Recently I decided that I wanted to see how easy it would be to build a Windows 8 application that consumed the Windows Azure Management API. It seemed like it should be an easy thing, and something that could potentially end up in a nice management/overview/dashboard kind of application. However, it isn’t quite that simple as I thought as Windows Azure uses certificates for authentication of the HTTP requests being used.
Using certificates for HTTP requests isn’t really that hard, at least not when working in .NET. But in Windows 8 apps, we are using WinRT, which is way more sandboxed, and to be honest, a bit more complicated, which makes it a little bit more complex…
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I barely managed to get back from this years MVP Summit before I am on my way again. I landed in Stockholm yesterday at 11:30, and it is now 15:30 and I am back on the train to the airport…
This time I am headed to Amsterdam for a “Train the Trainer” for Windows 8. For those of you who do not know what TTT events are, they are basically a way for Microsoft to educate trainers on their new platforms, making sure that there are trainers out there ready to educate people when their new platforms launches. I personally think this TTT is going to be extra interesting as it is covering the next version of Microsoft’s biggest product (Windows…duh), which just a couple of days ago was released as a “consumer preview” version. And this time, Microsoft is handling the whole thing a bit differently than normal, so it is quite exciting…
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A couple of weeks has gone by since Microsoft unveiled Windows 8 at the BUILD conference in Anaheim, and things are kind of back to normal. Except for the fact that Microsoft has gagged all of their normal information channels.
Apparently, Microsoft representatives are not allowed to talk about Windows 8 at all. And speakers at some conferences have been informed that they are not to talk about Windows 8 on stage. At least not their personal opinions. I assume that they are allowed to talk about the facts that were unveiled in Anaheim…
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I feel that the one thing that has been lacking here at Build is information about the fact that “old” windows application technologies are still there in Windows 8, and are just as much first class citizens as the new Metro style apps. They even have a lot on offer that the new apps don’t.
Microsoft promises that any application that runs on Windows 7 will also run on Windows 8. They are also saying, repeatedly but not loud enough, that the “old” technologies are still a very viable option for developing apps. You should not necessarily default to building a Metro style app when creating a new application. To be honest, in my world at least, I am very likely to lean towards another technology when starting a new project.
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15. September 2011
ZeroKoll
BUILD , Windows 8
Windows 8 introduces a new concept called “charms”. Charms are basically a set of features that is handled by the OS, but is used/implemented/extended by the installed apps.
That sounds really confusing…but it isn’t…or…well…I will try to explain…
When you expand the “toolbar” on the right hand side of Windows 8 (swiping from the right edge of the screen towards the center) you are faced with a couple of buttons. First off the start button (Windows logo), but also share, settings, search. These are all “charms”. A charm is basically a feature that can be called up through the OS by using that toolbar, but should be implemented by the individual apps.
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Ok, so I will only quickly mention this as I find it awesomely cool, but have limited information. But basically, all apps get the ability to store settings and a certain amount of data in a roaming data store. This roaming data store is then synched “up” to Live services, and then down to all the users devices. This way, all settings and app things that makes sense to have identical in all places will just be on all devices automatically.
This means that a setting only needs to be done once, and then all your devices will have the same setting. I do however assume that you can manipulate what settings are synched, but I have to check…
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Earlier today, I made an update to a previous post, cause I had misunderstood some things regarding WinRT. It is however getting clearer and clearer as we get more and more information.
This post is a way for me to try to explain the Windows 8 developer story as I see it today. I am probably wrong in a hundred different ways, as I am trying to stitch together lots of little pieces of information to get a bigger picture… But I am at least going to try to get what I believe down on paper, and also add my own reflections of course…
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Ok, so I have finally got myself settled in Stockholm (Sweden) and started my new job at Active Solution. It has started slow, but it is looking very promising after having been here a day and a half. It might even give me a bit more time to keep my dear blog active, which has unfortunately been a bit neglected during the whole move from Sweden.
One of the first things I am going to do for my new employer, is to go to the BUILD Windows conference in Anaheim, and blog and tweet as much of the information I get my hands on as possible…with my personal views included of course (not that they really asked for that)…
So I went to the BUILD website and registered myself, something that went very smooth. I guess that is to be expected. Whenever someone wants you to give them $1595 (or whatever it was), they generally remove any friction from the process.
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