Professional Software for Windows Services / 24×7 OperationIs the Desktop Dead?On my annual New Year’s Day trek to the Mecca for geeks (aka Fry’s Electronics), I noticed that their once busy desktop section was completely deserted:  A few feet away, the laptops, ultrabooks and tablets were the focus of all the love:  Perhaps the desktop PC isn’t dead, but excitement in it certainly is… Posted in Miscellaneous Leave a comment AlwaysUp, Service Protector, ActiveBooks Listed in the Windows Store
While the newly-minted Windows Store focuses on applications developed specifically for Windows 8, Microsoft allows select desktop applications to feature there as well. And after jumping through the necessary hoops to establish compatibility, security and quality, AlwaysUp, Service Protector, and ActiveBooks have all been accepted as desktop apps! Here is the page for AlwaysUp:
Windows 8 – A Fresh Start or a Last Gasp? Windows 8 is Microsoft’s most technologically adventurous operating system since Windows 95. Yet despite receiving rave reviews from phone and tablet users, the preview releases were consistently panned by the traditional desktop PC community. So what is the verdict? Why did Microsoft decide to serve both desktop and mobile users with one solution? I headed to Microsoft’s Launch Event in South San Francisco form my own opinions on Windows 8. A few hundred developers were in attendance for the jam-packed day and the technical sessions were unexpectedly illuminating. Here is what I learned: Content Before ChromeThis is the primary tenet in Microsoft’s new-found religion. Simply stated, applications should minimize (or eliminate) all non-content related GUI elements. Familiar components like title bars, close buttons, system menus, scroll bars and search boxes that have always featured prominently in Windows have been declared “second class citizens” and are drastically minimized in Windows 8. For example, here is Internet Explorer on Windows 7:  And here it is on Windows 8:  Not only are the screen-stealing bars at the top gone, but the back button has been replaced by a subtle arrow that only comes up when you hover over the left side of the screen. The end result is more pixels dedicated to the web page. Very nice. Of course, Microsoft did not “invent” this approach. User interface gurus like Edward Tufte and Don Norman have been preaching for years, but it is exciting to see that their common-sense ideas have infected Redmond! Live Tiles – Icons on Steroids Boring static icons may be a thing of the past. Live tiles (which have the power to give you a “quick look” at your information without having to open the application) seem to offer a huge potential… The Start Button is Gone (but you’ll probably get used to it)I still fault Microsoft for banishing the revered Start Button. Why didn’t they keep it there to ease the transition for desktop users? In any case, since learning how to bring up the powerful Charm Bar by swiping in one of the right corners I haven’t felt as outraged. (By the way, there are already a few utilities that restore the Start button.) C++ is Back!After years of hawking C# as the language of choice, Microsoft has added C++ (along with Javascript) to the short list of preferred languages. Old-timers steeped in C++ can hold their (our) heads up again 🙂 Interesting note: The core of Windows 8 is implemented in C/C++ and COM… Windows 8 is Beautiful on a TabletWhile my Windows 8-on-a-PC experience has been distinctly bipolar (with lots of switching between the tiles and the traditional desktop), it took only four minutes for me to appreciate the new OS on a Samsung tablet. The clean UI and proactive/”living” display were especially appealing. If Microsoft can deliver on reliability (no crashing!) I think they have a winner. Really, it’s all about Leveraging WindowsWhenever Microsoft feels threatened, it uses its Windows monopoly to defend itself. For example, just as Netscape started to be come synonymous with Internet, that young company was squashed when Internet Explorer was bundled with Windows. Now Microsoft is hoping that all of us using PCs will fall in love with the new mobile-centric features in Windows 8 and will ultimately purchase Windows devices as we evolve away from the traditional desktop. Windows 8 is simply the “gateway” to a much more lucrative market. If the past is any indicator, Microsoft’s plan just might work. Windows Server 2012 CertifiedGreat news! After successfully completing the rigorous demands of the Windows Logo Program for Server Applications, AlwaysUp, Service Protector and ActiveBooks have all earned the Certified for Windows Server 2012 classification from Microsoft.  Despite an early setback with hardware requirements, testing went very smoothly. The many days of experimentation and 24×7 automated QA with the June Windows Server 2012 release candidate paid off handsomely and there were no surprises. Enjoy! Posted in Miscellaneous Tagged activebooks, alwaysup, service-protector, windows-server-2012 Leave a comment Windows Server 2012 Certification – Thanks Microsoft!For many Windows developers, a new Operating System release involves testing applications for compatibility. So with dreams of the shiny new Certified for Windows Server 2012 logo in mind, we eagerly started jumping through the usual hoops to prove that our professional applications are worthy of Microsoft’s latest and greatest. The main phase of the certification process involves running the Microsoft Platform Ready Test Tool, an easy-to-use utility that installs your application and verifies that it “plays nice” with Windows. Usually we have no problems with this straightforward utility but after a fast start, we quickly ran into a serious roadblock: Apparently the tool will only run on a Virtual Machine on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V with at least 4 cores! Our single-core VirtualBox deployed VM doesn’t cut it. OK. So how do we get a copy of Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V? And where will we find a spare quad-core computer to run it? And how long will it take to set up this utterly temporary environment? Suddenly my head is starting to hurt. Maybe we can live without the logo… Certification remained in limbo for the next month but then the gods smiled on us. Out of the blue, a pleasant Microsoft representative called to find out if we were going to get our applications certified for Windows. I jumped at the opportunity to explain our problem, to which she promptly informed me that Microsoft would be happy to loan us a Hyper-V deployed VM for a few days. Say what? That is exactly what we need! I quickly signed up and week later, as promised, received the following email with the details of the VM: We raced to log in and completed the certification for three of our applications in less than 2 hours. Whew! The proverbial happy ending. In closing, let me say a big THANK YOU to the folks at Microsoft for their new “VM loaner” program. We simply would not have been able to certify our applications without it. I surely hope that the program is still around when Microsoft gives birth to Windows Server 2014! 🙂 |
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