1. Technology Buzz
Windows 8 provides an immersive user experi-
ence. Clicking a tile will bring up the application
in full screen mode, if it is a metro application. A
classic desktop application opens in Desktop
mode just like in Windows 7.
From the desktop itself, you can start typing in
the keyboard to find your applications, files, and
other resources. Here is the search screen in
Windows 8 that lets you find applications quite
easily.
Marlabs' Windows 8 Developer By clicking the 'Desktop' tile, you can also access
the familiar Windows desktop to run your legacy
Preview desktop applications from the start screen.
Lot of new features
Microsoft officially unveiled Windows 8 during Other than improvements in
the Build conference. Dubbed "Windows the user experience that
Reimagined," the OS is optimized for tablets makes it suitable for tablets,
and touch devices. Featuring a new start screen Windows 8 is loaded with a
with the 'Metro' User Interface (which gained number of new features.
popular with Windows Phone 7), Windows 8 Windows 8 is designed for
supports new, touch-optimized Metro applica- low power tablets, and for
tions as well as legacy desktop applications on very low energy utilization.
the new WinRT runtime. The boot time in Windows 8
is significantly reduced, and
There are several ways to get up and running you can really feel the
with Windows 8. You can either install it on a difference. Windows 8 also
virtual machine in Windows, or you can install it includes Hyper V support,
on a VHD (Virtual Hard Drive). In my case, I which brings Hyper V to
downloaded the ISO image of Developer desktops for the first time.
Preview with tools (the 4+ GB one), extracted it Windows 8 also has a lot of
to a USB drive and made the USB drive boot- new security features built
able, booted from that, and then installed Win- in and enables tight integration with Windows
dows 8 on a Local HD Partition on my home live services.
machine. Now, it is dual bootable, with Win-
dows 8 and Windows 7, and all is well. Charms in Windows 8
On touch devices, swiping from the right side of
For End Users the screen brings up what is known as Charms,
The new start screen in Windows 8 features live an implementation of the start bar On a no-n
.
tiles where users can see all applications listed. touch regular PC, Charms can be accessed by
Users can also receive application notifications dragging the mouse to the bottom left corner of
via the tiles. the screen.
For Developers
Windows 8 comes with WinRT a new object-
,
oriented, native/unmanaged API for developing
‘Metro’ applications for Windows. WinRT APIs are
expected to replace the Win32 APIs. WinRT proj-
ects types using metadata and is fully object-
oriented. You can access WinRT directly from
managed languages like C#.

2. Here are a couple of interesting reads about dows Live applications (Mail, Calendar Photos) are
,
WinRT. now developed in Javascript/HTML5 and are native.
You can connect multiple devices via Windows Live
Developing For WinRT Support for Wide Variety of Hardware
WinRT is going to be ‘the runtime’ for Windows,
across multiple devices such as PCs and Tablets. Hardware support for Windows 8 seems really awe-
Windows Metro style applications can be devel- some. The demos feature Windows 8 running on a
oped on top of WinRT in C#/VB.NET and XAML. variety of hardware devices. New and improved
features include:
XAML libraries with WinRT are now re-written in
C++ and don’t have any .NET dependencies. • Multi monitor support with a start button
WinRT XAML is a subset of the earlier XAML on all screens.
libraries that was available with .NET but doesn’t • Hyper V Support for client.
support features like DataTriggers for now. Pres - • USB 3 Support.
ently, you can access only a subset of the .NET • Hardware acceleration for all applications.
BCL/Runtime from your C#/VB.NET + XAML • Malware detection in boot strapper .
WinRT application. • A boot mode called “Cold Boot“ which is super fast.
Conclusion
This doesn’t even support the .NET client profile;
it is just the .NET core profile with access to a
minimum set of .NET namespaces, combined
with XAML namespaces now in Windows.UI. The
entire CLR will be loaded at the time of execu -
tion, but you’ll be able to access only a subset of
that. This is to ensure that you are running in a
sandboxed environment. CLR comes into play as
a thin layer only for binding your calls to WinRT
at run time. As WinRT is object oriented and has
managed data, you are in any case developing
directly against WinRT .
C++ and XAML
If you are developing in C++ and XAML, your
code will be compiled directly to an unmanaged
library. I assume this maximizes performance as
your code is directly compiled to native code.
Javascript + HTML5
From Javascript, you can directly call WinRT After installing Windows 8 and tinkering with it a bit,
methods and in that sense it is native. The UI is I’m pretty much convinced that Microsoft has it right.
rendered in HTML5. If your application is a They corrected the tablet part of the equation and
Javascript + HTML5 application, it will run in a they got the entire Cloud <-> T ablet stack in place,
‘shell’ that uses the same rendering engine as in with proper platforms and a nice set of developer
IE10. tools. And without doubt, Windows 8 devices are
going to be a serious competitor to Android and
You may continue to develop .NET/C#/Silverlight iOS/iPad in the tablets market space.
applications for classic desktop scenarios. But if
you need to develop Metro applications then you Here we go, Microsoft has officially entered the post
have to develop against WinRTWindows Live PC era!
integration.
The entire suite of Windows Live services is
neatly integrated with Windows 8. All these Win -