Vista Forums - Vista News http://www.vistax64.com/ All the latest Windows Vista and Tech news. en Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:33:48 GMT vBulletin 15 http://www.vistax64.com/images/styles/vista/misc/rss.jpg Vista Forums - Vista News http://www.vistax64.com/ Mobility in Office 2010 http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261101-mobility-office-2010-a.html Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:00:03 GMT ---Quote--- Microsoft Office 2010 provides you powerful new ways to deliver your best work - whether you’re at work or at home, whether you are...
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Microsoft Office 2010 provides you powerful new ways to deliver your best work - whether you’re at work or at home, whether you are travelling in a cab or on a flight, whether you are working on a PC, browser or phone. By offering more ways to access your files from virtually anywhere, Office 2010 puts you in control.

As part of Wednesday’s Office 2010 Beta Announcement we announced the availability of the Office Mobile 2010 Beta -- today’s post describes some of the exciting work we’ve done related to mobility in more detail.  Specifically, we’ll talk more about the experiences that make Office 2010 the mobile information worker’s best set of productivity tools on the phone.

Basically, there are two major offerings we provide for mobile information workers to work on their Office documents. Depending primarily on the type of phone you have, you get to choose whichever way works best for you or is available to you. One way is with Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 and another is with Microsoft Office 2010 Mobile Viewers.  We’ll discuss both in detail below, but in short…

…If you are using a Windows Phone

  • You get both options. If you want to modify your Office documents, you can use Office Mobile 2010 applications providing rich user experience which customers of Microsoft Office client applications are familiar with. If you just want to quickly view the documents, you can use Office 2010 Mobile Viewers which display your documents in mobile IE browser. We will walk you through the different scenarios in upcoming posts so you know which option might work best for you.
…If you are using a phone built on a non-Windows Platform

  • You get the Office 2010 Mobile Viewers option only. As previously mentioned, you get to view the Office documents in your mobile browser whether you have smartphones like iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Symbians or non-smartphones.
The Beta for Office Mobile 2010 is available worldwide in Windows Marketplace for Mobile for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.  To try the Office 2010 Mobile Viewer, you need to have the Office Web Apps installed on your company’s Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and then you can use explorer on your phone to view Office documents on the server (read this Office Web App blog post for more information on how to deploy the Web Apps in the enterprise). 

In future blog posts, we will explore tips and tricks for the different apps and tools Microsoft Office provides to meet the demands of your busy life on-the-go with your mobile device.  In the meantime, enjoy the information below and we hope to hear your feedback soon!

Office Mobile 2010

Use Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 on your Windows phone to get the familiar Microsoft look and feel as well as the services that you’re used to.

Even when you’re on the road, you can view Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint documents sent as email attachments.





 

Word Mobile 2010

Excel Mobile 2010

PowerPoint Mobile 2010

Office Mobile 2010 also makes it easy for you to review documents on the move by adding the ability to edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.  So use your commute time in a cab or on a flight to customize an existing presentation by hiding or rearranging slides, reviewing speaker notes, and even adding new notes as you rehearse. What’s more, you can now use your Windows phone as a presentation aid that enables you to control the slideshow and simultaneously view notes as you engage more effectively with your audience.

View images and animations

SmartArt graphics are preserved

Manage Slides

Using OneNote Mobile, you can take and manage personal notes on your Windows phone. You can even record voice or take pictures using the phone and bring them to OneNote Mobile or share your notes with your PC and refer to them when you are away.

 
Capture multimedia notes with ease

Take & insert a picture or voice recording

 Organize your notes with lists

In addition to files and e-mail attachments, if you get a link to content hosted on SharePoint Online or on SharePoint 2010, you can access it using SharePoint Workspace Mobile 2010, which enables you to browse sites, document libraries, and lists from the comfort of your Windows phone.


Access multiple sites and libraries

View and sync documents easily

Access your content offline

We’ve also done work to allow you to save edited documents to the phone and just synchronize them back to the server in case you lose your mobile connection.

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers

With your mobile device browser, Office 2010 Mobile Viewers will help you stay organized, get things done, and present information by keeping Office at your fingertips.

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers enable you to view Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files in an easy to read small-screen format that maintains high fidelity. Office 2010 Mobile Viewers target a wide range of devices and micro browsers so that people with or without smartphones can take the advantage of the cool features without having to upgrade your mobile phone. Here are a few examples.



Viewing product sales documents on your mobile phone

Imagine you are sitting in the airport when your colleague calls you and says that the inventory data sheet and promotion document you are going to share with the customers later has been modified and saved back on the SharePoint server to reflect the latest status. You don’t need to bother turning on your laptop. You open up your browser from your mobile phone, connect to your team SharePoint portal, select the inventory data sheet, and quickly see the new inventory diagram. You then click on promotion document and see that the visuals have been revamped. You feel confident before you walk on the plane knowing that the customers will surely be happy with your presentation later.

Excel Mobile Viewer

Excel Mobile Viewer - Details

 

Word Mobile Viewer – Image View

Word Mobile Viewer – Text View

 



Joining a meeting and viewing the presentation on your mobile phone

Office 2010 Mobile Viewers also go beyond just allowing you to view your own files. Imagine you’re stuck in a traffic jam are going to be late for a meeting that starts in 5 minutes. Now you pull out your mobile phone and pop open the email you received from the meeting presenter that contains a URL to the presentation broadcast (“Broadcasting a Slide Show” is a new feature supported by PowerPoint 2010 that will be talked about in more detail in the future). You can now participate in the call and view the current slide in real time as the presentation moves along.

PowerPoint Mobile Viewer – Image View

PowerPoint Mobile Viewer – Outline View

We hope you’re as excited about Office Mobile 2010 as we are! Future posts will walk you through each of the above mobile productivity tools in more detail so when they are released you’ll be able to use them as we do and improve your productivity on the go.
More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261101-mobility-office-2010-a.html The Windows Platform, Silverlight 4, and Facebook http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261056-windows-platform-silverlight-4-facebook.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:40:02 GMT Last week, we announced the availability of the Facebook SDK (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/ee388574.aspx) for .NET developers. The SDK... Last week, we announced the availability of the Facebook SDK for .NET developers. The SDK supports coding for both Silverlight and the Windows Platform (WPF, etc.). Yesterday, Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's .NET Developer Platform, took the stage for his part of the Day 2 Keynote at PDC09 where he announced Silverlight 4.

During the keynote, Scott demonstrated an out-of-browser Silverlight 4 application called SilverFace. SilverFace was developed using the Facebook SDK we announced last week.



SilverFace lets you do all kinds of things on Facebook directly from your Windows desktop such as update your status, upload photos, view friend’s photos and videos, and much more. This application is meant to serve as a proof point for the capabilities of Silverlight 4 in combination with the Facebook SDK and is not an actual product. You can think of this as more of a “technology showcase” and a demo of what the technology can do.

For those of you wanting to try out physical code (and is pretty cool), I’ve got something just for you.

Today, we’re making available an application for Windows 7 called Fishbowl for Facebook. This application is a sample application created by UXLabs@Microsoft that showcases the Windows Platform (when I say Windows Platform = .NET Platform) and takes advantage of key Windows 7 features.

Download: Fishbowl for Facebook Preview



Fishbowl for Facebook lets you quickly post a Status Update to Facebook, watch your Facebook News Feed, post comments, browse your friends and their photos and upload photos directly from their Windows 7 desktop. Let me take you through a few key areas of the app. I’ll start with the Windows 7 integration.

When running, Fishbowl for Facebook takes advantage of new Windows 7 features such Taskbar Previews and Jump Lists.

For example, when moving your mouse over the Fishbowl for Facebook icon on your Windows Taskbar, you get a Taskbar Preview. This allows you to quickly navigate quickly between Home (you’re News Feed), your friends list, your profile, and photos. You can also quickly go to Facebook’s homepage too.





If you right-click on the Fishbowl for Facebook, you get a Jump List that lets you see your most recent notifications. It also lets you switch to “mini-mode”.

You can upload photos to Facebook using Fishbowl for Facebook – simply by drag-and-drop!



Just put a title in, choose the album you want to add the photo to (or create a new album), and hit upload! Here I am dragging a panoramic photo I created in Windows Live Photo Gallery from my visit in September to the U.S.S. Hornet in Oakland, CA.



See the red lines under the “U.S.S.” and “SFO” text? Yeah, that’s spell check. Fishbowl for Facebook comes with spell check to help ensure you don’t accidently spell important words wrong that your friends can make fun of you for the rest of your life with. Trust me, it happens ;-)

While browsing a photo album, you can view the album in a slideshow, save photos, print photos, and zoom in and out.

And Fishbowl for Facebook supports Windows Touch too.

Ok, one last thing – when browsing your friends in Fishbowl for Facebook, you are given several ways of sorting through your friends. You can sort by name (display name or family), last Status Update, Upcoming Birthdays, or Interest Level. And you can also adjust Interest Level of individual friends by simply clicking on a friend and viewing their profile. Interest Levels let you control how much of that friend’s stuff hits your News Feed. If you have an annoying friend, just turn the Interest Level way down.

There are a lot of neat experiences you can have with Fishbowl for Facebook so give the app a spin yourself! Remember, you can download it here.

Fishbowl for Facebook will run on Windows XP and Windows Vista but requires .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 to be installed (this is not needed if you’re on Windows 7 as it’s built in). For the best experience with Fishbowl for Facebook, it is recommended you use Windows 7 to take advantage of all its features. Fishbowl for Facebook with automatically update when updates are available as well so when we make updated available, you’ll get them! But please note that Fishbowl for Facebook is meant as a sample application showing what developers can do with the Windows Platform and the Facebook SDK. This is NOT an officially supported product.

Stay tuned, Yochay from the Windows 7 for Developers Blog will be posting some behind-the-scenes geeky developer stuff shortly. For you developers out there, this will be a must-read. I can’t wait to see more applications like this for the Windows Platform.




More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261056-windows-platform-silverlight-4-facebook.html Fishbowl for Facebook Using the Windows 7 Taskbar for Extra Spice http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261055-fishbowl-facebook-using-windows-7-taskbar-extra-spice.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:40:02 GMT During Wednesday’s keynote, Brian Golgarb resented SilverFace, a Silverlight client application for Facebook. Beyond its amazing looks, SilverFace... During Wednesday’s keynote, Brian Golgarb resented SilverFace, a Silverlight client application for Facebook. Beyond its amazing looks, SilverFace provides a full and complete desktop client application for Windows (and Mac). SilverFace is built on top of Silverlight 4 – also announced during the keynote. However, if you want a cool Facebook client application to work on from your Windows desktop today, your only real option is going with Fishbowl for Facebook Preview.

In today's world, the client’s experience is more important than ever before. Your application doesn’t just have to be fun and interesting; it has to be good looking, polished, and functional, providing a “natural” user experience that just works. As a developer, you need to push the envelope and use any available technical tool that the OS provides or any other available means (if installed on mobile devices) to provide a superior user experience, or users will switch to the next guy. In such a competitive scenario, using the Windows 7 Taskbar to shave a few seconds from day-to-day tasks looks like a very obvious choice.

The SilverFace and Fishbowl applications each provide a great UX and enhance user productivity. Scott Guthrie also announced the Facebook SDK for managed code applications that combines the latest in Web and Client platform innovations with leading Social technologies (services) to help developers plug into Facebook. But, beside the new Facebook SDK and beside the great looks, the Fishbowl application is a great WPF (3.5) example that demonstrates how to write applications that produce amazing experiences on Windows 7.

As a WPF application, Fishbowl runs on multiple Windows versions, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and it integrates with the Windows 7 Taskbar and Multitouch. One of the main ideas behind the Taskbar is to provide users with quick and easy access to their content and help them accomplish tasks and navigate between windows easier and with more confidence. For example, JumpList provides a great tool for surfacing common work items and tasks. If you have a task that you perform once or twice a day, taking two or three clicks to perform the task is not that bad. However, if you have a task that you perform 10, 20, or even 30 more times, using JumpList tasks or items in the recent category list goes a long way. Facebook users often check their wall, write notifications and messages, view friends' pictures, and so on. Therefore, in some scenarios, the Taskbar JumpList tasks, icon notification, thumbnail buttons, and other functionality become major tools in the application.

Fishbowl uses the taskbar to provide a quick, easy, and seamless integration with Facebook functionality directly from your Taskbar. Let’s review some of the user functionality before jumping into code behind.

The Fishbowl taskbar offers a few tasks even before you start your application. You can go to Facebook.com, or you can actually “jump” directly and see your wall, friend's picture, and more, as the following image shows.
One of the amazing things in Fishbowl for Facebook is that it changes it functionality between the different modes of the application. Being able to use the taskbar differently for different scenarios provides an amazing user experience in heavily used application like Fishbowl.

When Fishbowl runs in normal mode, the Taskbar JumpList reflects items and tasks that you can actually perform in the context of a running application, like viewing the last few notifications and messages that you received without opening the application, as shown by the following image.

If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image. If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image.



(And thank you Raman for writing so many PDC tweets J)

Fishbowl also has a mini-mode operation mode. This mode shows just one message in a small window. As you can see in the following image, a small arrow allows you to switch between messages. When you hover over Fishbowl taskbar icon, you can see the preview but you can also control the message, again using the taskbar thumbnail preview.

 

Besides great Taskbar integration, Fishbowl offers a great Multitouch experience, allowing you to scroll between messages using your finger to touch the touch screen. It is a little hard to illustrate Multitouch with screen capture so you will have to trust me on this one.

We've covered most of the Fishbowl features unique to Windows 7, and in the next post I will dive into the API that enabled these Taskbar and Multitouch features. If you are interested, you can download the source code for Fishbowl.




More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261055-fishbowl-facebook-using-windows-7-taskbar-extra-spice.html Open XML: One Year In http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261042-open-xml-one-year.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:40:01 GMT ---Quote--- As you’ve probably heard, this is a big week for Microsoft’s Business Division. Earlier this week we announced the public availability...
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As you’ve probably heard, this is a big week for Microsoft’s Business Division. Earlier this week we announced the public availability of Microsoft Office 2010 Beta. Have you ever wanted to co-author a document with your team in Word? Have you ever wanted to analyze tons of data at once in Excel? Have you ever wanted to push the limits of multimedia in your PowerPoint presentations? If so, check out the Beta.

It’s also a big week for the standards community, especially for those of us working in document formats. This week marks the year anniversary of the first publication of ISO/IEC 29500, also known as Open XML. As the cross-Office driver responsible for Open XML support in Office 2010, I thought that now would be a good time to reflect on the work that we have done in Office 2010 to support the Open XML standard, as well as how improving interoperability relates to our ability to innovate in Office.

Open XML Support in Office 2010

In the document format space, the big question on everyone’s mind is what level of support Office 2010 will have for Open XML. I’m happy to announce that Office 2010 will generate, by default, ISO/IEC 29500-compliant files of the transitional conformance class.

The first step to get Office 2010 generating ISO/IEC 29500-compliant files was to evaluate the files that we were generating in Office 2007. That product was generating ECMA-376 First Edition files, which, as you’ll recall, was the precursor to the ISO/IEC 29500 standard. Once we identified the differences in syntax resulting from either bugs or changes in the standard, we went about making the changes required to get our syntax compliant.

It generally surprises people when they learn about some of the changes we had to make to get our syntax compliant. In most cases, the changes were due to trivial bugs in specific scenarios. A favorite example of mine is a bug in Word 2007 where, in certain circumstances, Word would write out the oMath element before the rFonts element, whereas the standard clearly states that the oMath element should be written out after the rFonts element. This was a minor bug that was simple to fix and is characteristic of many of the changes we made.

Because we were changing some of the syntax of the files we write, we also did work to ensure that customers using previous versions of Office could continue to work with files using this new syntax. First, we included fixes in Office 2007 Service Pack 2 to ensure continued compatibility. Second, we updated the Compatibility Packs for older versions of Office, too. In other words, if you have Office 2007 SP2 or the latest compatibility pack, interoperability with Office 2010 will be seamless.

We also went further than just ensuring syntax-compliance of the files we generate. We went through many of the accepted recommendations that various national bodies made during the ISO ratification process for Open XML, and identified a handful that we wanted to support in Office 2010. Here are a few highlights:

  • support for reading the new percentage and measurement syntaxes;
  • support for titles on shapes to improve accessibility;
  • support for more named colors and support for longer color MRUs lists; and,
  • support for the new contentPart to persist ink.
There are two other particularly important investments we’ve made based on national body feedback provided via the standards process.

The first relates to our dependency on Vector Markup Language ( VML ). We heard clear feedback during the ratification process that depending on VML was a difficult requirement for other implementers. To lower this bar, we set out to reduce our dependency on VML, and have made great strides moving to DrawingML. PowerPoint 2010, for example, almost never makes use of VML as its primary method of representing drawing elements.

The second relates to the date syntax in spreadsheets. Again, during the ratification process, we heard lots of requests to add support for using the ISO 8601 Dates syntax for expressing dates in spreadsheets. Although currently in progress, Excel 2010 Beta includes support for this syntax. What is noteworthy about this investment is that we’re working closely with members of JTC 1 SC 34 ( the standards body responsible with Open XML maintenance ) to identify and resolve backward compatibility issues related to this new functionality. We’re particularly proud of this cooperation between Microsoft and the standards community.

The Relationship between Improving Interoperability and Innovation

As I talk to customers and partners about the work we’re doing to improve interoperability, I get asked lots of questions about how this quest to improve interoperability impacts our ability to deliver innovation in Office.

A few months ago at the Seattle, Washington DII event, one of my friends, Dr. Lee, a member of the JTC 1 SC 34 Korean National Body delegation, once asked me, what impact this focus on improving interoperability has on our ability to innovate in Office. It was a great question and the answer surprised many of the DII attendees.

My answer was simple: None. In fact, if anything, it makes it easier for us to innovate. The room fell silent.

From a technical perspective, there is nothing in the standard which prevents us from innovating. True, there are many rules and requirements we must follow. But there are also a number of technologies defined in the Open XML standard, MCE and extension lists, for example, which allow all implementers the ability to deliver compliant implementations, and, at the same time, compete in the marketplace on customer value. Microsoft Office, as we showed in that DII event, makes heavy use of these technologies to add all of the great innovations being delivered in the 2010 release, such as sparklines in Excel 2010 and new transitions in PowerPoint 2010.

I also pointed out that we fully documented both the Office 2010’s Open XML implementation as well as the technical details behind those innovations to ensure that all implementers had free access to that information. After all, this is about interoperability.

But the answer to Dr. Lee’s question was more than about technology. It was also about how working to improve interoperability has positively impacted the manner in which we build Office.

Interoperability has been elevated to the same level as other core design requirements of our products. Just as all of our features go through security and privacy reviews, performance and scalability testing, accessibility and programmability reviews, and international sufficient testing, we now approach interoperability the same way. Instead of documenting our file format implementations at the end of the release, we document the implementations during the release, while it’s being worked on. This provides countless benefits to the engineering team, allowing them to build features in a more efficient and more effective manner. It also makes on-boarding new employees, as well as load-balancing between employees, much more efficient given the wealth of documentation we have regarding our document formats. Ultimately, it is simply a great benefit to the entire design process. And fortunately it’s here to stay.

But it is more than just documenting your document format. It’s about continually looking for new ways to improve general interoperability between different vendors’ implementations. We recently held a DII event on the PST format used by Outlook. We did it not because we had to, but because it was the right thing to do. And based on the feedback so far, this was a great win for the industry.

I promised myself that I would limit this post to no more than two and a half pages. So for those of you who I have been unable to convince that our quest to improve interoperability hasn’t stifled our ability to innovate, I can only make one more suggestion to prove my case: go get the Beta. It’s well worth it.

As always, everyone working on Microsoft Office would love to get your feedback on ways in which we can improve the current state of interoperability. We hope that you’ll share our excitement for the Office 2010 release.

Shawn Villaron

Group Program Manager, Microsoft Office

shawnv@microsoft.com

For More Information
More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261042-open-xml-one-year.html Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 available November 24th includes enhancements for Wi http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261041-windows-home-server-power-pack-3-available-november-24th-includes-enhancements-wi.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:40:01 GMT The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German,... The Windows Home Server Team is pleased to announce that Power Pack 3 will be available in all shipping languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish) on November 24th, 2009. Power Pack 3 will be made available to existing users via Windows Update. Users need to have Windows Home Server with Power Pack 2 already installed on their home server. Power Pack 3 will automatically install as part of Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on the home server.

As we’ve communicated in a past post, Power Pack 3 improves the Windows Home Server experience with Windows 7 and Windows Media Center by providing new features like: backup and restore of computers running Windows 7, Windows 7 Libraries integration, enhancements for Windows Media Center, and better support for netbook computers. Power Pack 3 will enable the most optimal experience for Windows 7 users on a Windows Home Server network.

“If you've recently upgraded to Windows 7, Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 is an essential download providing enhanced integration between the two platforms and a number of cool new features. Combine library support with enhanced features for Windows Media Center, and we're really starting to see Microsoft bring together the Windows Home Server and Windows 7 client experience so that your media can be stored on your home server and enjoyed seamlessly on TV, PC and Mobile devices with little effort from the user. The bad old days of copy, paste, convert and transcode may well be behind us,” says Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Terry Walsh of We Got Served.

Microsoft MVP Alex Kuretz of MediaSmartServer.net says “Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 makes storing and accessing your media easier by bringing all the content contained on your Home Server smoothly into your Windows 7 libraries. TV Archive is also a very nice feature that has allowed me to record TV shows and move them to my Home Server to be watched at a later time.”

Here are some details on what’s new:



Windows 7 Libraries integration

When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.

Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression

After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.

Windows 7 power settings

You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.

Console support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.

Windows Search

Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.

TV archive

Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.

Console view

You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.

Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.

We want to thank our community for all of their testing and feedback over these past months with the Power Pack 3 Beta. You validated that Power Pack 3 was ready for release. We like to think that we are building this product together – as a passionate community.

- The Windows Home Server Team




More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261041-windows-home-server-power-pack-3-available-november-24th-includes-enhancements-wi.html New Windows API Code Pack Version http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261005-new-windows-api-code-pack-version.html Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:00:02 GMT I am glad to announce that today we shipped a new version of the Windows API Code Pack (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack) – version... I am glad to announce that today we shipped a new version of the Windows API Code Pack – version 1.0.1. This is not a major version with a lot of new features, but rather a minor version focused on fixing bugs, improving performance, adding demos and few features updates (new wrappers…)

But before we dive into this new version of the Windows Code Pack let’s better understand what this Windows API Code Pack is all about.

Windows 7 offers new features like the taskbar, libraries, and the Sensor and Location platform, to name a few. These features enable new scenarios and create new opportunities for developers to make their applications shine on Windows 7. All these great features are exposed via the Win32 native API. Currently there is no “Windows 7” namespace in the .NET Framework, and no easy way to use these features from managed code applications. To help managed code developers access them, we released version 1.0 of the Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Framework in August (just after Windows 7 RTM).

The Windows API Code Pack is a free, managed Source Code Library provided by Microsoft as is. You should consider this library as if you wrote it yourself, as if it is your own code. It is a great starting point and provides a really good and solid solution for managed code developers. It covers a lot of the new Windows 7 features as well as some more fundamental core features from the Windows Vista timeframe. You may think of the Windows API Code Pack as the closest thing to an “official” managed API for Windows. But you need to remember that it’s not a product with 24x7 technical support available from Microsoft Customer Service and Support. We believe it is a great solution, and that the codebase is very solid and high quality.

Our goal with the code pack is to enable managed code developers to take advantage of Windows APIs that are not part of the .NET Framework. We feel that as a shared source that is separate from the .NET runtime libraries, the Windows API Code Pack provides an optimal compromise between the Microsoft Win32 managed wrapper, short time-to-market -we released the Windows API Code Pack just a month after the Win7 RTM, and we ship full source code of the library.

The Windows API Code Pack includes a great deal of managed API for Windows (7). For example:

  • Extensive integration with the Windows Shell namespace, with support for the Windows Shell property system, providing control like explorer browser and access to Windows Libraries
  • A completely 100% feature parity with the native Taskbar API including (but not limited to) JumpLists, Icon Overlay, Progress bar, Thumbnail, custom switcher, Thumbnail Button, etc…
  • Windows Task Dialogs , other controls
  • Support for Direct3D 11.0 and DXGI 1.0/1.1 APIs
  • Support for the Sensor Platform APIs
  • Extended Linguistic Services APIs
  • Windows Restart Manager
  • Power APIs
  • And many other features
Each technology represented in the Windows API Code Pack has multiple demos and examples (including source) in C# and VB. We are planning on releasing updates to the Windows API Code Pack roughly every three months. We will be investing mainly in stability (meaning fixing bugs), fundamentals, testing and documentation, as well as new feature support (based on customer feedback).

You may ask yourself, “Why isn't the Windows API Code Pack part of the .NET Framework?”

We ship open source code that we might bring into the runtime sometime in the future, if we feel it's sufficiently core to the entire framework to be worth the size increase. Remember the .NET Framework runs on both Windows Vista and Windows XP. However, Windows 7 is here now, and we want to enable you to access this set of free, open source library sooner rather than later. We’re shipping this library in a community-supported form and, as you can see, we intend to keep updating it. While this version (1.0.1) is a minor release, we are planning on another release in the next few months. In the meantime, you get the best of both worlds in a package that you can use as a whole or in parts without restriction.

Another question you may ask is, “Will .NET 4 replace the need to use the Windows API Code pack?”

When .NET 4 ships, you will be able to use its Windows 7 features such as Taskbar and multitouch integration with WPF, DirectWrite support, and the location API via the Devices namespace. Continue to access other features such as libraries, Restart Manager, and Sensors via the Windows API Code Pack.

Last but not least, we are looking for feedback from the community – that is you the .NET developer using this library to write managed code applications for Windows 7. On the Windows API Code Pack site, you can ask questions, provide feedback, report bugs, and follow open bugs. Your input is critical for the continuation of this library, so please send us your feedback and questions.

To learn more about how to use the Windows API Code Pack check the Windows 7 Training on Channel 9




More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/261005-new-windows-api-code-pack-version.html Business Deployment of the Office Web Apps http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260991-business-deployment-office-web-apps.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:40:01 GMT
Quote:
This post is for IT Professionals who may wish to host the Office Web Apps within your own organization on your own servers.  As we announced earlier this morning, the Office Web Apps are now available in a public beta for our business customers to try with SharePoint 2010. 

Franklin Williams, a Program Manager on the Office Web Apps team, has posted information on the Web Apps blog about how to deploy Office Web Apps on-premise on a server running Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 or Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.  His post will help anyone interested in evaluating the Beta and understanding how the Office Web Apps can work inside an organization’s IT infrastructure when they are released in 2010.

Enjoy!
More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260991-business-deployment-office-web-apps.html An Early Look At IE9 for Developers http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260980-early-look-ie9-developers.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:00:02 GMT ---Quote--- We’re just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer...
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We’re just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer 9.

At the PDC today, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do today. Web site developers will see performance gains and other benefits without having to re-write their sites.

Performance Progress. Browser performance involves many different sub-systems within the browser. Different sites – and different activities within the same site – place different loads and demands on the browser.

For example, two news sites might look similar to a user but have very different performance characteristics. Because of how the developers authored the sites, one site might spend most of its time in the Javascript engine and DOM, while the other site might spend most of its time in layout and rendering. A site that’s more of an “application” than a page (like web-based email, or the Office Web Apps) can exercise browser subsystems in completely different ways depending on the user’s actions.

The chart below shows how much time different sites spends in different subsystems of IE. For example, it shows that one major news site spends most of its time in the script engine and marshalling, while another spends most of its time in script and rendering, and the Excel Web App spends very little of its time running script at all.



Note that this chart shows the percentages of total time spent in each subsystem, not relative time between sites. It focuses on just the primary browsing sub-systems and doesn’t include “frame” functionality (like anti-phishing), or third-party software that’s running in the IE process (like toolbars, or controls like Flash). It also factors out networking since that’s dependent on the users network speed. Notice also that a site’s profile can change significantly across scenarios; for example, the Excel Web App profile for loading a file is quite different from the profile for selecting part of the sheet.



The script engine is just one of these browser subsystems. There are many benchmarks for script performance. One common test of script performance is from Apple’s Webkit team, the SunSpider test. The chart below shows the relative performance of different browsers on the same machine running the SunSpider test.



In addition to IE7 and the current “final release” versions of major browsers, we’ve included the latest pre-release “under development” builds of the major browsers. We’re just about a month after IE8 was released as part of the Windows 7 launch, and the version of IE under development is no longer an outlier.

It is worth noting that once the differences are this small, the other subsystems that contribute to performance become much more important, and perceiving the differences may be difficult on real-world sites. That said, we remain committed to improving script performance.

We’re looking at the performance characteristics of all the browser sub-systems as real-world sites use them. Our goal is to deliver better performance across the board for real-world sites, not just benchmarks.

Standards Progress. Our focus is providing rich capabilities – the ones that most developers want to use – in an interoperable way. Developers want more capabilities in the browser to build great apps and experiences; they want them to work in an interoperable way so they don’t have to re-write and re-test their sites again and again. The standards process offers a good means to that end.

As engineers, when we want to assess progress, we develop a test suite that exercises the breadth and depth of functionality. With IE8, we delivered a highly-interoperable implementation of CSS 2.1 and contributed over 7,200 tests to the W3C. Standards that do not include validation tests are much more difficult to implement consistently, and more difficult for site developers to rely on.

Some standards tests – like Acid3 – have become widely used as shorthand for standards compliance, even with some shortcomings. Acid3 tests about 100 aspects of different technologies (many still in the “working draft” stage of standardization), including many edge cases and error conditions. Here’s the latest build of IE9 running Acid3:



As we improve support in IE for technologies that site developers use, the score will continue to go up. A more meaningful (from the point of view of web developers) example of standards support involves rounded corners. Here’s IE9 drawing rounded corners, along with the underlying mark-up:



Another example of standards support that matters to web developers is CSS3 selectors. Here’s a test page that some people in the web development community put together at css3.info; it’s a good illustration of a more thorough test, and one that shows some of the progress we’ve made since releasing IE8:



Community testing efforts like this one can be helpful. Ultimately, we want to work with the community and W3C and other members of the working groups to define true validation test suites, like the one that we’re all working on together for CSS 2.1, for the standards that matter to developers. For example, this link tests one of the HTML5 storage APIs; some browsers (including IE8) support it today, while others don’t.

The work we do here, both in the product and on test suites, is a means to an end: a rich interoperable platform that developers can rely on.

Bringing the power of PC hardware and Windows to web developers in the browser. The PC platform and ecosystem around Windows deliver amazing hardware innovation. The browser should be a place where the benefits of that hardware innovation shine through for web developers.

We’re changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers. The starting point is moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU. (This interview includes screen captures of a few examples.) Now, web developers can take advantage of the hardware ecosystem’s advances in graphics while they continue to author sites with the same interoperable standards patterns they’re used to.

In addition to better performance, this technology shift also increases font quality and readability with sub-pixel positioning:


96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom using GDI (note jaggies):



96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom: Direct2D (without jaggies):



Last week, Channel 9 interviewed several of the engineers on the team. You can find videos of the interviews here:
Introduction, and Interoperable Standards

Early look at the Script Engine

Hardware accelerated graphics and text in the browser via Direct2D

While we’re still early in the product cycle, we wanted to be clear to developers about our approach and the progress so far. We’re applying the feedback from the IE8 product cycle, and we’re committed to delivering on another version of IE.

Thanks,
Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer
More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260980-early-look-ie9-developers.html Office 2010 beta now available http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260964-office-2010-beta-now-available.html Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:15:09 GMT The public betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 have arrived. Download links inside. Full Story:... The public betas for Office 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, and SharePoint Server 2010 have arrived. Download links inside.

Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/11/office-2010-beta-now-available.ars ]]> Vista News Slimy http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260964-office-2010-beta-now-available.html Windows 7 Delivers Next-Generation Audio http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260797-windows-7-delivers-next-generation-audio.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 23:00:02 GMT When it comes to optimizing and really advancing the personal entertainment experience on the PC, Microsoft and Dolby Laboratories share a history of... When it comes to optimizing and really advancing the personal entertainment experience on the PC, Microsoft and Dolby Laboratories share a history of improving the integrity of audio playback. The collaboration between the two companies started when they began working together to enhance audio delivery for the Xbox in 2001. After this design was completed, Microsoft extended its usage of Dolby audio technology in Windows Media Center. This work continued with Windows Vista, which was launched worldwide in January 2007. The evolution of these shared efforts is realized in Windows 7 today.



Windows 7 builds on past collaboration by adding next-generation Dolby Digital Plus technology to offer high-quality multichannel audio. Available in Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate, Dolby Digital Plus brings home theater–quality audio to the PC, improving the listening experience of music, movies, and TV.

When it comes to the small, discreet speakers built into a PC or laptop, how can audio really be optimized? Dolby Digital Plus, a multichannel audio standard for DVDs and select HD broadcasts worldwide, is a high-efficiency, next-generation audio codec that maintains the quality of Dolby Digital at a lower data rate and is fully compatible with all current Dolby Digital A/V receivers. From the movie and music producer point of view, this means that Dolby Digital Plus offers more channels and better compression, making it easier to create higher quality content at lower bit rates to experience on the PC.

Dolby Digital Plus is already the broadcast audio standard for HDTV services in Europe. France is currently using Dolby Digital Plus, with Poland and other countries following closely. Users in these countries watching streaming broadcast content on their computers get to experience next-generation sound.

Microsoft’s diligence in working closely with Dolby engineers to fully enable the PC to be a more sophisticated, dynamic entertainment device is evidence of the company’s broad vision and steadfast commitment to revolutionizing the role of the PC. The next generation of PC enthusiasts can enjoy their computers as their primary home entertainment device—and Dolby Digital Plus will play an important role in that experience.

Spinal Tap fans will recall the restaurant scene in which David St. Hubbins’s interfering girlfriend, Jeanine, informs the band that their album wasn’t “mixed right” because it wasn’t mixed in “Dob-l-ey.” We may be biased, but we tend to agree with that statement. Content is never quite right without Dolby audio technology. Fortunately, PCs with Windows 7 will never have that problem.

To check out the latest on Dolby Digital Plus in Windows 7—including Dolby videos and a dedicated Windows 7 web page—visit Dolby.com and Audiodolby.com. For a complete Dolby PC demo and other PC videos, visit www.audiodolby.com/#/motion/pc. For press releases and news about Dolby technologies, visit investor.dolby.com/releases.cfm.

Robin Selden
Senior Vice President, Marketing, Dolby




More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260797-windows-7-delivers-next-generation-audio.html Adobe Releases Flash Player 10.1 And AIR 2.0 http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260750-adobe-releases-flash-player-10-1-air-2-0-a.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:05:49 GMT ---Quote--- ..the company is releasing two highly anticipated new products that have been in the works for a while:Flash Player 10.1 and Air 2.0....
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..the company is releasing two highly anticipated new products that have been in the works for a while:Flash Player 10.1 and Air 2.0.
more..

Prerelease/Beta Adobe Flash 10.1
Prerelease/Beta Adobe Air 2.0

Release notes-
flashplayer10/releasenotes.pdf
Release notes-
AIR 2:Release Notes

Different articles -
Flash Player 10.1 plays nice with AMD CPUs and GPUs
Adobe rolls out Flash 10.1 and AIR 2 betas
Adobe debuts full mobile Flash (minus the mobile) ?


Still no x64 Flash though. :(

Had successful installation of both activex and plugin, for both IE8 and Firefox. ]]> Vista News Airbot http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260750-adobe-releases-flash-player-10-1-air-2-0-a.html New SMB flaw can crash Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 remotely http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260722-new-smb-flaw-can-crash-windows-7-server-2008-r2-remotely.html Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:07:00 GMT Microsoft has confirmed reports of a new vulnerability that affects both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Full Story:... Microsoft has confirmed reports of a new vulnerability that affects both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Full Story: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/11/new-smb-flaw-can-crash-windows-7-and-server-2008-r2-remotely.ars ]]> Vista News Slimy http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260722-new-smb-flaw-can-crash-windows-7-server-2008-r2-remotely.html <![CDATA[UX Design Tools & Techniques]]> http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260690-ux-design-tools-techniques.html Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:20:03 GMT ---Quote--- Hello, I’m Jeffrey Dunn (User Experience Designer) with the Office Design Group (ODG). As Shawn mentioned in his “Designing with...
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Hello, I’m Jeffrey Dunn (User Experience Designer) with the Office Design Group (ODG). As Shawn mentioned in his “Designing with Customer in Mind” post, ODG includes UX Designers who work to create compelling software. I’d like to share with you a little bit of the design work that went into Office 2010. I hope to give you a sense of the scope of our work and how it’s made 2010 a better experience for you.

Just what is UX Design?

UX design defines how software looks and behaves. We’re deeply interested in the interaction models that affect how software is perceived, learned and used. Our goal is to make compelling software that’s usable, useful and desirable. We are not the only discipline at Microsoft that has an active hand in experience design. In fact we are a partner. We work closely with the researchers in ODG (see Tim’s previous post “UX Research Tools and Techniques”) to integrate your feedback into our software design process. We are embedded with engineering teams and also work closely with many of the folks you’ve heard from on this blog: the teams that produce Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Project, SharePoint etc.

As UX designers we get to exercise many creative muscles you might associate with the word ‘design’. We sketch on paper. We brainstorm new opportunities. We envision interactive flows and innovative ideas. We create wireframes of software interactions, and mock-up the look and feel of our software. Many of these creative tools have one goal in common: they minimize the risk of committing to a particular design direction. The artifacts we produce support discussion with product teams, researchers and you. They help us realize which design proposals are compelling & feasible.

Yeah but what do you really do?

We sketch. We build prototypes. We design the visuals. Though not as concise, the samples below may illustrate what we do with a little more clarity. Since I’ve worked closely with the SharePoint product team to incorporate the Ribbon user interface, I’ll share with you a few samples that highlight the development of SharePoint 2010. It’s important to note, most of these samples represent designs that do not match what you see in Beta. This is important as many of our sketches & prototypes are explorations. We aim to fail early and often such that what you see when we ship is the best that it can be.

Sketching is a tool we use throughout the product development cycle. It’s often helpful in the early phases. Collaborating with researchers and the product teams, designers sketch and iterate on feature design. Sketching is very low cost work. We can explore a myriad of possibilities without committing time to visual polish or code. The quick and loose nature of a sketched designs helps crystalize a vision, teasing out goals and success criteria. It sets the foundation for discussion, iteration and polish.

These early sketches explore possible placement of Ribbon UI in SharePoint 2010. (Click to see larger images)



Sample sketches exploring alternate ways to access site level commands in SharePoint 2010. (Click to see larger images.)



Once a design direction is well understood we often create a prototype. These mock user interfaces are often click-able and rich with interaction. Like the sample below, some prototypes are bare, almost wireframes. Regardless of the fidelity, creating a prototype helps us get a closer look at the intended design. The process of building one removes ambiguity by crystalizing a number of decisions into a design that can be experienced, just like the real software. It is common for us to evaluate the experience of these prototypes in the lab, with people from outside Microsoft. Tim mentioned this in his post “UX Research Tools and Techniques”.



Here is a sample prototype exploring ribbon interaction for SharePoint 2010.

Designing the form and behavior of our applications is another core part of what we do as designers. The visuals or form are closely tied with the interaction or behavior. We carefully consider how the user interface is presented. We also carefully craft the subtle details that make each button hover and transition feel alive. In a future post we’ll spend some time explaining the details of how we develop visuals and branding. Here, I want to share what happens once interaction and visual direction is defined. There is quite a bit of work that goes into specifying interface details. Being embedded with engineering teams means that we play a crucial role in making sure that software matches our specification. This is what we often call a fit and finish stage. The sample below illustrates just how detailed we get about visual.



Above is a sample visual specification of SharePoint 2010 Ribbon user interface.

What else?

I hope this quick overview of user experience design helps you understand the impact of our discipline on the software you use. Our work affects the look, feel and behavior of Office products. It’s evident in the icons, themes, visuals and details of each application screen. It also shows through in the bits of delight we hope you experience when you use Office.

Please look for our upcoming posts on the Visual and Branding story for Office 2010. We look forward to hearing what you think! Thanks for reading.
More... ]]> Vista News SGT Oddball http://www.vistax64.com/vista-news/260690-ux-design-tools-techniques.html