example. Refining the experience in Portrait mode displays would also be a good idea. Whilst it's not common to see ordinary monitor in portrait, it's super handy when reading documents and web pages on a tablet (as a tablet user since the days of XP Tablet Edition it's always been my preferred reading mode). App switching via ALT-TAB also needs work as it's currently a bit unpredictable, due to the way Metro apps are lifecycled.

There are some areas that I think need some refining. Notably the way WNS expires URI's for applications that haven't been run for 30 days, the official response seeming to be don't create tiles that will stop users wanting to run the full app. To me that seems to work against the benefit of Live Tiles and I'm sure there must be a cleaner way of accomplishing this without the WNS service being flooded with notifications for apps no longer in use.

I do industrial/military software and did not hear much about embedded windows 8.   The only thing that will help me greatly is fast boot times (huge in embedded control systems) and more use of touch screens which helps develop custom user interfaces.  We develop single function apps that take over your pc and just run. I dont want or need a Metro start screen but I could try to get creative in using it as a Control System launch point.  I do apps like a point of sales terminal but for factories and naval ships, etc.   I am not in the silverlight camp (although I was hoping it would succeed) but I do use C# and .NET and I am glad that is progressing.  

The tablet is cool but I love those new laptops from samsung (thin and light) and would trade my tablet anyday for one of those puppies.. 

To sum it up Build was about tablets and some new windows runtimes which help secure windows. Anders C# talk was still the best and I see this area still going strong even if .NET morphs into Windows runtime.

I've been using Dev11 for a couple of weeks and I like a lot of the new features.  Unfortunetely, my ancient C++ projects I have to work on for these QFEs are not immediately convertable to Dev11, or even VS2010, so I've been talking about migrating the C++ to "modern C++" instead of just fixing bugs (but they won't let me do it, yet).  I think migrating the legacy C++ would be a great idea if we just can schedule in the time; how nice it would be to get rid of most of the now unneccessary memory management which is the cause of most of the bugs I've seen in our code.

The GPU debugger and the other DirectX tools are a nice surprise and I wish I had some reason to use it; I will be giving it a try on my free time, eventually.

I've been tracking Roslyn for a long time now, and because I have source control access to Roslyn, so I knew that it wasn't ready for BUILD but was still being worked on right up to BUILD.  I was a bit dissappointed that it didn't make it into the Dev11 preview, but I am glad to hear it should be ready in the coming months.

The F# 3.0 type convertors look great.  I'm excited to see that, and hope the concept makes it into the rest of the .NET languages, ASAP.  I gave it a quick try against a database, just for kicks.  Super easy.

XAML for C++ ... great! 

I'll have more feedback for sure when I get Windows 8 installed.  First, I have to get a new SSD for it.

As far as the developer side goes, WinRT is a great idea. I'll have to play around with the dev tools, but maybe someone else can answer this. Can I have a WinRT app that utilizes .NET assemblies? Like something with a Metro UI but using ADO.NET to get data? Or an immersive window hosting a WPF user control?

8 minutes ago,spivonious wrote

*snip*

Is MS planning on releasing a touchpad mouse thing to add touch features to non-touchscreen monitors?

*snip*

Hmm, anyone tried one of these on Win8 yet?  Does it allow touch gestures?

Herbie

Might as well buy it retail from Amazon.

Edit: Doc, if you're thinking about acquiring one of those, read this guy's review. He called it "rubbish" initially, but he was able to make it better with some fine grit sandpaper. LOL 

10 hours ago,Charles wrote

So, what do you think about what you've learned about the future of our platform (and are undoubtedly still learning given the sheer number ofsessions available from BUILD)? Have you had a chance to download the Developer Preview technologies?

Speak up. For Windows 8 feedback and questions, go here: http://win8.ms/forums ( Pretty impressive who's monitoring the threads there )

C

well first i will say that this month i am moving accross town and that plus work and stuff has left me very little time to watch the sessions. so if i am missing something this may be why.

1)  Metro, start menu and all, we should have the option for the classic start menu if we want it. not sure if the dev preview just does not have the option showing or what but right now the switch is a pain to go back and forth.

2) WInRT / Win32 / .Net  still seems like a *LOT* of confusion on how this will play out.  what i *HOPE* the long term story will go like is that WinRT is the start of the eventual replacement of WIn32 and other really really old bits and that .Net will some day just call WinRT and we can move on.

3) Silverlight / WPF and RIA Services:   will RIA move to a place where it supports non -silverlight applications with the kind of tooling that we have for Silverlight now?  Will RIA move forward to work with Metro style apps and the new .Net 4.5 framework ?  not all data can / will be in Azure in the next 5 years.

4) GUI design standards: I sent in a tweet but there was not room to really explain this in full.  really i need to expand from just the GUI to windows as a whole:

Mr. C one of the things that has made the Mac / iPhone / iPad so popular that Microsoft has not really IMHO taken to heart and done the right work on yet is pushing the QUALITY of Apps and Drivers and Utilities.

This is *NOT* a simple easy thing to take on, i will say that right now i know it's hard.

but many of the things that kills the users windows exp.  is stuff like this:

not all the control panel applets have icons that match.

not all apps use the same visuals / layouts for dialog styles menus etc...

drivers that bring down the system.

applications that fail to follow the windows guidelines for stuff like where they put files in the filesystem.

the list goes on .... that's just the first few things i can name off.

it's the pain of a thousand tiny cuts adding up to the point where you just want to stop and go elsewhere.

Win8 and Metro are a good try at making some needed changes.  I really do hope that WinDiv will keep pushing to do more.

#1 I think is just a preview thing.

but 2,3 and 4 I think are things that we need to get a better story about.

I know that some things just can not be done in the next revision, but we should get a community roadmap where developers, designers  and microsoft can colaberate on what the priorities are.

They are calling this .net 4.5 and yet it doesn't have any of the familiar datatable stuff.

It has linq, but what good is that without data?

I would like to have more documentation on how to access sql server data similar to the way I do so currently.

28 minutes ago,foxjazz wrote

@figuerres:

 

They are calling this .net 4.5 and yet it doesn't have any of the familiar datatable stuff.

It has linq, but what good is that without data?

I would like to have more documentation on how to access sql server data similar to the way I do so currently.

Are you talking about .Net 4.5 or WinRT? They're two different things, even if they are similar.

WinRT uses IAsyncOperation its not Task but it supports await pattern.

http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jeffreyr/archive/2011/09/20/using-the-windows-runtime-from-a-non-metro-application.aspx

There is aloso AsyncInfoFactory class to convert a Task to IAsyncOperation stuff.

8 hours ago, Ian2 wrote

I guess there will be 2 hardware camps for some time to come (traditional PC and new style slate/touch devices) and I do have concerns that MS is trying to cover both with one product. (for most users this is going to result in a lot of confusion)

The actual release should maybe market the same product (Win8) targetted/focussed on the different hardware devices: Phone*, Slate, PC etc.)?

See I disagree that there as the industry moves forward that there are two distinct hardware camps. For example touch screen labtops, the ablity to dock devices such as tablets (and phones) calls for the ablity to support both tradional desktop apps and touch screen based apps.

Given that I was disapointed by the lack of information regarding the use of WinRt on the desktop and if there is any support for applications that present users both a metro based interface, and a wpf interface depending on the context the application is running in.

• Itemscontrol scaling 

Watched the complete video and the ItemsControl metric is staggering. Charles this is one of the main reasons that WPF has been justifiably slaughtered as slow. Pretty much every data control i.e. listbox, treeview, datagrid, listview is an items control, in fact I had to renege to a winforms chart control in a recent project. This was a pretty significant bug, that affected the uptake of the platform, and why some of us keep asking for continued investment in the technology.

People complaining that WPF was slow were right

12 hours ago,cbae wrote

*snip*

• Asynchrony
• Asynchrony
• Ribbon licensing
• Itemscontrol scaling
• MVVM improvements
• Asynchrony

Skip to around 0:32:00 here.

While I agree the async stuff is utterly fantastic your inflated list makes my point. IMO, Microsoft will be lessening it's investment in Silverlight/WPF and will be pushing WinRT/Metro.

19 hours ago,Charles wrote

So, what do you think about what you've learned about the future of our platform (and are undoubtedly still learning given the sheer number ofsessions available from BUILD)?

It looks promising.  More to review before knowing for sure.  From what I've seen so far it looks like I may finally be able to avoid having an objective-c project and programmer on staff.  It seems we may end up with a cohesive platform mix of cloud, desktop, server, and devices at both the OS and development level.

19 hours ago,Charles wrote

Have you had a chance to download the Developer Preview technologies?

No.  Scott Hanselman says he installed it side by side with VS 2010 without issues ("so far").  In our environment we still have VS 2005 for Windows Mobile development so I can't risk it.  A spare PC may become available shortly at which time I'll see what I can do.

C

I'm glad that I won't have to p-invoke crappy old Win32 functions from Metro. But I'm a little irritated at this carrot / stick game with metro / non-metro non-ie development scheme.

What I think would be really interesting is if, the Metro platform was given away for free. But it you wanted the classic windows part. Charge me $100. That way you could see massive up-take, right away.

-Josh

We need some kind of a developer program to facililtate this please.

Thanks for listening.

All in all I'm thinking that I'd really enjoy it on a tablet (I actually debated wether to buy one of those Dell swivelling-screen things to run the dev preview on so that I'd have a keyboard and mouse for Visual Studio and just swivel it to tablet mode for the full tablet experience) but decided against it for now. Not convinced by the mouse keyboard scenario just yet. There's too much stuff you have to go back to the desktop for, and then it's kind of a pain. It could grow on me, who knows.

Also lots of stuff isn't working. The news feed app doesn't do anything, the weather app doesn't do anything... hard to judge the user experience that way.

C