Microsoft executives introduced developers at the PDC 2008 to a pre-beta version of Windows 7 (milestone 3 according to Microsoft’s internal schedule), showcasing how coders can work with the Windows 7 platform and other Microsoft offerings to webify, dotnetify, and meshify (Live Mesh enable) applications. As Ray Ozzie, chief software architect at Microsoft put it in his keynote, “From PC to the web to the phone, and from the server to the cloud, we are focused on enabling the creation of the next generation of user experiences.” He also noted that the product is real, but “nascent” at this point in the development cycle. Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows and Windows Live engineering group, said that Windows 7 would RTM about 3 years after the generally availability of Vista. What’s new for developers? Well, it’s not called Vista. Sinofsky said that in response to developer (and other feedback) Microsoft plans to improve the platform, runtimes, and tools; improve performance, increase device coverage and improve app compat. He admitted that when Microsoft changed the device driver model partners weren’t ready at the launch. He noted that Windows 7 is built on the same kernel as Vista and app compat will be good to go. Open standards will be supported in Windows 7.There will be IE 8, CSS, and AJAX support. Multitouch scenarios will be enabled. There will be enhancements to the DirectX family of APIs.
Here’s what the Microsoft press release says about how the combination of its Windows and Visual Studio offerings will combine to help developers develop with the Microsoft platform: “Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will make it easy for developers to create applications for the new Azure Services Platform [and] Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 innovations will help developers build the next-generation applications for Windows 7 and take advantage of the new features in Windows 7, such as the Ribbon and support for multitouch enabled interfaces.” Improvements in using Win32, C++, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) were also discussed at the keynote.
In addition to getting the pre-beta build of Windows 7 PDC conference attendees are receiving a pre-beta developer release of Windows Server 2008 R2. According to the Microsoft press release the R2 release includes “live migration of virtual machines, power saving capabilities, and developer features to build and host the next-generation applications and appliances.”
To learn more about developing for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 go to http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/windows
And check out the Engineering Windows 7 blog on msdn: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/