Category Archives: microsoft

.net, microsoft, software development

Windows 8 discoverability: users searching for search

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I have been poking around in the Windows Store as the public launch of Windows 8 approaches, and was intrigued by the reviews for the Wikipedia app, which is nicely done. Several users complain about the lack of a search function:

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In fact the Wikipedia app has excellent fast search, on the Charms bar:

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The problem: when you open the Wikipedia app there is no visual clue of where to find Search. Even if you have figured out that you need to right-click, or swipe up, to show the menu bar, it does not show a Search option.

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The Wikipedia app developers have done the design correctly, in terms of Microsoft’s guidelines. This is the “Immersive user interface” which shows content rather than distracting UI furniture.

Another advantage of having Search on the Charms bar is that you are just a tap away from performing the same search in other apps, such as Internet Explorer.

The concept fails though if users simply do not discover key functions. What is the use of an encyclopaedia without search?

It does not help that the Charms bar, which is where Search lives, is hard to summon with the mouse. It is OK on a tablet (swipe from the right) or with the keyboard (Windows Key + Q). With the mouse, you have to position the pointer vaguely in the top or bottom corner and wait for Charms to fade into view if you have done it correctly. It is a vague movement with no feedback that you have initiated an action, like a button that does not click.

I presume though that as users live with Windows 8, Windows Key + Q will become natural when looking for a Search function (hah!). It is fair to say though that the UI does not score highly for discoverability.

microsoft, mobile, software development, windows

Appcelerator mobile developer survey shows Windows 8 progress, uncertainty

Cross-platform mobile tools vendor Appcelerator has released its latest mobile developer survey (in conjunction with IDC) representing the views of around 5,500 developers using its tools.

It is worth a read this time around. I was particularly interested to see what Appcelerator developers think of Windows 8, launching later this month. There is a chart showing the percentage of developers who are “very interested” in developing for various mobile platforms, and which shows Apple iOS leading at 85%/83% for iPhone and iPad, Android next, then HTML5, and then Windows 8 Tablets at 33% – already ahead of Windows Phone as well as Amazon and RIM devices (RIM has declined from 40% in January 2011).

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The report says that potential Windows 8 developers are most interested in the “shared development capabilities between desktop and tablet promised by Microsoft with the launch of Windows 8.” I am not sure exactly what this means, and of course surveys like this are broad-brush and different developers will have meant different things. It could be about code sharing between desktop applications and Windows Runtime (WinRT) apps. It could be about the ability to run WinRT apps on the desktop as well as the tablet. It could be about Visual Studio and its ability to target multiple Windows platforms. However, the the survey goes on to talk about a “single paradigm for both desktop and tablet/smartphone applications” which seems to look forward to a future Windows where desktop applications really are legacy.

There is also a note that there were as many developers convinced that they will not be building apps for Windows 8 or Windows phone, as those who were.

What really counts is in the next paragraph in the report:

A large installed base of devices was the #1 criterion for 53% of developers when asked about why they choose to develop on a platform

This is the simple truth, which is why Microsoft has chosen a strategy which puts WinRT on every Windows 8 box whether or not it is really wanted.

The report also states that developers are dissatisfied with HTML5 for mobile applications, in terms of monetization, security, fragmentation, performance, and more. I suggest not taking too much account of this since Appcelerator’s Titanium tool is an alternative to HTML for mobile apps, so will have attracted those who do not want to use HTML5.

Finally, there is a fun section on what devices developers think they will be targeting in 2015. Televisions head the list, followed by connected cars. Most intriguing though are the final two: foldable screens and Google Glass. Apparently 67.1% believe Google Glass is in their future. Surveys, always entertaining but given the volatility of the results, not something you can rely on as a predictor.

.net, javascript, microsoft, professional

Here comes TypeScript: Microsoft’s superset of JavaScript

Microsoft’s Anders Hejlsberg has introduced TypeScript, a programming language which is a superset of JavaScript and which compiles to JavaScript code.

The thinking behind TypeScript is that JavaScript is unsuitable for large projects.

“JavaScript was never designed to be a programming language for big applications,” says Microsoft’s Anders Hejlsberg, inventor of C#. “It’s a scripting language.”

The ubiquity of JavaScript makes it remarkably useful though, with that now extending to the server thanks to projects like node.js. Microsoft is using node.js for its Azure Mobile Services.

TypeScript therefore lets you use features including type annotations, classes, modules and interfaces to make large projects more robust and maintainable.

Variable names are preserved when TypeScript is compiled. Further, since TypeScript is a superset, any JavaScript code can be pasted into a TypeScript project. The compiler is open source and you can download an early version here.

Microsoft is also trying to stay close to the specification for Ecmascript 6, the proposed next iteration of the official JavaScript standard, where relevant.

There is tooling for Visual Studio including a language service to provide code hinting, syntax highlighting and the like.

TypeScript differs from projects like Google Web Toolkit or Script#, both of which also emit JavaScript, in that it does not compile from one language into another; rather, it compiles into a reduced version of itself.

Why is Microsoft doing this? That is the interesting question. I would conjecture that it is partly self-interest. Microsoft itself has to write increasing amounts of JavaScript, for things like Office Web Apps (apparently written in Script#) and the new Azure portals. Azure Mobile Services uses JavaScript as mentioned above. JavaScript is also one of the options for coding apps for Windows 8. Better tools will help Microsoft itself to be more productive.

That said, the arrival of TypeScript will re-ignite the debate about whether Microsoft, while not anywhere close to abandoning .NET, is nevertheless drifting away from it, towards both native code in Windows and now JavaScript in the managed code space.

More information from Microsoft’s S Somasegar here.

.net, microsoft, mobile, silverlight, software development, windows

A glimpse into the internal battles that set the future of Windows and .NET

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A couple of posts from Hal Berenson give insight into the internal battles at Microsoft as the company worked out its strategy to rescue Windows from irrelevance in the world of mobile and tablets. Berenson is now President of True Mountain Group LLC but was formerly at Microsoft where his roles included SQL Server development and architecture, Mobile Development Tools strategy, and General Manager of Forefront identity and security products.

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Berenson left Microsoft in October 2010, but by that time the strategy behind Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 would have been in place.

According to Berenson, there were two core options for evolving Windows. There may have been others, but the heart of it is this: what to do with .NET. One option was to make .NET the app model for Windows, which is what was planned for the original Longhorn, before it was reset and became the less radical update that was Windows Vista. The other was to create a new app model based on native code. Steven Sinofsky, the Windows President, chose the latter, which is why .NET is only one of three options for programming the new tablet personality in Windows 8. This meant going down the opposite path from that of Windows Phone 7, which has an entirely .NET-based programming model.

You may recall from other sources that Steven Sinofsky has never been known to be a .NET fan.  While others within Microsoft, and even senior people in the (pre-Windows 8) Windows organization, wanted to move to an entirely .NET app model for Windows Steven did not.  He (and others fyi) wanted to re-engage the native code C++ developers that Microsoft had been neglecting.  And they wanted to co-opt the huge base of web developers to create apps for the Windows platform.  Well, what had the Windows Phone guys done?  They’d implemented a .NET only app platform.  Could the Windows Phone app platform evolve to address the native and web developers?  Sure.  But with no existing library of apps and a desire not to have .NET-centric platform at the core of Windows Sinofsky apparently felt pretty comfortable ignoring the Windows Phone team’s work.

This goes a long way to explain the puzzlement many of us experienced when it transpired that having created in Windows Phone 7 the basis for a touch-friendly operating system that could easily be extended to larger form factors such as tablets, Microsoft chose instead to do a new thing entirely for its tablet strategy.

One take on this is that Berenson’s account illustrates the chaos at Microsoft. Windows Phone was created in a mad hurry in reaction to the iPhone and the ascendance of touch UIs, reusing pieces of .NET, Silverlight and Zune to bring something to market quickly. Then the company’s next move was not to build on that, but to throw it away, even in the context of a mobile and device revolution that was and is a huge threat to its core business. And where was CEO Steve Ballmer in all of this?

The other take though is how this shows the determination and strategic focus of Windows boss Steven Sinofsky. He did not believe that rebuilding the Windows user interface on .NET would save it, with the Longhorn experiment no doubt a factor in that conviction, so he refused to go down that path again, despite the cost in terms of time and, perhaps more seriously, the impact on the developer ecosystem. Microsoft platform developers were asked first to bet on .NET and Silverlight, and now to bet on this new thing the Windows Runtime, and many are disillusioned or even angry. A hard decision; but putting long term strategy ahead of the immediate demands of your customers may be the right thing, in fact the only right thing.

Berenson also confirms what many of us have always assumed: that the removal of the Start menu on the Windows 8 desktop is all about making the new personality in Windows hard to avoid:

The Start menu, and indeed the entire desktop, are legacies that will have to be removed from Windows over time.  While the desktop itself is probably with us for a couple of additional major Windows releases (though there may be truly desktop-free editions sooner than that) the start menu was something that Steven has bet he could get away with not bringing forward into Windows 8.  By doing so he forces users to start living in the new usage paradigm rather than totally avoiding it.  Yes you can still set up a system to avoid leaving the desktop most of the time.  But you can’t avoid the new world completely.  In doing so he sets people up to eventually accept systems without the desktop at all (or at least Windows RT systems for personal use even if they need the desktop at work, for example).

Personally I no longer miss the Start menu; but its absence is certainly a barrier to adoption for Windows 8, as new users struggle to navigate the operating system.

Note: Berenson has kindly commented below. Note his point that merely working at Microsoft does not give you detailed knowledge of all decisions made there.

.net, microsoft, mobile

Microsoft’s Azure Mobile Services: node.js and more in beginnings of easy cloud to device development

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Microsoft announced Azure Mobile Services last month and it was mentioned by Microsoft Server and Tools boss Satya Nadella at the launch of Visual Studio 2012, as an example of where Microsoft is going with its “Modern app” vision, continuous services and connected devices (but with a Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8 flavour).

Azure Mobile Services is in some ways a reworking of the WCF RIA Services developed to support Silverlight applications, and in fact I swear I saw a reference to RIA Services flash past when I was opening my first Azure Mobile Services project in Visual Studio. It consists of a service type in Microsoft’s Azure cloud combined with a client SDK which is currently for Windows Runtime apps in Windows 8, though the REST protocol used could be called from any client platform.

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Looking at the dashboard for a Mobile Services project in the Azure portal, you can see what Microsoft is going for here. Mobile Services handles authenticated access to data stored in SQL Server Azure. It is designed to be simple and cost-effective to get started, but can be scaled out by moving from a service on a shared host, to a dedicated VM with multiple instances.

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It is easy to think of cases where the cloud component of a cloud plus device app need do little more than authenticate users, and retrieve and update data. Azure Mobile Services also provides for server-side scripts which you can modify to handle validation and other tasks.

I was interested to see that the server-side scripts are written in JavaScript and executed by node.js. Node.js is fantastic, and one of the benefits is that if you have an HTML and JavaScript client, you can use JavaScript both on the client and on the server. On the other hand, I wonder if Microsoft’s community would rather work with C# on the server, which is more mature and more familiar. Scott Guthrie’s introductory tutorial does not mention node.js.

I had a quick go at creating my own Azure Mobile Service. I have only been partially successful so far.

Things started well enough. I created a mobile service and the Quick Start opened.

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Both Guthrie’s blog and the Quick Start wizard in the Azure portal are based on a todo list app. I went slightly off-piste here, deciding instead to create an app to track my articles on the web. I wanted to see how Azure Mobile Services copes with related tables, as opposed to a single table.

I had a frustrating time trying to create the database tables. I had to add my IP address to a firewall rule, enable popups, and deal with connection failures caused by unknown network issues.

Finally I was able to get into the database designers. I created an Articles table joined to a Publications table, with a very few fields.

Next I downloaded an automatically generated Windows 8 app from the portal. I had hoped this would magically work with my data. Unfortunately though, it seems to be hard-coded for the todo list app. If you do not want a todo list, you have to write your own code; and so far I have not had time to figure out from the reference what to do next. I looked at the Get started with data article, and guess what, it is the todo list again.

When you create a database, you can specify simple permissions. The todo list example depends on an application key stored in your app and sent over SSL, to grant permission to read and modify data. I selected authenticated user access instead.

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There is an article explaining how to add authentication, though note that it presumes use of a Microsoft Live ID (the service formerly known as passport). This is perfect in the context of Windows 8 and Windows Store apps, but businesses will want to use Active Directory instead, whether hosted in Azure or Office 365 or on premise. I presume Microsoft will add this at some point though it is not mentioned currently.

My initial conclusion is that Azure Mobile Services shows lots of promise, but that the introductory documentation could be usefully improved, for example not to assume that you want to make a single table todo list app.

In this context the partnership with Xamarin, which is extending the SDK to Apple iOS and Google Android, is excellent news. This makes Azure Mobile Services useful more broadly, and I have a hunch that Xamarin’s support will soon improve the documentation and tutorials. The client SDK is open source and on github.

Note that according to Microsoft’s Kirill Gavrylyuk, in answer to a question from Roger Jennings, Microsoft plans to “roll out full support for iOS and Android including native SDKs soon”, rather than leaving the non-windows support entirely to Xamarin and C#.

development, microsoft, open source, professional, software development

Microsoft Project Austin: superb C++ code sample for Windows 8

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No time to blog in detail about this; but developers with any interest in Windows 8 should check out Project Austin, a sample project for Windows 8 whose quality exceeds most of what is currently available in the Windows Store.

This is a simple note-taking app but beautifully rendered and with support for adding photos, sharing via Charms, and more:

It’s amazing how useful just a pen and a paper are by themselves. But when you take that concept to the computer realm and expand it to do things like add photos and annotate them right on the spot, and digitally share what you create, then the possibilities are endless.

say the project’s creators. More to the point:

Austin aims to demonstrate with real code the kind of device-optimized, fluid and responsive user experience that can be built with our newest native tools on the Windows8 platform.

Most of the code has been put on CodePlex under the Apache 2.0 license. It demonstrates C++ AMP, the new parallel library for GPU computing, as well as C++ coding for the Windows Runtime.

I downloaded and built the project with few issues, following the helpful guidance here. I did have to add the boost libraries manually to the include path.

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It is not completely stable but is already very pretty.

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Immersive UI of course. The tools disappear while you are working. I am still not sure how well I like this, but it is good to see examples of how Microsoft thinks this should work.

.net, development, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio

Platform churn? If it is in Windows 8, we are committed to it says Microsoft

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I interviewed Corporate VP of Microsoft’s developer division Soma Somasegar at the Visual Studio 2012 launch last week; see the article on the Register here. I asked about the inconsistency of the Microsoft platform, and the way the platform story has changed over the years (Win32, .NET, WPF, Silverlight and now Windows Runtime). Can developers trust in the longevity of today’s platform, especially on the client?

Here is what I thought was interesting about his reply:

Any technology you see shipping as part of Windows 8, we are very committed to that.

So what ships in Windows 8? Well, for reasons which are hard to discern for those of us outside Microsoft, Silverlight is not shipped in Windows 8. It is an optional download. In fact, the only plug-in installed by default is Adobe Flash:

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No, that does not imply that Microsoft is committed to Flash; but it does suggest lack of commitment to Silverlight, which we knew.

What you do get though is .NET Framework 4.5. This is baked in and cannot be removed as far as I can tell, though you can add and remove some advanced features.

This means you also have Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF); and in fact Somasegar specifically refers to this alongside Win32 and the new Windows Runtime.

The inclusion of technology in a current Microsoft product has implications for its support lifecycle. The ancient Visual Basic runtime, for example, is still assured of a long life since it is part of Office 2013.

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My guess is that Microsoft’s thinking goes something like this. Right now, as the October launch date of Windows 8 approaches, what Microsoft needs most urgently is a viable ecosystem for its new Windows Runtime environment. This, you will notice, is the focus of the forthcoming BUILD conference as so far announced.

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What, though, of the Windows desktop, has Microsoft abandoned it as legacy? My guess is that we will get deliberately mixed messaging on the subject. On the one hand, Microsoft has relegated the desktop to a single tile in the new Start screen. On the other hand, most of us will spend most of our time in the desktop, not least developers who need it to run Visual Studio. If Microsoft succeeds in establishing the new Windows Runtime platform, it would not surprise me to see a little more love given to the desktop in, say, Windows 9.

Microsoft’s platform story is messy, without question, and especially so in mobile. We have seen Windows Mobile replaced by the incompatible Windows Phone 7, and now those loyal developers who invested in the Silverlight/XNA Windows Phone 7 technologies are finding that it is all change again in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 (though the exact details await the release of the Windows Phone SDK).

It seems clear though that the company’s current intent is that Windows Runtime evolves as the primary client platform for both phone and tablet, while desktop remains for legacy support and for applications that do not fit the new model, such as Visual Studio and (for the time being) Office.

What if Microsoft fails to establish the Windows Runtime as a popular app platform? All I can add is that I know of no Plan B.

.net, microsoft, software development

Information Density in Metro, sorry Windows Store apps

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Regular readers will recall that I wrote a simple blog reader for Windows 8, or rather adapted Microsoft’s sample. The details are here.

This is a Windows Store app – a description I am trying to get used to after being assured by Microsoft developer division Corp VP Soma Somasegar that this really is what we should call them – though my topic is really the design style, which used to be called Metro but is now, hmm, Windows Store app design style?

No matter, the subject that caught my attention is that typical Windows Store apps have low information density. This seems to be partly due to Microsoft’s design guidelines and samples, and partly due to the default controls which are so boldly drawn and widely spaced that you end up with little information to view.

Part of the rationale is to make touch targets easy to hit with fat fingers, but it seems to go beyond that. We should bear in mind that Windows Store apps will also be used on screens that lack touch input.

I am writing this on a Windows 8 box with a 1920 x 1080 display. Here is my blog reader, which displays a mere 7 items in the list of posts:

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This was based on Microsoft’s sample, and the font sizes and spacing come from there. I had a poke around, and after a certain amount of effort figuring out which values to change in the list’s item template, came up with a slightly denser list which manages to show 14 items in the list. The items are still easily large enough to tap with confidence.

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Games aside though, I am noticing that other Windows Store apps also have low information density. Tweetro, for example, a Twitter client, shows only 11 tweets to view on my large display.

The densest display I can find quickly is in Wordament, which is a game but a text-centric one:

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I have noticed this low information density issue less with iPad apps. Two reasons. One is that iOS does not push you in the same way towards such extremely large-looking apps. The other is that you only run iOS on either iPhone or iPad, not on large desktop displays.

Is Windows 8 pushing developers too far towards apps with low information density, or has Microsoft got it right? It is true that developers historically have often tried to push too much information onto single screens, while designers mitigate this with more white space and better layouts. I wonder though whether Windows 8 store apps have swung too far in the opposite direction.

.net, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio, windows

When will Blend, Microsoft’s Visual Studio design tool, be done? Not for a while says Soma Somasegar

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During the Visual Studio 2012 launch last week I took the opportunity to ask Developer division Corp VP Soma Somasegar when Blend, Microsoft’s design tool for Visual Studio 2012, will be finished. A tricky question to answer, since there are multiple versions, as explained here:

  • Blend for Windows Store apps (HTML or XAML) is fully released and available as part of Visual Studio 2012

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  • Blend for WPF and Silverlight is in preview. For production you are meant to use the old Blend 4, unless you are targeting Silverlight 5 where you have no choice but to use the preview version.
  • Blend for Windows Phone is part of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1

The SketchFlow prototyping tool is also part of the preview Blend.

So when will Blend for Visual Studio 2012 be done? Somasegar refers to HBlend, which is the HTML version, and XBlend, which is for XAML.

“We shipped HBlend, and we shipped a preview of XBlend. It will take several months to finish. We also want to continue adding to HBlend. So I can’t tell you that Blend is ever going to be done [laughs],” he told me.

That said, the full Blend for Visual Studio 2012 will come out of preview sometime. Will it coincide with the first update for Visual Studio, announced for later this year?

“It is going to be later than the update, but I don’t have a specific timeframe,” he said.

Personally I have mixed (ha!) feelings about Blend. On the one hand, it is obvious that the simple designer in the Visual Studio IDE is insufficient, and that the rich Blend tool is needed, for those who can make sense of its intricate user interface. On the other hand, the designer aspect of Microsoft’s tooling seems to me messy, with too many versions of Blend and overlap between Blend and Visual Studio which gives developers a difficult choice: do I work with Blend, or stay within the simpler but more limited IDE tools?

.net, development, microsoft, professional, software development, visual studio, windows

Visual Studio 2012 launch: focus on Modern Apps

Microsoft is holding a launch event in Seattle for Visual Studio 2012, attended by selected Microsoft-platform developers as well as press from around the world.

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Corporate VP Soma Somasegar kicked off the keynote, saying that Visual Studio 2012 has already been downloaded 600,000 times since its release to the web around one month ago – a take-up, he said, which exceeds previous versions.

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But what is Visual Studio 2012 all about? It’s for Modern Apps, said Somasegar, though you would be wrong to imagine that this means a Windows 8 formerly-known-as-Metro app. Rather, a Modern App implies continuous services and multiple client devices, connected over both public and private networks. In other words, think mobile as well as desktop, public and private cloud, and bring your own device as well as corporate desktops.

Fair enough, but it is all a bit vague and still leaves us wondering what exactly apps for the Windows Runtime are called at Microsoft. Visual Studio calls them Windows Store apps, which does not make complete sense when you consider that you can deploy the apps without going through the Store, and that the Store can include desktop apps although these are links rather than direct downloads.

Visual Studio 2012 is a vast and impressive product though. Developers were shown various new features, including asynchronous development for maintaining a responsive user interface, pixel-level debugging in DirectX, after the fact debugging using Intellitrace, and new HTML and CSS support in the editor, with error highlighting that adapts to the specified version of HTML.

There was a quick demonstration of developing for Kinect, in which we saw an avatar mimic the movements of VP Jason Zander.

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Technical Fellow Brian Harry spent some time showing off application lifecycle features in Team Foundation Server, including improved Scrum support and an emphasis on agile concepts like whole team development (the development team is not just developers).

There were a couple of announcements, including news of an update in preparation for Visual Studio 2012 which will include new features. There will be a preview later this month and delivery by the end of 2012.

Visual Studio Express for the desktop has now shipped and is available for download. This supports development in C#, Visual Basic and C++, so there is now a free C++ compiler available for Windows desktop development in the Visual Studio 2012 family.

I spoke to a couple of the invited developers after the morning event. Visual Studio 2012 looks good, they told me, but then again what choice is there for Windows platform development? That said, they had expected a stronger push for Windows 8 development, especially on the Metro-style side. Why did Microsoft not spend more time evangelising Windows 8 app development and the Windows Store? Of course there is a lot to cover but given how critical app momentum is to the success of the new Windows, it struck me as a valid point.