back to article Windows 8: Microsoft’s high-stakes .NET tablet gamble

There is a long discussion over on the official Silverlight forum about Microsoft's Windows 8 demo at D9 and what was said, and not said; and another over on Channel 9, Microsoft's video-centric community site for developers. At D9 Microsoft showed that Windows 8 has a dual personality. In one mode it has a touch-centric user …

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  1. tempemeaty
    Big Brother

    To take the computer out of our computers...

    Well if HTML and Javascript is the future for Windows applications then MS would succeed in pushing the world one more baby step closer to being ready to run all applications off a remote server over a WAN connection instead of natively on the "device" itself. Oops I said device not computer...yeah, that EXACTLY the plan.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      Suicidal

      That would be akin to bending over and shouting 'Come here Google, I'm ready'

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    tit-le

    To be honest, it just sounds like some developers are throwing their toys out their prams to me. Shut up and put up with it guys!

    1. Frank 2
      FAIL

      id10t

      put up with what? The problem is that Microsoft are not being clear about the future of Windows development. We need to make decisions now but don't have the information needed to do so.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @idi0t

        It is pretty clear to me - things change, never more so in the world of IT where things change quickly all the time. You just have to by dynamic and adapt.

        Seems pretty simple to me. Developers are just arsey about change.

  3. John G Imrie

    Those who don't learn History are doomed to repeat it.

    "However, the Tiled mode has a new development platform based on HTML and Javascript"

    Isn't this just Windows ME part 2?

    1. GavinC

      Re: Those who don't learn History are doomed to repeat it.

      maybe not Windows ME, but definitely sounds like Active Desktop part 2...

      1. Renato
        Devil

        Active Desktop

        Oh yes! And the "tiles" are rebadged "channels"!

        Who knew Windows 98 was so advanced for its time?

        What next? A full blue screen saying you removed your diskett-- I mean, USB drive without ejecting it?

        I'm laughing so hard here...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Reducing the relevance of Silverlight makes sense

    Microsoft are in a difficult position. Silverlight as a technology has comprehensively failed, it's got only marginal visibility within corporate intranets and next to no visibility on the public web. On mobile platforms, it's even worse.

    It's expected that mobile platforms of the future will be HTML5 based, pushing aside many of the proprietary platforms that exist today (or at least rendering those proprietary platforms less important, with most apps being HTML5 based). Microsoft know this, and by supporting HTML5 as a first class citizen along with Silverlight they're simply hedging their bets. Ultimately they know their own unloved proprietary technology is likely to be the big loser a few years further down the road as the world embraces the multi platform open standard.

    It's hardly surprising to discover the Silverlight code monkeys are wailing and gnashing their teeth in anticipation of their proprietary platform being usurped by a multi platform open standard - when did you ever hear of a Microsoft coder seeing the bigger picture? Rather than welcome and embrace the new HTML5 technology, they instead petition Microsoft to poison every other platform by porting their proprietary Silverlight run-time more widely. That ain't gonna happen, and with the ever diminishing number of Silverlight developers - which was never great - the only option that makes any sense for Microsoft is HTML5...

    1. Spearchucker Jones
      FAIL

      As usual...

      ...the real answer lies somewhere in the middle.

      A lot of what you say about HTML5 is true. But there are scenarios in which server-based apps won't work. Apps where you need greater security than TLS, for instance.

      Sure, HTML5 apps can work in a disconnected state, but you're still constrained by the security of the browser (or lack thereof). Phones lack crypto stuff like DPAPI so there's little option than to use public/private key-pairs - which isn't going to work in HTML5 for a long time.

      If you're going to preach a single approach you need a more compelling justification than calling Silverlight devs code monkeys.

      All of that said, the panic is hilarious. I have no doubt that Windows 8 on ARM will run .NET in some way, shape or form.

  5. rhettmash

    Native support..

    Windows strength traditionally has been it's ala cart approach for developers. Depending on the requirements and comfort, devs chose their implementation platform.

    Looking at the spectrum, you have

    - native code infused with Win32, GDI, Direct X and/or MFC/ATL,

    - unstrict .net (managed C++ mixed with native, unsafe C#)

    - pure .net (along with WPF, Silverlight, etc)

    - Web based HTML + Client script

    - Functional languages like F#, etc.

    If you look at some of the richer apps, they tend to fall in the first two categories. Although MS has tried to push the third (.net) heavily, eventually it boils down to the fact that at some point, regardless of the perceived excessive resources, we will need tight code; code that talks to the hardware as close as possible. It's also the reason, many apps tend to have asm blocks for some high impact code.

    The current revolution is not that of tablets, but it's a revolution of moving towards highly portable, extremely power efficient and highly reliable devices. The iPad is successful not just because of the app store and user experience, but also because of it's unmatched battery life combined with it's instant ON reliability. To keep up with those requirements,

    - the dev platform of choice needs to be auditable (cert process) to keep misbehaving apps out of the system

    - the dev platform needs to have performance metrics that match if not rival the most low level form of development. i.e. the language compilers/runtime should be effective and smart enough to produce code that matches the performance metrics of written assembly. The argument that current devices have excessive resources be it CPU cycles or memory is moot; devs will find a way to use all of it.

    On the first point, Win 8 tablets are going to fall flat given that support for all legacy apps. Any misbehaving app can drain the battery or hold up my experience on the device.

    On the second point, I do think .net still has a long way to go before it's performance metrics can match native code. I'm not saying that it will never catch up. People felt the same way about C++, but today we have C++ compilers that produce very tight code. That in combination with good dev practices to not abuse the language, make it the choice for performance conscious development. As of now, there is a significant performance penalty .net apps pay in comparison to native apps. WP7 is a great example. While the advertised dev platforms are .net with Silverlight / XNA, it is possible for serious dev partners to write native apps. The fact that such a provision exists should be telling that .net is not the most effective use of the hardware. Dont believe me...?? Ever wonder why the native phone apps lists scroll buttery smooth in comparison to the 3rd party apps jerky lists?

    At the end of the day, IMO, if MS wants to rival the iPad successfully..

    - Go vertical (do the hardware + software) so that they can clearly define and control the power and instant ON experience

    - Take a cert approach for all apps (including legacy apps). That way existing apps can rework their code to be certified. App devs benefit from being able to release their existing apps for the new platform with little work and MS benefits from having legacy apps that are well behaved.

    - Create a killer common UI toolkit that under the skin is built on tight native code.

    - Support all 4 dev platforms with certification processes and thin layer interfaces that expose the above mentioned toolkit

    - purely native

    - semi managed with the option to drop down to native

    - managed

    - web tech based

  6. Adam Trickett
    Alert

    What is new?

    Big company (Microsoft in this case but it could be anyone) creates a technology goes on about it, but then abandons it without so much a by or leave. Microsoft have done this many times before as have lots of other companies, what's new?

    1. Uncle Slacky Silver badge
      Headmaster

      It's...

      "by YOUR leave".

      1. Elmer Phud

        thank you

        use it or loose it

    2. wmarkjones

      What's new? Are you kidding?

      I guess you're not any sort of developer who has succeeded in their career and business by spending time building serious products using Microsoft technology. I have been a software engineer since the late 70s, and much of that time has been spent developing software for Windows of one sort or another. Simply put, this latest move by Microsoft is unprecedented in its baffling antagonism toward both the developer community but also (and more importantly) toward its huge customer base. Although MSFT has pulled the plug on various products, they have never done something like this, which is tantamount to dropping ongoing commitment to mature, proven, and still-growing technologies that run circles around HTML5/JS. I would challenge you to respond with any examples of major application products, let alone entire software infrastructures, that have been scrapped the way it appears Microsoft is doing here with their walking away from Silverlight/WPF/.NET in their Windows strategy.

      1. Jason Terando
        Windows

        Not Exactly Unprecedented

        The whole VB6 to VB.NET deal was met with angst, and lets not get started on the constant "reinvention" of the data layer we've put up with (ODBC, ADO, RDO, ADO.NET, LINQ to SQL, and now Data Entity Framework). Remember FoxPro? Microsoft has never been one to be coy about calling a "mulligan".

        That being said, if I can write quality front-ends for applications that are data-centric using HTML5/JS, and have them work on any device (PC, tablet, smartphone) without worrying about plug-ins, I think that's groovy. It's not like WPF is all that great, for example it's still cumbersome to write asynchronously updating UI's (why should I have to bother with InvokeRequired/Invoke?)

        To me, the biggest risk is the immaturity of HTML5 and the beginnings of fragmentation we are seeing in implementations. Once we do get a standard, workable baseline for things like Canvas and HTTP sockets worked out though, it's going to be hard to make an argument to write all but the most demanding client apps (games?) in anything locked down to the Windows GUI.

        1. ThomasW

          probably a strategy to split the standard.. again.

          Microsoft's a**hole strategy is probably to try & split the standard again, to 'join up' & then bastardize and debase it -- to lock people in.

          IE is the biggest load of turd, and entry point for 85% of malware & viruses currently on the net -- use Firefox, it's faster, better & more useable anyway. IE can't even listen properly for a Ctrl-T new tab command. Lazy piece of turd.

          MSDN is full of ratshit examples, Microsoft don't know how to build software, you couldn't possibly learn proper software techniques from these. Resources, exception handling, logging, reliability.. come to the Java platform and look at Spring, Hibernate, Apache if you want a real industrial platform.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fun!

    "...the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard Javascript and HTML to deliver new kinds of..."

    ...Malware?

    Closely coupling the browser and the OS again. Those who fail to learn from history, etc, etc

  8. Sentient
    Thumb Up

    Bewildering

    What's even more strange is that while MS is now pushing HTML5 and Javascript so hard their tools to create such rich internet applications are subpar to the competition. This of course due to the past focus on SL.

    Are they really going to sacrifice VS 2010 or try and compete with Adobe CS?

    On the other hand the developers in this forum do behave like drama queens.

  9. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Pirate

    Interoperability two-step?

    I suspect that this is a refined version of the old M$ "embrace, extend and extinguish" startegy. M$ is going to keep all the Silverlight and .NET goodies for later, after it has spun a good tale of interoperability with their competition. Previously, M$ has fought from the position of "our way is better", and then been forced to add in support for competitiors' products if only to avoid the attention of monopolies bodies and whilst fighting off law suits. Remember the M$ JVM fun? Sun made a mess of Java, M$ made the technically better job, but M$ took a brow-beating for their "aggressive startegy". This got M$ plenty of grief and split buyers into either pro-M$ or anti-M$ camps. I suspect that this time M$ will do an Oracle - play nice, get on the inside track, but produce their own and better product by ripping off the competition. The result allows M$ to say "try our way, it's better, but you can also use everyone else's toys if you want." The strategy allows M$ to have their own cake (apps which will only run on M$ tablet and phone products) but also eat everyone else's cake (all the general Java apps), but sidestep the monopolies worries. Oh, and I bet the M$ "our way" will have Flash!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Black Helicopters

      "aggressive strategy"

      By 'brow-beating for their "aggressive startegy"' I assume you mean: 'convictions for anti-competitive behaviour'.

  10. wmarkjones
    FAIL

    Problems run very deep on this issue

    The problems the developer community has with both Microsoft's distance from Silverlight/.NET and with its silence about the issue run deeper than you even imply in this article. The Windows and WP7 developer community is up in arms for very valid and inescapable technology reasons, which have very little to do with any superficial or groundless developer complaining (presumably because our pet platform is being yanked). On the contrary, Microsoft's proposal to replace Silverlight/.NET as the primary development platform with HTML5/Javascript, based on our collective and long experience, poses what most reasonably seem to be intractable problems:

    1) It won't work. Many of us complaining have extensive web development experience, and to even propose JavaScript as a serious component of a strategic development platform for non-widget, world-class applications is simply beyond belief, to put it mildly.

    2) HTML5 is in flux, both in its specification and in its multi-vendor implementations. It will remain a moving technology target for at least the next year or so. This platform instability is of course problematic to those who know and value the realities of stable, serious application platforms.

    3) By contrast, Silverlight and .NET are well proven, mature, very robustly developed, and revolve around world-class development languages, such as C#. To put it briefly, stacking up HTML5/JS against Silverlight/.NET is irresponsible, unrealistic, untenable, and frankly a joke.

    4) Waiting until September to travel across the country and be evangelized by the BUILD conference not only is expensive, but it is completely unnecessary in order to disclose the pertinent details required now from Microsoft to maintain the developer community's trust and loyalty. Furthermore, the timing could not be worse (at least for everyone except Apple and Google), for various reasons that go well beyond the scope of this brief note.

    5) The MSFT position on this "new" development platform (which is really not new at all in our experience), draws clear and serious lines of technical demarcation between WP7, Windows 8, and the Windows desktop, making application portability difficult at best between the three platforms if we are to remain committed to a seamless user experience and to robust systems that are affordable to develop and port.

    The seasoned developer community which, at least for the vast majority of us, strongly objects to Microsoft's positioning and lack of information on this does problem, does not need to hear anything at this point from Microsoft except a relaxing of their exclusive dogma and instead replacing it with a continued commitment to Silverlight and .NET. We aren't interested in propaganda. We are interested in responsible, honest communication and real support.

    1. An ominous cow heard
      Thumb Up

      have you thought about platform independent development?

      Y'know, using things like Qt, from that nice Elop chap's company?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Speak for yourself.

      "...to even propose JavaScript as a serious component of a strategic development platform for non-widget, world-class applications is simply beyond belief, to put it mildly."

      There's this niche product called "Google mail", it's not long been out of beta but you might want to take a look at it. Doubt it's as anywhere near world class as anything that someone like you with your extensive web development experience has built...

  11. mafoo
    Devil

    Dashboard

    "Windows 8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using standard Javascript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences."

    So basically its orange dashboard/konfabulator widgets...

  12. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Coat

    The battle of wills inside MS?

    If the 'WP7' is great guys win then to do any serious dev in the future you may well have to buy (at great cost) Windows Server 20xx to do any app dev. This would leave W8 for the home (picture, music, FB, TW lovers)

    This will not please the business sector one little bit.

    I'd love to be wrong but I do have a vision of Balmer with a really big foot gun here.

    Its raining so I will need it today

    1. wmarkjones
      Alert

      WP7 and "Windows Server 20xx" ??

      Huh? I'm interested in understanding how you're linking WP7 to Windows 8, and I'm also wondering what you think is the relationship between WP7 development and MS server products. I've done quite my share of WP7 app development, and I don't get it. Finally, you obviously think that the developer community wants all future programming models to be based on WP7. I think you don't get it. Reply back if you want to know more.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    So MIcrosoft did what HP and far east manufcturers should have done

    This is exactly what HP should have done with WebOS - run it on top of a legacy OS (more than one if possible), bring it up and push it back as needed. Ditto for Android and the raft of bogus dual-boot/quick boot concepts perpetrated by the likes of Accer, Asus, etc.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      On top of a legacy OS?

      But that's *exactly* what Android does!

  14. Gareth Gouldstone
    Happy

    Windows 8 Tiled mode?

    Oh, yes, i remember the Windows 1.x interface. Funny how, if you wait long enough, history repeats.

    I wonder if we'll get Program Manager and File Mangler included?

    1. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Program Manager, surely you mean...

      ...oh, it's gone. (looks up Wikipedia) Ah, "MS-DOS Executive", that was it. Happy days. Well, not altogether.

  15. thunder

    Same old story

    This is MS changing the rules again as in the past. We've got a fairly popular consumer app for which we did the user interface in WPF. What a pain in the arse that turned out to be. Slowness, .NET problems, high memory usage, video card problems - but it looks great :)

    It seems MS is not really going to do much about improving WPF in the future so we've been forced to look at alternatives and a browser UI seems to be the way to go, plus it's cross platform. I'm not waiting around to see what MS does, it looks like cross platform c++ and a browser UI will be some way to future proof things. We get emails daily from Windows users switching to Macs.

    1. Sentient
      Trollface

      Troll Alert

      Ever considered it's your code and not .NET or WPF?

      Switching to Macs or iOS?

      1. thunder

        Reply to Troll

        Evernote had the same problems, and replaced WPF with a C++ UI. Quote from their site:

        "Evernote 4 is a major departure from Evernote 3.5 in every way. While 3.5 added tons of great new features, there were some problems we simply couldn’t fix: the blurry fonts, slow startup times, large memory footprint, and poor support for certain graphics cards were all issues that the technology behind 3.5 (Windows .net and WPF) was incapable of resolving. As a result, we ended up chasing down platform bugs rather than adding the great features our users wanted.

        So we decided to start over from scratch, with fast, native C++ that we knew we could rely on. As you’ll see, the results are amazing. This new version will set a foundation for rapid improvement."

        Ours is a desktop app, so people switching to Macs

  16. ShaggyDog
    FAIL

    HTML5 + JavaScript: Oh Boy

    As a newbie to web-development (but with a LONG background of rich-client dev on Java Swing and MFC, etc) I am horrified by the backwards step that is JavaScript. It's great in many ways (especially with jQuery), BUT the lack of encapsulation leaves me shivering. Not being able to manage complexity by encapsulating a control is rubbish. No (real) classes, no namespaces or packages.. Brrr.

    So, MS choosing this, is a backwards step for software "engineering".

    1. ThomH

      Fingers crossed for new development tools

      Javascript isn't very nice, but quite a few people are working on that without any need to change the infrastructure underneath. The specific examples may not be to your liking, but e.g. Objective-J and CoffeeScript are both languages that attempt to improve on and compile down to Javascript.

      Microsoft do some of the best development tools in the world and have in-house language design expertise. They've also got a pretty good HTML engine nowadays. So if they decide to go with HTML+CSS+Javascript as a replacement for native code, I'm optimistic they'll be able to deliver a fantastic toolset that isn't in any way limited by the semantics of Javascript, and retain good end-user performance.

    2. CD001

      You're doing it wrong

      JavaScript does support objects and encapsulation - you just need to tweak your mindset a little.

      All a class is, in JavaScript, is a function - you just nest functions inside the function and it's a class, you just have to bear in mind where you declare your variables determines their scope.

      Declaring your variables, with var, inside the function restricts their scope to that function so a very basic encapsulated class might look like:

      function User() {

      var name;

      this.setName = function (sName) {

      name = sName;

      }

      this.getName = function() {

      return name;

      }

      }

      That creates a private class member called name that cannot be accessed or overridden - if you want to try it (fast and dirty JS time)...

      ----

      var theUser = new User();

      theUser.setName("Fred Bloggs");

      document.writeln(theUser.name);

      document.writeln(theUser.getName());

      theUser.name = "Joe Bloggs";

      document.writeln(theUser.name);

      document.writeln(theUser.getName());

      ----

      That will print out:

      undefined

      Fred Bloggs

      Joe Bloggs

      Fred Bloggs

      So whilst you've created a new public class member called "name" it hasn't actually overridden the private class member defined by "var name;".

      ... of course, if you were going to get textbook about it you should probably create the basic "class" function and then prototype it.

      1. wmarkjones
        Joke

        JavaScript is a joke

        Yeah, yeah, the note title doesn't apply in all cases. It does apply in the case of JS acting as the coding technology for Windows 8 apps. In that context, it's a joke. Your example and explanations only further reinforce my point. Try out a real, modern programming language like C#. I've done tons of development in both JS and C#, and I'll say it again --- JAVASCRIPT IS A JOKE.

        1. CD001

          Umm...

          @wmarkjones : If that was aimed at me...

          I've done enough C# (Java and C++ before that) to know that yes, JavaScript ISN'T the greatest thing since sliced bread (personally I prefer strictly typed languages such as C#) BUT, the point I was trying to make is that, like any language, it's possible to do it WRONG and make it even more painful than it needs to be.

          If you understand JS it's not a bad little hacky-about scripting language - great for what it was designed for but it's now being shoe-horned into a whole variety of other applications where it's not the best fit.

          If you want to quickly build a native Windows app you can't beat C# (in VS2010), it certainly beats Java with the Netbeans Platform (or formerly Swing) - if you want to make a web page do something other than display static markup - then JS is the right choice. *shrugs*

    3. Nathan 6
      Thumb Up

      Excellent Point

      It always surprising me how people who come from a HTML/JS background always believe you can do all sorts of complex apps using that technology, while those of us coming from Java/Swing who do AJAX stuff quickly sees that it's a bad idea to go completely that direction. What's needed is a good balance, and once of the best I have found is GWT.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @wmarkjones

    Hear hear

  18. Andy Farley

    How long is left for Balmer?

    The man's a liability.

    Dear Reg, please do a review of his impact on MS and explain why he's still in his position.

    All the best,

    Andy.

  19. Filippo Silver badge

    SL/.net versus HTML5/Javascript

    I can understand dropping Silverlight for HTML5 and Javascript. I don't like it, for all the reasons wmarkjones detailed, but I "get" that HTML5 is the big standard and there are so many web browsers nowadays that you need to use a standard or die. I mean, I can't use Silverlight apps on smartphones, and Mono doesn't really work.

    What I don't get is the idea of dropping .NET on the desktop. That's plain outright *insane*. Windows developers, as a general rule, *love* WPF and .NET even though they mean your apps don't work outside Windows, because back here in the desktop world nobody gives a crap about portability. We want ease of development, and we want good engineering.

    The idea of one day having to do a desktop app in HTML5 and Javascript (because .NET has been left behind and no longer supports something crucial) frankly terrifies me, because it would probably take twice as long if I'm lucky, and I get paid by results. I'm looking at major income loss here. The only upside is that the app is easy to port to other platforms, something I can't monetize as I can dictate the OS to my customers already anyway.

    And what does MS exactly gain by pushing developers towards standards on the desktop? MS is the underdog in the web world, so it has a lot to gain by pushing standards - WP7 has a lot more value if it can run everything that's developed for other platforms. But on the desktop, the situation is reversed. There's almost nothing to be gained from other platforms, but there's lots and lots of Windows-only stuff. Why would they want their numberless hordes of Windows-only developers to learn skills that can be easily applied to Linux or Mac?

    1. wmarkjones

      Think about it

      Filippo,

      You say, "I can't use Silverlight apps on smartphones". I'm assuming you mean that you can't display either a webpage containing a Silverlight app, nor can you run a native, out-of-browser SL app, on a smartphone. Both are true in general, with one pretty notable exception -- MANY WP7 APPS ARE OUT-OF-BROWSER SILVERLIGHT APPS. Specifically, there are two WP7 presentation (application layer) platforms -- Silverlight and XNA Framework. So if you're not developing a game using XNA, you're developing a Silverlight app. At least for now.

      Realizing that a good portion of all Windows 7 Phone apps are based on Silverlight, and also realizing the tremendous investment in design, engineering, development, etc. required to deliver those thousands of applications to the Marketplace, kinda makes one wonder what's going to happen to the WP7 platform and also wonder what's going to happen to all Microsoft's and the devs' customers who have purchased and now rely on these (apparently obsolete) Silverlight apps. Hmmm ...

      So it would appear that Microsoft isn't just pulling the rug out from underneath its long-time, loyal .NET/Silverlight devs. It's applying a big wedgie to its own customers too. Think about it.

  20. pip25
    FAIL

    Am I the only one who's reminded of Microsoft Bob?

    Instead of a shell (supposedly) aimed at people who find icons scary, now we have a separate shell meant for tablet devices IN PARALLEL to the regular one - since desktop users will likely be reluctant to start swiping their monitors or imitate the same behavior with a mouse. (Or at least I cannot imagine them seriously advertising this tiles-based nonsense for desktop PCs.)

    Microsoft could have tried going for a UI that builds upon the old one, but incorporates both touch gestures and traditional input devices well; I'm not sure it's possible, but they could have made a stab at it at least. However, with this move they more or less admitted that as much as they would like, they cannot create a version of the Windows OS which is suitable for both tablets, laptops and desktops. As I see it, Windows 8 will be more or less two OSs as far as UI goes; the fragmentation this will cause (apparently affecting even Microsoft's closest fans, the Silverlight and .NET programmers) is just the icing on the cake.

  21. Tchou
    Pint

    Learn native

    language, and free yourself from techno-hype.

    C or C++. Grow in expertise, get better jobs, better money.

    Work on more interesting projects.

    Give yourself the possibility to really make a difference by using what Microsoft, Apple and other BigCos are using to make their tools (Objective-C, .net, .....)

    This is what really make softwares for nearly 40 years now.

  22. Sentient
    Childcatcher

    Native HTML

    http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html

    Runs 'Native' on Windows, compiles to something that works a bit on non windows.

  23. David 84
    Stop

    Apps are the foundation for future success

    Silverlight 4 is at the heart of the Mango release of WP7, so much so that it now underpins and provides API calls to the XDA engine. My expectation was, and remains despite this article, that Windows 8 will provide this same functionality.

    I have published a WP7 app and am working on a Silverlight version for the PC, 90% of the code is transferable; my only frustration is the lack of a Metro theme to quickly replicate the UI and I’m expecting this to be available on Windows 8. If I have to rewrite my app to use Javascript and HTML5 I’m really going to be pretty pissed off.

    Microsoft have to compete against iPad and Android tablets and the only way they can do this is by having competing Apps. Don’t tell me to write it in one form for the WP7 and then give me something completely different (and weaker) for a tablet.

    For the consumer market Apps are a key feature, if Microsoft are going to have any penetration then a pretty seamless move between WP7 and Win8 is going to have to be available. Where is the competitive advantage for Microsoft in forcing developers to work with HTML5?

    1. multipharious

      @David 84 - Nice Summary

      Normally I would just upvote this and move along, but you really hit the nail on the head here. The portability is the point, and would be a clear advantage.

    2. Raphael M

      Most transferable of all

      Wouldn't you and you clients also have to support iOS and Android as they have a huge momentum, in fact much bigger than WP7 and even possible Win8? Wouldn't XHTML5 apps be the most transferable of them all, not only from tablet to desktop but also to all 4 platforms(including WebOS)?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why not wait for an official statement ?

    I mean, its all nice and well to start speculating, but why base your opinion on statements from a techie which are most likely incomplete and fully out of context (no offense to the techie ofcourse) ?

    In this case I think the only reason why people are seriously questioning all of this is because MS has done something like this before. Do we still remember the "Active desktop" on Windows 98 ? And most of all; what eventually happened to it ?

    Personally I seriously wonder if this information is accurate. And if it is how much it would really influence us. I mean; if there's one thing MS learned its that backwards compatibility is important. I conclude as much from several issues like including their virtual pc application and an XP image with every copy of Win7 professional.

    So even if they do try to roll this out in favor of .NET I don't think it means .NET will suddenly cease to exist. Just look at vbscript. They have serious plans of dropping support for it, but not in the near future.

    1. wmarkjones
      Facepalm

      Active Desktop??

      ShelLuser,

      You said, "In this case I think the only reason why people are seriously questioning all of this is because MS has done something like this before. Do we still remember the "Active desktop" on Windows 98 ?"

      It's easy to see, when comparing the significance of Win98 Active Desktop against the significance of Silverlight or any comparable presentation-layer technology, that there is really no comparison. In light of the entire scope of this issue, I must disagree -- No, MS has NOT really done something like this before, certainly not on this scale. All other products they have abandoned have either died a natural death or proved within the market that they were really bad or poorly-executed ideas. They were also products which had little following, therefore the cost of discarding them was relatively low all the way around. Not so at all with Silverlight/C#/WPF/.NET.

      Again, no comparison.

    2. wmarkjones
      Unhappy

      Why not wait for an official statement ? -- I thought we had one

      ShelLuser,

      You said, "Why not wait for an official statement ?". Of course, Microsoft has made the official statement, in overly-brief but still very clear and emphatic terms, that HTML5/JS is the supported development platform for new Windows 8 apps. Period. This is their official story, and they're sticking to it.

      If instead you're asking, "Why not wait for the BUILD conference?", I would just wonder whether you are a developer of phone and desktop apps who needs to make decisions now so they can be prepared for the launch of Mango (WP7.5) later this year, and so they can also be prepared for the launch of Windows 8 next year. If you are in that position, as many many others such as I am, then waiting for the BUILD conference proves to be a somewhat unrealistic expectation.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Good point

        @wmarkjones

        Good point, I'm not operating in that specific segment and as such overlooked the obvious here. Thanks for your comment.

  25. multipharious

    Radio Silence

    There is not going to be anything from Microsoft employees leading up to the Build. If you re-read the moderator post on the SL forum that seems to be sparking the furor, he isn't thrilled about it either. From what I hear this is a top down command to the Microsoft employees to not blog, comment, or anything and it is clear from how he wrote it. All we can do at this point is speculate. I have been keeping my eyes on this since last year when SilverLight was more or less (for right or wrong) declared dead and HTML5 was the future (insert ensuing uproar.) I do want to point out that SL5 is in beta.

    "I'm not dead!"

    "What?"

    "Nothing, here's your 9 pence..."

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Bono estente!

    "CHA-NEL 9!"

    (Actually, the real joke is on everyone buying so far into Microsoft's technologies that if they turn around they can just about make out, through a now somewhat distant opening, the glistening reflection on the water in the toilet bowl.)

  27. DBJDBJ

    Google ante portas

    http://dbj.org/dbj/?p=893

  28. xyz Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Finally we're dumping the kludge

    IMHO.. and in respect of web development, MS completely fucked up the browser based client side starting with .Net 1 and have continued that fuck up until they finally understood what they should have been doing with MVC. .Net web development is a joke, remember every click refreshed the page...Jesus. Then Ajax was shoehorned in but as a bloated monster from hell. And then theres bloody silverlight which is another POS and should have been strangled at birth.

    Just seeing how often you have to reboot your sharepoint servers should have given you a clue that the jig was up for this bloated junk which was probably only ever developed to give old VB client server programmers a future.

    I've been using VS since the original 1997 version and had decided to part company with MS instead of buying VS 2010, because I thought they had got it so wrong. Now this has given me hope that they finally understand what they're doing.

  29. Robert E A Harvey
    FAIL

    Ah, right

    So M$ want us to buy an M$ tablet instead of a robot or fruit based one, because then we get our familiar M$ environment in which all our software runs.

    Then when we get it we discover it won't run all our old software, 'cos it wants everything to be in html and magic fairy stuff.

    Marketing win? or marketing drop? you decide.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Meh

    Why bother with any of this?

    As much as they have pumped it down the throats of as many devs as they could, MS themselves never actually go round to writing any of their bread and butter products in .Net nor did they ever get around to that "fully managed" OS (ha-ha, what a naive notion).

    It doesn't matter what they do. Windows will aways be an unholy mess thrown together in C and C++ and so will their Office apps line. That ain't never going to change. NEVER. They will keep telling you that API calls are "too complicated" to be made in "legacy" languages and you'll all still bend yourselves outta shape trying to keep with with their latest weirdly abstracted layer of whatever-it-is-this-week programming paradigm/fad.

    But wait. What's this over the horizon? CLOUD computing! Oh this is going to be fun to watch.

  31. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    The historical precedent...

    ...is surely not Active Desktop but VB6.

    Microsoft took an entire "platform" and dumped it in the nearest skip. VB6 developers were given the option of re-writing under .NET, which although the closest match at the time was still largely untested and not *that* close if you wanted a new release of a major application Real Soon Now. They got away with it because, like it or not (and many didn't) the brutal fact was that the company best placed to offer migration options away from VB6 was ... Microsoft.

    It's called vendor lock-in, kids. If you weren't paying attention ten years ago, here's a second chance to learn the same lesson.

  32. Sil
    FAIL

    A disaster

    I can't believe Microsoft will do such a big mistake.

    Microsoft strength has always been the ecosystem: developers, IT consulting shops, trainers, that could make a good living on Microsoft platforms with Microsoft APIs.

    To alienate 95% of the dev community for an underwhelming, not finalized HTML 5 and javascript platform when the .net platform clearly is more comprehensive, fast and mature would be Microsoft's biggest failure ever and would absolutely deserve the firing of Steve Balmmer and any senior executive that took part in this decision.

    To promote HTML5 + javascript as an OS platform is to promote chrome notebooks and all its BS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      I can ...

      "I can't believe Microsoft will do such a big mistake."

      I can.

      You make the mistake of believing that Microsoft is being run by sane, rational people with a sense of historical perspective.

      Phhhhhhh ...

    2. roadhog
      FAIL

      @sil Not disaster inevitable

      "Microsoft strength has always been the ecosystem: developers, IT consulting shops, trainers, that could make a good living on Microsoft platforms with Microsoft APIs."

      Baloney, microsofts strength was that 90% of what people wanted to run required the

      windows API, and that API was so obfuscated that no one really bothered to emulate it.

      Now 90% of what people want is on facebook, which requires a html renderer and a flash

      renderer if you are unlucky. The windows API is now irrelevant to most of the world and is

      a pain in the ass for the rest. .NET never even got close to killing flash.

      HTML can run just about anywhere, javascript is a less load of crap than flash, requiring a

      less load of crap renderer.

      I used to code only DOS/windows centric apps but i haven't coded anythign that is windows

      specific in about 5 years and to do so now would be anachronistic.

      IBM used to rule the roost with mainframes,

      Microsoft ruled the world with desktops,

      the new ruler(looks like facebook at the moment) will rule with internet client machines

      that are chrome like

      ie smart phones, tablets or such

      (you know the devices people like more than computers because they are cheap,

      easy to use and you can carry them around)

      that run the common presentation layer which is html/javascript.

      .NET like java will be confined to the server.

      Microsoft needs to split or start selling off divisions like IBM did.

  33. Geoffrey Swenson
    Thumb Up

    C# is great, ASP.net not so much

    Its been apparent for some time that the overly complex model of ASP.Net has some serious limitations. I've been writing end-runs around the clunky mess of server-side controls, overly complex page states, and the multitudes of ways that it fights you in creating dynamically generated controls. One of my bosses once told me that I wrote too much JavaScript, and I didn't try to argue -- I just found a better place to work instead.

    C# and visual studio are both really nice, and work just fine for back end code. I'm also very impressed with the ASP.Net MVC platform, which has an elegant simplicity that makes it much more flexible for writing complex dynamically generated applications.

    The original promise of the ASP.Net postback page model was that you could link together controls on the server side and not have to worry very much about HTML and JavaScript which were all handled for you automagically. The reality was huge amounts of bugs, complexity, poorly constructed HTML, bloated viewstate stuffed into hidden controls on the page, and more time spent turning off unwanted features and restyling garishly ugly control layouts that it would take to write something much more simple and elegant from scratch.

    I was a fan of the first versions of Silverlight which was a graphics engine that you scripted on the client side with JavaScript much like SVG. I wrote a couple of charting functions that were nicely interactive and much easier to deal with than Flash, and rendered much more quickly than SVG. But then a new version reversed this, broke all my code, and reintroduced the bloated ASP.net model of controlling Silverlight indirectly on the server side with C#. I really didn't want to go there and the early buggy betas made it very hard to code anything that worked. On top of that there were a lot of complex abstractions to learn, and until I had a paying project - or noticed much of a demand for Silverlight developers -- there wasn't enough time to wrap my head around it.

    Some of this makes you almost wish for classic ASP since it was simple. (But not VBscript!).

    HTML 5 is in some ways going back to SVG and the original Silverlight model of mixing HTML elements and graphics together using JavaScript. It is much more direct and flexible. It doesn't supersede C# as an excellent language for coding the back end. But it makes sense to do more scripting on the client side because it scales better and it makes the user experience so much more immediate and flexible.

  34. Mikel
    Flame

    When you're chained to an oar

    Then you expect to go down with the ship.

    Windows developers have proven time and again there's nothing Microsoft can do to make them go away. They will whine and moan on their blogs, and then go back to their cubicles and code away muttering foul obscenities and wishing ill of the Redmond gang just as they always have.

    So boo hoo. They're going to deprecate your certs again and sell you more courses and books and tests all over again you schmucks. And if they feel like it they'll do it again in a year and you will stand in line to take it AGAIN.

  35. Tim Almond

    Simple...

    Silverlight and WPF are basically going nowhere. Look on Jobserve for the number of jobs asking for them. It's tiny.

    The use of HTML and JS for desktops makes sense, I think. Most new development both for internal systems and intranet is browser-based. Allowing those users to reuse those skills on desktop applications makes sense.

  36. John Styles

    Fruiterer analogy (as in 'Hello Glastonbury, we are...')

    Fruiterer: 'Hey, we're going to sell bananas'

    Bloggers and Register commenters: 'oh, no, there are going to be no more oranges, that's a big mistake, we want oranges'

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