The World of Windows: September 2010

Internet Explorer 9: Seamless with Windows 7.

Internet Explorer 9 takes advantage of features that people love in Windows 7 to make browsing faster and more efficient.

Pinning.

Now you can launch your favorite web pages from your task bar with a single click. To pin a web page, just grab the tab in the browser and drag it down to your taskbar. It's that simple.

Jump Lists.

Many pinned sites have added functionality when you roll over them, like links and player controls.

Aero Snap.

In the same way you can resize windows in Windows 7, you can do the same with tabs just by dragging them to the edge of the screen.

HTML5 Support.

Through active participation in standards development in CSS3 and SVG working groups, co-chairing the HTML5 Working Group, and leading the HTML5 Testing Task force, we are actively helping set the standards for the modern web.

Through our investments in standards and interoperability, we hope to help bring predictability to web programming. Because when you can spend less time rewriting your sites to work across browsers, you can spend more time creating amazing experiences.

Internet Explorer 9 introduces support for modern web standards, including:

CSS3
HTML5
SVG
ICC Color Profiles
DOM L2 and L3
ECMAScript5

All around fast.

Today's websites and browsers only use about 10% of the processing power your PC has to offer. Internet Explorer 9 unlocks the other 90%. With Internet Explorer 9, we're tapping into your graphics processor through Windows to harness the full potential of your PC. It makes HD video smoother, colors truer, graphics clearer, and websites more responsive. Combined with our new JavaScript engine, the web now performs like an application installed directly on your computer.

We've also added a several ways to reduce the number of clicks it takes to get where you're going. You can pin your favorite sites to your task bar for single-click access. Our new tab pages features your most commonly viewed sites. And we've moved all notifications to the bottom of the page with clearer instructions. Combined with performance enhancements, these new features make your web browsing experience truly fast.

Your sites shine.

Designed to get you to the web faster and get out of the way once you're there, Internet Explorer 9 lets web content come forward and shine.

Rollover the Hotspot

's in the browser window to explore the new UI.

Changes to Internet Explorer.

Some of the expected changes for IE9 include speedy graphics rendering for IE9. This will take advantage of a computer’s graphics hardware to better render online images, videos, animations and other graphics.

Another expected feature that should be detailed is support of new HTML/CSS code that creates rounded borders on text boxes. Also HTML 5 support will be discussed, and how much of it will be implemented.

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Thursday, September 30, 2010

2:03 AM

Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Released.

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I’m pleased to announce that today we shipped the final release of the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools. You can download them here.

What is Included?

The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools package includes everything you need to write awesome applications and games for Windows Phone 7. All of the tools included in it are absolutely free.
The following is installed with the download:

Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone – Free edition of VS 2010 for Phone development.
Express Blend 4 for Windows Phone – Free version of Blend for Windows Phone 7 Development.
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 – Rich framework for building great applications for Windows Phone 7.
XNA Game Studio for Windows Phone 7 – Rich framework that enables you to build great 2D and 3D games for Windows Phone 7.
Windows Phone Emulator – A hardware accelerated emulator that allows you to run and debug your applications and games without requiring a phone.
Phone Registration Tool – When you get a device, this allows you to “unlock” the device so you can run/debug your application on it, using your Marketplace account.

All of the above tools and frameworks are packaged into one setup, and everything is free. If you already have Visual Studio 2010, the setup will also add support for Windows Phone 7 development and projects to your full Visual Studio 2010.
Applications and games you build with the tools released today can be uploaded to the Windows Phone Marketplace - which enables any phone consumer to easily download and purchase them directly from their phone. This provides a great way to distribute applications/games that you either get paid for or distribute for free.

Using the Windows Phone 7 Tools

VS 2010 Express for Windows Phone provides a rich development environment for building great phone applications.
Using File->New Project, you can choose from several Silverlight for Windows Phone starter templates when creating new projects. Today’s release adds support for new Panormana and Pivot controls and associated project templates that you can use to create applications that take advantage of these new Windows Phone 7 metaphors:

Selecting the “Panorama Application” template above will cause VS to create a fully working Silverlight for Windows Phone application that uses the Panorama UI metaphor (and the new Silverlight Panorama control):

Visual Studio provides a WYSIWYG design-surface (with split-view support for XAML source) for building phone applications using Silverlight. It also provides full code intellisense, debugger and developer tool support.
You can choose to deploy and debug an application on a physical phone device - or alternatively within a built-in phone emulator. Below is a screen-shot of the above application running inside the built-in emulator and being debugged by Visual Studio:

The phone emulator is hardware accelerated, and optionally supports multi-touch monitors (enabling you to easily simulate finger gestures).
Expression Blend for Phone
You can edit projects using both Visual Studio 2010 Express for Phone as well as with Expression Blend for Phone (which is also included for free in the download package). The project file format is the same for both tools - enabling you to create an application in one of the tools and then open it up and edit it in another.
Expression Blend for Phone provides a really powerful environment for creating interactive experiences:

It includes full designer support – including support for animations, storyboards, custom paths, and many other features. It also uses the same phone emulator as VS – enabling you to build and run applications without needing a physical device.

Great Applications Already Happening

We have had hundreds of thousands of downloads of the development tool previews – and are already seeing some awesome applications being built for the Windows Phone 7 launch.

Below are some videos taken of a few applications running on actual Windows Phone 7 hardware devices connected to the web over 3G:

On YouTube, you can search the tag wp7dev to find other demos that have been posted by developers who have been using the previous previews – the demos posted include games, utility applications, data snacking applications, and more.

How to Start Building Windows Phone 7 Apps Now

If you’re a developer who has experience with .NET, Silverlight or XNA, you already have the core skills necessary to start writing a Windows Phone 7 application or game.
We’ve been working hard to get resources and information out to developers so they can be successful writing applications from day one. Since the Windows Phone 7 application platform is Silverlight-based, most articles or information about writing a great Silverlight application is also relevant to the phone. The same is true for XNA articles and information for building games.
Below are some Windows Phone 7 specific links to help get you started:

Building a Twitter client for Windows Phone 7 – An introductory tutorial I wrote a few months ago
Jump Start Training – 12 free Windows Phone 7 JumpStart Training Videos on Channel9
Windows Phone Development documentation on MSDN – Windows Phone 7 documentation home
Programming Guide for Windows Phone 7 – Windows Phone 7 Specific Topics
Windows Phone 7 Forum – Windows Phone 7 Help Forum
Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Forum – Help Forum on using Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
Optimizing Silverlight Applications for Windows Phone 7 – Great whitepaper written by the Silverlight team, with examples, detailing how to make your application perform fast and smooth.
Windows Phone 7 UI Guidelines and Templates – Good whitepaper and UI resources

You can learn more about today’s release from the Windows Phone 7 Blog as well as from this Channel9 video that includes an interview from me.

Silverlight for Windows Phone 7 Toolkit

I’m also pleased to announce that we’re extending the popular Silverlight Toolkit concept to include Windows Phone 7 components as well, with a dedicated release that will be available to download here.
The Windows Phone 7 Toolkit includes the following additional Silverlight controls and components that are customized for the Windows Phone 7 experience:

ContextMenu
DatePicker
TimePicker
WrapPanel
ToggleSwitch
GestureService – adds events for Tap, DoubleTap, Hold, Drag (DragStarted, DragDelta, DragCompleted), Flick and Pinch

This library is delivered both as a binary, as well as with fully buildable and modifiable code licensed under the MS-PL license, and you are free to modify and/or include it in your applications.
You can learn more about using some of the cool controls in the Toolkit from:

Installation Notes

If you have installed previous preview releases of the tools, you will need to completely uninstall those before installing today’s final release. This is also true for the Zune Client if you’ve installed that as well (which is used to sync applications with real devices).
The download of the final Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools release is here.

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