This allows developers to focusing on creating great apps and not worry about language or design tooling as much. Like CSS and the DOM but haven’t touched XAML? That’s fine. You bring your own skills to the table and can equally be successful. Should you be learning JavaScript or C++ to use WinRT? Nope. Managed code, C++ and JavaScript can all use the WinRT to equal effectiveness. The other (perhaps more important) part of what this slide implies is that everyone is on an equal footing for WinRT. This is awesome in that the performance of applications is greatly helped by this. In WinRT, DirectX is used to draw the entire user interface and handle all the input so the APIs aren’t mapped back to Win32. The true value in what Microsoft is doing is creating a new, object-oriented version of Win32 called the Windows Runtime (or WinRT for short). First, for desktop applications, nothing really changes (yeah, that’s a big deal…later in this post I’ll say more about that). You can see how it fits into the ecosystem from a slide I saw at build: It’s actually a little old and a little new. Some said it was simply the new Win32 some said it was the new. There was some confusion about what WinRT exactly was after the keynotes. WinRT and the New Development Environment It has to be fast and have great apps (I know, that’s our job). My only hesitation is that until we see Win8/Metro on ARM tablets, I won’t be completely convinced that Microsoft has a real competitor for iPad. Lots of great improvements, first class touch and it’s fast. Overall, the end-user story for Windows 8 is really good. Allow Adding Custom Apps to Lock Screen.Windows Live Integration (including syncing of settings).Picture Passwords (though not available for domain-connected machines). Some of my favorite parts of Win8 so far are (in no particular order): I am not sure I won’t turn off Metro on my laptops/desktops, or at least keep it on a second monitor. That’s how we win…getting consumers to buy devices. I know this is a limitation for some power users, but this will make the tablets great devices for real-people (not us). I was ecstatic to hear Microsoft clarify that the tablets will be Metro-only (or at least no x86 apps will run on it). The bifurcation of the OS into desktop and Metro feels odd though. The keyboards work mostly, though I’d love to see more use of context specific keyboards (e.g. I find the navigating apps a little more trouble than I’d like it to be and icon placement isn’t perfect. The touch experience is very good (but not perfect). I can’t wait to see what this looks like once we have more apps…real apps. The search and share experiences are great too. I love showing the device off and showing two apps on the screen at once and the live tiles. I have nits, but overall the Metro experience is very good if not great. For a product this early in its development cycle, I am duly impressed. I’ve spent the better part of several days with the operating system (yeah, it’s preview – that’s code for pre-beta, very early). I, like every other BUILD attendee, lined up and got my Windows 8 tablet to experience what Microsoft is going to have for tablets. I’ve been watching videos, playing with the tablet and trying out the WinRT SDK and think it is time for me to chime in. I wanted a thoughtful response to my week at BUILD. I wanted to take time and not just spurt out my gut reactions. So, what do you think this means for Silverlight? I decided at Build to try and not answer the question I was getting all the time:
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