.NET Information center: Windows 8 Replaces the Win32 API

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Windows 8 Replaces the Win32 API

Windows 8 introduces a new core API called WinRT. This is used to develop Metro style applications using C/C++, .NET, or JavaScript. These applications automatically gain features such as hardware acceleration and advanced power management out of the box. Existing Silverlight and WPF applications can be ported to the new “Native XAML” libraries with minimal effort.

What follows is a summary of the keynote presentation. More details will be provided as they become available.

General Notes

Windows 8: Base line memory usage dropped from 540 MB to 281 MB.

The lock-screen can now display user content.

Touch-based passwords, essentially you tap on three points of an image to unlock the machine.

Like Windows Phone, the start page uses the metro style with live tiles.

There is a heavy emphasis on full screen applications.

Application specific and system settings share the same space on the user interface. It appears that applications will need to indicate which systems settings are relevant.

New version of Internet Explorer will be completely free of chrome. All of that functionality is hidden in application bars that slide into view.

Spell check is included system wide.

Developer preview includes Visual Studio 11 Express, Expression Blend 5. There is no timeline for the next milestone, which is the public Beta. Intern updates will be pushed to the preview machines on an as needed basis. The preview will be available starting tonight as http://dev.windows.com at for x86/x64.

Application Integration

Windows 8 will have extension points known as “charms”. An example of a charm is the “share charm” which shows all the ways text can be shared such as email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Applications can register themselves inside a charm by implementing the correct interfaces. Meanwhile other applications can indicate they are capable of sending information to the charm. The concept is very much like JavaScript mashups or classic OLE, but with a lot more thought about what those interactions should be.