Billy Hollis regaled the audience with his trademark wit and passion during his talk on app design at the Visual Studio Live! Conference in Las Vegas last week. While the audience enjoyed a good laugh, Hollis' underlying message was dead serious: Microsoft line-of-business developers need to challenge themselves to master design concepts -- and they need to do it soon.
Hollis said that sleek consumer apps in smartphones and iPads are conditioning users -- both inside and outside corporate walls -- to value thoughtful design in app interfaces. Dense and haphazard Windows Forms UIs that pack dozens of controls on a screen are simply not acceptable anymore.
Projecting a mockup of a nightmare Windows Form UI on the screen, Hollis challenged attendees to take bad design personally, telling them to "be unsatisfied" when they see poorly designed apps.
"You need to feel emotionally unsatisfied if you end up with a kludged-up adaptation," he said during an interview the day after the presentation.
'Microsoft Understands the Danger'
There was urgency in Hollis' voice as he talked about missed opportunities in the Microsoft ecosystem to improve the state of application design.
"When XAML started up we really went heavily into that space and I just immersed myself in design," said Hollis, who at the time expected the developer community to take advantage of XAML to create unique new interfaces. It didn't happen.
"It's a huge missed opportunity. And not only a missed opportunity -- it's a pretty big risk associated with it," Hollis said. "I remember when IBM went from dominating the entire IT industry to irrelevant, in 10 years. In 1985 they ruled everything. In 1995 they were irrelevant."
IBM was upended by its inability to respond to the PC revolution, Hollis said, adding that Microsoft faces no less a threat from the visual revolution that is redefining users' relationship with their computers and devices. If Microsoft developers fail to meet the increasingly sophisticated expectations of users, then developers in other ecosystems will.
"Microsoft understands the danger," he said.
Getting into a Design State of Mind
Microsoft has taken urgent action to close the design gap between its various platforms and those produced by Apple. Touch-savvy Windows Phone and Windows Store apps, with their minimalist UIs and explicit community design guidelines, reflect Microsoft's commitment to meeting user expectations.
But Hollis said that Microsoft faces a challenge as it works to build design expertise.
"Acquiring that discipline is a three- to four-year process. How long has Microsoft been working on it? Two years," Hollis said. "It's inevitable that they will get better at it. But they need to get better quickly."
How can developers improve their ability to design visually compelling and coherent app interfaces? Hollis' first piece of advice is to get emotional.
"Design is about emotion, intuition and other right-brain things," he said. "I tell [developers] to go out and learn to sketch, go to a museum, take pictures of things in the real world that reflect good and bad design."
Hollis said developers need to press users' buttons with their application designs. Characteristics like size, color, shape and relative position can guide user attention. He further advises developers to find ways to cast important information in a way that makes the most sense for users, and not for the computers serving them. A pediatrician's app, for instance, might prominently display the age of the patient, rather than his or her date of birth.
"Humans are programmed with responses," he explained. "If you take advantage of that you can help people make better and faster decisions."
Posted by Michael Desmond on 04/01/20130 comments
Microsoft has been improving Windows Azure so aggressively that developers can struggle to keep up. That was the message from Applied Information Systems CTO Vishwas Lele, who explored recent additions to Microsoft's cloud platform during a presentation at the Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas conference last week. "The number of services that are being added is amazing," Lele said, encouraging developers to take a targeted approach to using the Windows Azure. "When you look at the cloud, think of the pieces that might help you."
Lele in his talk highlighted several areas of interest for developers, including Windows Azure Mobile Services support for Android and HTML5 Web clients, and updated Active Directory integration that lets IT departmentsgrant employee access to Windows Azure subscriptions using Windows Azure Active Directory or Office 365 identities.
Big data capabilities also got a boost with the HDInsight Preview, which allows developers to access Hadoop clusters running on Windows Azure. And the Windows Azure Portal received numerous enhancements, including the ability to monitor Windows Azure Web sites and cloud services from locations around the world, added Service Bus configuration and blob storage.
Lele highlighted advances in the mobile space, including new support for PhoneGap and mobile Web apps, and updates to Windows Azure Mobile Services. Lele explained Mobile Services by saying: "If you're trying to write a mobile application and you want some kind of a database that stores some information, you want to service-enable that layer, you want notifications to work...you want some kind of identity management -- essentially all the things that I've described, you can sum it up as it's a back-end in a box."
He noted that scheduler capabilities were also added to Mobile Services. When asked by an audience member why it was preferable to use Mobile Services instead of HTML5, Lele said that, in addition to device support, "the other reason you want to use it is, you're actually not writing any back-end code. What Mobile Services is doing is giving you a ready-made, REST-based API that you can invoke to communicate with [your] data."
Active Directory integration was also highlighted in Lele's presentation. Previously, Lele noted, users had to use their Windows Live ID to log in to the Windows Azure Portal, and there was no two-factor identification available for Windows Azure. "With Active Directory integration, you can actually project your Active Directory credentials up to the Windows Azure Portal," Lele said. "So you can now say, 'Person A from Active Directory, Person B from Active Directory, owned by an organization, will be able to log in to the Windows Azure Portal.'"
Lele noted that Windows Azure Active Directory is highly reliable because it can fail over to other datacenters. It also supports the Graph API and other hard-to-support protocols such as WS-Federation.
The HDInsight Preview, another recent addition, allows developers to get into the big data game with its Hadoop and Hive integration. "You can download the Hive ODBC driver, and then run big data analysis in the cloud," Lele explained. "Then, using Excel and Hive -- once the data comes out of the Hadoop cluster -- you can use Excel to further slice and dice that data." These capabilities will give developers visibility into large data sets, Lele said, allowing them to analyze and "mine that data for patterns."
Another platform enhancement Lele discussed was the introduction of Windows Azure Media Services, which allows developers to bring secure, encrypted "digital media assets," such as video, through the cloud and into SharePoint and other sites.
"There's a REST-based API that's available, and you can invoke it from any platform," Lele explained as he demoed a Media Services-hosted video running on a SharePoint site. "The Media Services team gives you an SDK, which allows you to write applications for iOS and Android, so you can consume it from those devices as well."
As Lele described these and other enhancements to Windows Azure, he emphasized that, to make the most of all these capabilities, developers must take advantage of the automation capabilities in the cloud.
"Cloud computing is based on two premises: One is that it is a consumption-based model. You only pay for what you use, you turn things off you don't use. That necessitates automation," Lele said. "Number two, you can take advantage of the low cost [derived from cloud providers using lower-end hardware], but at the same time not be impacted by the hardware failures. [So] automation is key to being successful in cloud computing."
Hand-in-hand with automation is the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) capability that Windows Azure has provided since June 2012. Lele noted that IaaS allows developers "to provision hardware resources using an API," and eliminates the error-prone process of capacity planning. "It's important for developers to understand [IaaS] because...by not understanding the options that are available to make your applications more fault-tolerant, you're not taking advantage of them in designing your applications," Lele said.
Posted by Katrina Carrasco on 04/01/20130 comments
When it comes to design, what you see is not always what you get. During his Visual Studio Live! Las Vegas talk on app design, Billy Hollis noted the fascinating role that the human brain plays in interpreting and comprehending visual input, and offered insights into how developers can take advantage of biology to make their app UIs more effective. Here are four key points Hollis highlighted in his talk this week.
Gestalt Principles: Mind the Gaps
The human visual system is designed to see structure and relationship. Things like the color, shape and proximity of elements to each other impact the mental grouping that the brain commits. So pay close attention to how these elements impact the visual hierarchy of your design. What's more, the brain willingly fills in missing information in the visual field to yield expected or anticipated patterns. This enables designers to, for example, employ minimalist icons (such as the camera icon in Windows 8) that are both spare and simple, yet immediately convey their meaning to users.
Inattentional Blindness: Hiding in Plain Sight
The human brain filters out things that it's not looking for. This is called "inattentional blindness," and it can render objects essentially invisible to the user even though the objects are in plain sight. For instance, if you put error messages in the status bar, you stand a good chance of not getting those messages read because no one will be looking for them there.
Figure and Field: Perception Is Everything
No doubt you've seen the optical illusion that can be interpreted either as a vase in the middle or the silhouettes of two faces at the edges. This happens because your brain chooses what elements in the visual range are the "figure" (that is, the object of interest in foreground) and what elements are the "field" (that is, the background), depending on what you're doing. Microsoft ran afoul of this phenomenon when it tried deemphasizing menus and controls in pre-release versions of Visual Studio 2012, in an effort to make the code windows pop. But developers struggled when they shifted focus to the controls, which remained stubbornly in the background due to their design.
Mapping Principle: Keeping It Real
Want to cut down on user training and frustration? Try presenting tasks in a way that has a close analog to familiar, real-world interactions. For instance, the Windows Screen Resolution dialog box for setting up multiple monitors lets you drag little monitor representations to align the displays and define how graphic elements will cross from one display to the next. The task of aligning monitors is extremely intuitive, precisely because it maps so closely to the physical ideal.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 04/01/20130 comments
During a heavily attended session at Visual Studio Live! 2013 Las Vegas last week, Brian Noyes attempted to clear up some of the confusion about where developers should focus their efforts in the crowded field of Microsoft technologies. Noyes, a Microsoft regional director and MVP, and CTO and architect at Solliance, counseled that developers should primarily consider their users and those users' needs when choosing a technology path.
"Don't be focused on the technology first," Noyes said. "Technology is a means to an end. Figure out what your apps needs, who your users are, what your requirements are, and then start trying to align that with what the technologies are best for."
Noyes' talk was titled "Demystifying the Microsoft UI Technology Roadmap," and the packed room and number of audience questions showed that many Microsoft devs are searching for direction. Noyes fielded questions about the viability of Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the changing mobile landscape, Windows 8 style guidelines and more. Guidance for the mobile space was of particular concern: When Noyes asked how many attendees have current or near-future requirements to build apps for tablets or phones, more than half the audience raised their hands.
"Mobile is the wildcard in all this," Noyes said, explaining that friction is to be expected when moving or redesigning traditionally desktop-based line-of-business (LOB) apps to mobile devices.
Noyes gave a general breakdown of which Microsoft technologies are best for which scenarios. For traditional, content-focused enterprise LOB apps, Noyes suggested focusing on the Modern UI style or WinRT for Windows 8 apps. For small and midsize businesses (SMBs), he noted that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) scenarios will be more common, and those scenarios will be best served with rich HTML for multiple platforms. For their traditional desktop apps, Noyes added, SMBs should focus on WPF. For businesses supporting tablets and other devices with touch interaction, Noyes suggested focusing on WinRT. He also recommended branching out of the Microsoft stack if needed, and "using the native client platform to provide good UX" -- iOS for Apple products, Java for Android and HTML5 for browser clients. But these recommendations came with a caveat: Noyes said that in the Microsoft tech roadmap, there's no single "best" path.
"The key thing for people to understand is that there is no silver bullet out there," Noyes cautioned. "The UI technology landscape is a confusing morass of overlapping capabilities and you really have to have a good understanding of your user and deployment scenarios, as well as your development team's technology biases, to be able to select the right technology for your application."
Asked why it's so difficult to select a technology path, Noyes responded: "Microsoft's perspective, and the product teams' perspectives, is that they want you all to be happy. Wherever you are today, they want you to be happy and have a path forward. That's why there are so many choices [out] there."
The best thing developers can do, Noyes said, is protect themselves from the number of technology choices -- and the pace of change among those choices -- by trying "to design in such a way [that you] don't paint yourself into a box."
He continued: "Don't put logic on the client side unless you have to. Put things behind the service boundary...You can't think just in terms of the UI. Even if you don't have current requirements to be on tablets and mobile devices, pretend you do. [And] designing for the cloud as your back-end, to the extent possible, is going to make your life easier."
Posted by Katrina Carrasco on 04/01/20130 comments
JavaScript has been in the air at the Visual Studio Live! 2013 Las Vegas conference this week. Whether it was Steven Guggenheimer's Tuesday keynote address on modern apps or Brian Noyes' Wednesday session on the Microsoft UI technology roadmap for developers, JavaScript has been an important part of the conversation. The problem is, many .NET developers familiar with strongly typed C# are either uncomfortable with or even hostile to JavaScript's dynamically typed scripting language.
In particular, programming in JavaScript can become a challenge on larger, more-complex code projects. The lack of strong typing invites runtime errors, while the lack of namespaces and class structure make it difficult to organize and manage code as it grows.
That's where TypeScript, an open source language created by Microsoft, comes in. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that presents class structure and type safety for coders, helping them better manage and maintain their code. Projects written in TypeScript compile to valid, standards-compliant JavaScript code.
Ben Hoelting is a software architect at Aspenware and a C# MVP. He also led an hour-long presentation on TypeScript at the Visual Studio Live! conference on Tuesday. He said that C# developers previously aligned with Silverlight are finding themselves forced to learn JavaScript/CSS/HTML.
"Talking with many of the attendees at these conferences and at community events, I find many of them miss coding in C# and XAML. It's just easier for them," he said, noting that JavaScript lacks the tooling and syntax C# developers prefer. "I believe that TypeScript can provide the tooling and syntax to reduce the negative feelings most C# developers get from JavaScript."
TypeScript does not eliminate the need to know and learn JavaScript, Hoelting warns. Rather, it helps reduce the learning curve for C# devs and opens opportunities they might otherwise miss. For instance, TypeScript can take full advantage of powerful JavaScript libraries and APIs like Node.js, and there is TypeScript tooling for both the Sublime and WebStorm 6 JavaScript IDEs.
In addition to providing strong typing, TypeScript also promotes proper code organization -- something that can be difficult for inexperienced JavaScript developers.
"TypeScript allows for Modules [the equivalent of namespaces in .NET], Classes and Interfaces, which fit better into the SOLID principles of object-oriented coding," Hoelting explained. "It makes it easier to separate concerns in my JavaScript."
So could TypeScript win the hearts and minds of grizzled C# developers who might otherwise be hostile to the scripting language? Hoelting thinks it's too early to tell, as TypeScript remains a pre-1.0 release. Version 0.9 is currently in the works -- an alpha version could be released in April -- and promises to add support for generics and a more robust compiler architecture. You can read more about the upcoming version at Microsoft's TypeScript blog.
"Here's my opinion on TypeScript. Anders Hejlsberg [the creator of C#] and many of the other members of the C# team at Microsoft have been helping to define and develop TypeScript," Hoelting said. "That tells me that we're going to see an explosion of C# features that start showing up in TypeScript. In a year or two, C# developers are going to feel right at home inside TypeScript. That's my take on what I've seen from Microsoft."
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/28/20130 comments
Interoperability is emerging as a central theme of Microsoft mobile development at the Visual Studio Live! 2013 Las Vegas conference, being held this week.In his Tuesday session, "Better Together -- SharePoint 2013 and Mobile Development," Aptillion Inc. Founder and Director Darrin Bishop discussed the SharePoint mobile dev experience on a variety of devices. "Windows Phone is a no-brainer to code against for SharePoint," Bishop said, but he added that new Remote APIs in SharePoint 2013 -- REST and client-side object model (CSOM) -- allow developers to code against iOS and Android devices, too. According to Bishop, on SharePoint 2013, "You're not limited to the [Windows] Phone OS anymore."
Bishop noted that mobile device usage is skyrocketing, and companies that use SharePoint need to develop a "mobile story" to be prepared for the continuing influx of mobile devices in the workplace. "Designers and architects need to think about who is accessing what data or services from where and for what reason," Bishop said.
Touching on the theme of interoperability and the cross-platform capabilities of SharePoint, he commented: "Sometimes it makes sense to browse a product natively and change the UI to make it a little bit easier for the platform, and sometimes it's nice to make a specific app to go after that targeted [platform]."
Bishop described the Android platform as the friendliest to proprietary apps created by developers for private company use. He noted that both Apple and Microsoft have more-restrictive policies about what apps are put onto their devices. He also gave this caveat: "We've got a lot more tools [in SharePoint] to do better mobile devices and customizations, but it's still not perfect yet. It's still a lot of work to make it really work well on all devices, whereas SharePoint on the desktop out of the box is really easy. The tradeoff is really about who your people are and what you're doing."
While the SharePoint mobile dev experience is an evolving area, the biggest impediment to developing mobile solutions in SharePoint may be the product's install base. Many organizations are still on SharePoint 2010, and it remains to be seen if the new mobile dev capabilities in SharePoint 2013 will spur fast adoption.
Bradley Flynn, an audience member, noted: "It's hard, especially for larger companies, to do adoption for a brand-new product like [SharePoint 2013], so usually there's a two-year delay" between product release and company deployment. Flynn is holding off on redoing his company's intranet until they deploy SharePoint 2013 "because I know there are a lot of pluses, like MySites. The social tools that are built in to 2013 are way better than 2010." But he admits the upgrade might be a hard sell -- some of his company's departments are still on SharePoint 2007.
Bishop points out that Microsoft cloud offerings could help companies shortcut the update process and move quickly to the latest tools. "I think companies need to look at Office 365 and SharePoint 2013 in the cloud while they consider their plans," he said. "Office 365 is a strong contender for many businesses."
Posted by Katrina Carrasco on 03/27/20130 comments
Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist of Developer and Platform Evangelism at Microsoft, took the stage at Visual Studio Live! 2013 Las Vegas Tuesday afternoon to outline Microsoft's vision for the emerging class of modern apps in a device- and services-centric world.
Guggenheimer noted the challenge posed by the rapid explosion in the number of deployed devices, from 500 million worldwide in 2003 to an estimated 50 billion by 2020. However, he called the effort to develop for these devices "just one half of the conversation." The flip side, he said, is enabling services to constantly interact with these devices and with other services.
Throughout the talk Guggenheimer kept coming back to the concept of symmetry -- be it in enabling diverse client form factors or supporting a range of client-server and cloud-based software models.
Guggenheimer made a point to distinguish Microsoft's device strategy across phone, tablet and computer from that at Apple or Google. He noted that both competitors treat the phone and tablet the same, despite the large differences in screen size, while the computer is addressed with an entirely distinct platform. Microsoft, Guggenheimer said, has worked to enable symmetry across all three form factors, treating the tablet and PC more as equals.
"Nothing is perfect here today. But we've tried our hardest to try to get that symmetry," Guggenheimer said. "We've picked some different design points intentionally, because we think bigger screens align more than smaller screens."
Microsoft Fellow John Shewchuk came up on stage to demonstrate how Microsoft supports development across all three form factors. The demonstration showed how developers can code similar functionality for the Web with HTML5/JavaScript, natively with C++, or in a managed framework with C#. At one point, Shewchuk showed a C++-based, DirectX-enabled game based on the Unity 3D graphics engine, running both on his Windows client PC and a Windows Phone.
"It's the same game running through that engine," Shewchuk said.
Guggenheimer also talked extensively about the cloud and Windows Azure, noting that for many greenfield development efforts, the "starting point now is cloud first. In the past it was on-premises first and cloud second. That was just where we were in our history then."
Shewchuk returned to stage to show how Windows Azure Mobile Services can be used to transform a traditional VB-style application into a cloud-enabled connected application targeting Windows Phone, Windows Store, Android or iOS. Shewchuk also showed how a real-time Web mapping application can interact with Google Maps on an Android smartphone.
Even as Microsoft makes gains enabling cloud- and services-centric app development tuned for diverse client targets, a core economic challenge remains. Guggenheimer noted that companies are struggling to monetize apps sold through store environments like Windows Store. Store-based apps account for $20 billion in annual revenue, compared to more than $300 billion for line-of-business applications.
The solution, said Guggenheimer, is to maximize exposure by being "available in as many countries, as many languages, and as many currencies as possible." He also noted that Microsoft's fee structure enables apps that have more than $25,000 in sales to move to a more advantageous fee level. After $25,000, developers keep 80 percent of revenues for apps sold on the Windows Store, up from 70 percent.
Guggenheimer closed by reminding attendees about the upcoming Microsoft BUILD conference, scheduled to take place June 26-28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. BUILD is Microsoft's flagship developer conference and has been used in the past as a platform to launch major dev-oriented products and initiatives.
For more on BUILD 2013 see our interview at Visual Studio Live! with Guggenheimer here.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/27/20130 comments
At the Visual Studio Live! 2013 Las Vegas conference today, Microsoft announced the release to Web (RTW) date for WebMatrix 3, the company's free tool for creating and deploying Web sites.
In an interview before his presentation, "From 0 to Web Site in 60 Minutes with WebMatrix," Mark Rosenberg, an instructor with Microsoft certified training partner New Horizons, revealed that the new version of WebMatrix will debut on April 4, 2013.
Rosenberg noted that the WebMatrix 3 CTP was released in mid-March, and is currently available for download.
Using WebMatrix, Web developers can build, deploy and maintain Web sites using a variety of languages and platforms, including PHP, Node.js and HTML5. Rosenberg described WebMatrix as "Visual Studio simplified." It provides the Visual Studio HTML editor and Web site-creation experience, along with other Visual Studio tools like IntelliSense, yet still gives developers from various platforms the power and simplicity of "one-click" Web site creation and deployment.
"The idea is to get a Web site up and running as simply as possible," Rosenberg said. "One of the problems that I always have in Visual Studio is… 'I don't have the prerequisites: I need to install PHP to make it work, I need to do this [or that],' and I install PHP, and then it doesn't work. WebMatrix takes care of all those problems for you. [If] you don't have PHP installed, and you've picked a PHP-based Web site, it installs PHP. It actually takes care of installing everything you need on your machine."
The most notable improvement in WebMatrix 3, according to Rosenberg, is the tool's strengthened integration with Windows Azure. (He noted that the Microsoft ASP.NET team -- a team from the Windows Azure side of Microsoft -- is behind WebMatrix, perhaps driving some of the interoperability.) He described the WebMatrix/Window Azure experience as "smooth, easy [and] simple," and noted that, "essentially, you can develop a Web site and, with a click, put it up in Azure if you have an Azure account." Rosenberg mentioned the 10 free Web sites that come with the 90-day free trial of Azure, noting that Microsoft is "not charging you to put them up there -- so without even an MSDN account, you can put a lot of stuff up there, get a Web site going, put it up in the cloud, have it running."
Another important piece of the WebMatrix 3 update is the addition of source control support for Git and Team Foundation Server (TFS). TypeScript support has also been added to the tool, along with improved remote editing and provisioning capabilities.
Asked who the target dev audience is for WebMatrix, Rosenberg replied: "If you're using Visual Studio and you really, really like it, you don't have to use [WebMatrix]. But if you have people that don't know how to use Visual Studio, or if you need to set up Web sites that someone else is going to maintain, this is a great tool for them."
He noted that WebMatrix is "open to anyone," and stressed the product's interoperability aims, saying that though it is not an open source product, it "cooperates with open source."
"[Even people who] work with Visual Studio a lot have trouble sometimes getting all the little parts to work correctly. With WebMatrix you don't have that problem...Everything in WebMatrix just works --it's all designed to just work," Rosenberg said. "Whatever kind of Web site you want to make, it's easy to do in WebMatrix."
Posted by Katrina Carrasco on 03/27/20130 comments
Wednesday's keynote address at the Visual Studio Live! conference in Las Vegas explored the new development models, tools and capabilities around SharePoint 2013, Office 2013 and Office 365.
Jim Nakashima, lead program manager in the Office Developer Tools division at Microsoft, opened his Day Two keynote by noting the same point stressed on Tuesday by Steven Guggenheimer, Microsoft corporate vice president of Developer Platform Evangelism, during his keynote address. That is, the decisions companies are making to deploy applications to the cloud are no longer about "if," but "when."
Microsoft recently completed a round of product launches enabling the new app model for Office and SharePoint. Office 2013 was released in January 2013, while the cloud-based Office 365 was released in February. The Office Developer Tools for Visual Studio were released in March.
Nakashima went on to walk through the cloud-based development model introduced with Office 2013 and SharePoint 2013, and showed how this model coexists with Web standards-based and .NET server-side development. He then worked through a series of demos, showing how developers can embed app functionality in Excel spreadsheets and Outlook e-mail windows, before exploring how developers can quickly build applications for SharePoint that can be deployed to provider-hosted or auto-hosted (that is, Microsoft) servers.
Nakashima went on to highlight the app lifecycle capabilities of the new platforms, showing how the Web-based Team Foundation Service enables continuous deployment and provides source control, continuous integration, and features like burndown charts and work-item tracking.
In an interview after the keynote, Nakashima said that Microsoft's strategy around Office and SharePoint is to build upon the well-understood Web app development model and give developers a seamless path to shift their Web development efforts to SharePoint.
"There's just a little bit of goo on top of [a Web app] you need to do to make that app for SharePoint. And you get awesome identity [management] by default with that little bit of goo," Nakashima explained. "It is literally just tying a manifest to a URL. That URL is hooked on a Web server. So everything you've done as a Web developer and developing a Web app continues to exist, but you get some value-add on top of that."
Once deployed to SharePoint, developers can work to take advantage of the capabilities of the platform, Nakashima said. SharePoint features like workflow, search, remote event procedures, lists and libraries all become available to developers that move their Web apps to SharePoint. In addition, SharePoint offers a standard way to surface apps within the organization, using the new App Catalog.
Perhaps most important, new Office and SharePoint apps streamline the end user experience, Nakashima said.
"People are already using these apps," he said. "Why have them bounce out to different apps and experiences? Just keep them in the apps and experiences they're in."
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/27/20130 comments
Don't look now, but the Microsoft BUILD conference is back.
Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president and chief evangelist of Developer and Platform Evangelism, announced today that the next BUILD Conference will be held June 26-28, 2013, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Guggenheimer revealed Microsoft's BUILD conference schedule at the Visual Studio Live! conference in Las Vegas this morning. During his afternoon keynote address, Guggenheimer told attendees that the Moscone Center will provide a lot more room than last year's event, which was held on Microsoft's Redmond campus. Registrations for BUILD 2012 sold out in less than one hour.
BUILD is Microsoft's flagship developer conference. The June event will be the third BUILD conference, following events held in the fall of 2011 and 2012. The conference in the past has served as the platform for launching developer previews of key Microsoft developer products, including Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012.
In a blog post, Guggenheimer wrote that the conference will provide updates "about what's next for Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio and more." Developers can also visit the official BUILD Web site for information about the event.
BUILD 2013 conference Registration opens April 2nd at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. Registration costs $2,095, with an early bird rate of $1,595 for the first 500 registrations.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/26/20130 comments
The Visual Studio Live! conference in Las Vegas kicked off Tuesday morning with a keynote address focused on Windows Azure application development by Microsoft Senior Director of Developer and Platform Evangelism James Conard.
While the conference is aligned around a number of core themes, including cross-platform mobile and Windows 8 app development, Conard's talk hit hard on the compelling features of Windows Azure.
Windows Azure has seen significant updates over the past several months, including a March update for Windows Azure Mobile Services that added support for HTML and JavaScript clients and Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) to support and manage AJAX requests from across multiple domains. During his keynote, Conard showed off the streamlined Windows Azure Management Portal and guided attendees through creating, configuring and monitoring Windows Azure applications.
Among other things, Conard showed off Windows Azure's new endpoint monitoring capabilities, noting that Microsoft just added the functionality as part of the March update last week. He also discussed how Microsoft now allows developers to synchronize content from Dropbox folders, in addition to supporting Visual Studio, GitHub, FTP and other repositories.
"We've been on an amazing march with Azure for the last few months," Conard said in an interview, noting that Azure Mobile Services was introduced in August 2012. That release supported Windows Store and Windows Phone 8 applications. Microsoft updated Azure Mobile Services with support for iOS in October, followed by Android support about a month ago. JavaScript and HTML client support was added in the most recent March update.
Conard pointed out that Windows Azure touches a wide range of applications and scenarios, from Web-based apps to complex, multi-tier applications. During his presentation, he walked attendees through the process of configuring and deploying Windows Azure applications, highlighting the streamlined, Web-based Windows Azure UI and rich dashboard functionality.
Conard said that the overarching theme of his keynote was flexibility.
"This is a shift that is occurring across virtually every type of customer that we talk with. From the larger enterprises to mobile application developers that are one- or two-man shops -- just the transformation of using the cloud in different ways is happening across the board," Conard said. "[Developers benefit from] the flexibility we are exposing with Windows Azure and the ability with that to use the frameworks, languages and tools of Visual Studio and .NET, in the case of this group of developers, with Windows Azure."
The rapid-fire feature updates do pose a challenge of sorts for Conard, who says the Azure group is committed to a continuous-services model.
"What's really important for developers, and also quite difficult for developers to get used to today, is just the pace of innovation that is being exposed through the cloud, where literally next week you go and take a look at Azure and there is a new feature or new services, like Android support for Azure Mobile Services," Conard said. "We are on a pace of continuous services and so what we should expect are more and more capabilities being exposed on Azure, and that's across the board."
Posted by Michael Desmond on 03/26/20130 comments