Mark Fox's Weblog

Microsoft announced today that Windows Phone 7 has reached the “technical preview” state and as a result it can now ship prototype units to developers. It states that “thousands of prototype phones from Asus, LG and Samsung are making their way into the hands of developers over the next few weeks”. Along with these devices for developers a number of media outlets and bloggers received units to review.

Reaction varied, particularly depending on how important one felt the missing elements such as cut-and-paste, third party application multi-tasking, side loading of applications, raw sockets, Microsoft SQL Server CE , HTML5 or Flash or Silverlight in the mobile browser and others were compared to new UI and cloud integration features that were present.

Microsoft oriented Paul Thurott has a very positive preview. Engaget, Gizmodo, ZDnet, Cnet all have indepth previews in whicih they note that the missing features could really hurt Windows Phone 7’s chances as could a lack of third-party apps at launch.

In light of this, Ed Bott’s statement that Microsoft really needs to publize a road-map for WP7 is a good one. Missing cut-and-paste is acceptable if it will be fixed in a few months, waiting for a fix sometime in the indefinite future will drive customers away.

Microsoft has released a beta version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools replacing the existing Community Technology Preview last updated in April. Major changes including full Microsoft Expression Blend support, an updated Windows Phone 7 API, additional controls (but not the Panorama and Pivot yet), and Control Templates.

Microsoft also announced the distribution of pre-production devices to select developers will start in mid-July.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4. Also released is Silverlight 4. Developers will be the first to have access to these new products and techogies via MSDN downloads.

Here's a post when I covered the RC release.

Microsoft has announced the release of ASP.NET MVC 2, the next generation of its model-view-controller web framework.
Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie have details. The later notes that ASP.NET MVC 2 can be installed side-by-side with ASP.NET MVC and Visual Studio 2010 will include an automated upgrade wizard to convert ASP.NET MVC 1 projects to ASP.NET MVC 2.

Download from MSDN.

Microsoft has announced the release of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. Improvements over Beta 2 focus on speed including UI responsiveness, designers, editing, debugging, build times and solution/project load times.

There is a MSDN overview page and number of helpful blog posts. Jason Zander, General Manager for the Visual Studio team has a short FAQ, earlier he had a very useful discussion of using Team Foundation Server in VS2010 including TFS Basic which is intended to replace Visual SafeSource for individuals and small teams. Scott Guthrie, VP in the Microsoft Developer Division has a round-up of positive feedback and some more FAQs.

A launch event is scheduled for April 12, 2010.

Microsoft has announced the release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Beta 2 and has detailed the planned release versions and pricing. Jason Zander, General Manager, Visual Studio, Developer Division details the different versions:

• Visual Studio Express: the free Express SKUs for C++, C#, VB, and Web have been updated and released with this version and give you the basics for writing applications
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional with MSDN: professional development tools as you are used to today with the addition of source control integration, extensibility, etc.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Premium with MSDN: Premium has everything in Professional plus advanced development (including profiling and debugging), advanced database support, coded UI testing, etc. Rather than buying multiple “Team” SKUs, you can now get this combination of features in one box.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN: Ultimate has everything in Premium plus additional advanced features for developers, testers, and architects including features like Intellitrace (formerly Historical Debugging), the new architecture tools (UML, discovery), etc. All of the scenarios we’ve talked about are supported with this version of the product.

Scott Hanselman lists what he feels are the best new .NET Framework 4.0 features:

• Quicker to Install - A smaller Client Profile with a much smaller initial download (down to 0.8 megs from 2.8) for bootstrapping .NET client apps faster than ever)
• Side by Side - .NET 4 is a side-by-side release that doesn't auto-promote, meaning you won't break existing apps and you can have .NET 2.0, 3.5 and 4 apps on the same machine, happily.
• Side-by-side CLR support for managed add-ins inside of apps like Explorer or Outlook. Again, new and existing apps in the same process, chillin'.
• For more details on Application Compatibilty, check out the AppCompat Walkthrough for .NET 4 on MSDN.
• Dynamic Language Support - The DLR (Dynamic language runtime) ships built-in with .NET 4 so you can mix-and-match your solutions and pick the best language (or languages) amongst C# and VB.NET as well as F#, IronPython and IronRuby. This includes better support for COM (yes, COM! People do use COM and it's even easier with the new dynamic keyword in C# these days.)
• More Web Standards Support - Better support for WS-* and REST making interop easier. (I love ADO.NET Data Services, but you know that already, Dear Reader. I'm a bit of a RESTafarian, these days.)
• Plugins Galore - Visual Studio 2010 uses MEF and WPF to enable a whole new world of clean managed extensions as well as an Online Gallery (there's an extension for that!)
• Multi-Framework Multi-targeting

I have not looked at VS 2010. One thing I hope Microsoft includes is T4 templates for Windows Forms and WPF applications similar to those for ASP.NET MVC. The days of creating applications by dragging a few buttons onto a form should be behind us. Real applications need proper structure from the start.

Microsoft has announced that Windows 7 will be released to various partners and tech professional in early August. Dates are:

• ISV (Independent software vendor) and IHV (Independent hardware vendor) Partners - August 6.


• Volume License (VL) customers with an existing Software Assurance (SA) license - August 7.


• IT Professionals with TechNet Subscriptions - August 6.


• Developers with MSDN Subscriptions - August 6.

Beta testers? No freebies or extra discounts over the special pre-order offer for Windows 7 upgrades.

Microsoft has released XNA Game Studio 3.1, C# based cross-platform gaming library for the Windows, Xbox 360 and Zune platforms. The new release adds several new features over the prrevious 3.0 version including Avatar Support, Xbox LIVE Party Support, Video Playback, Content Pipeline and Audio Enhancements.

Microsoft has also renamed the Xbox LIVE Community Games which hosts selected peer reviewed XNA Game Studio games to Xbox LIVE Indie Games. (via Ars Technica)

Faced with mounting legal demands by European regulators Microsoft has announced it will drop Internet Explorer from Windows 7. While computer manufacturers will be free to add a browser to their PCs, people buying the European retail copy of Windows 7 will end up without a browser once they install Windows 7 over their Windows XP or Vista image.
Better have a copy of a browser on a CD or USB stick ready when installing the retail Windows 7 or you will need to learn how to use FTP to download a browser.

The main loser may be Opera Software which the European company that is the forefront of complaints against Microsoft. Without a preinstalled browser in Windows 7, computer companies will now be able to choose which browser to include in their standard PC setup. This choice could be based on who pays the most, no doubt Microsoft or Google on behalf of Google Chrome can outbid Opera.

Microsoft has released Visual Studio 1010 Beta 1 to the public. The list of new features includes improvements to:

• Visual Studio IDE (the whole IDE is now WPF based)
• C# and VB.NET Language
• Web Development
• WPF and Silverlight Designer
• Visual C++ Development
• Parallel Programming
• Adds Visual F#

Ars Technica has a list of links to the various beta downloads and to a lengthy blog post by Jason Zander who is the product’s General Manager giving an overview of the changes.

Microsoft has announced that the Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) will be available April 30th for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers and public availability beginning on May 5th.

For those wanting it faster, it has apparently leaked onto various torrent trackers already.

Also today, Microsoft unveiled details of Windows XP Mode, a virtual Windows XP environment running under Windows Virtual PC. Applications can be installed directly to the virtual Windows XP environment and will be runnable directly from the Windows 7 desktop little native Windows 7 applications.

A Windows SuperSite story about the Windows XP Mode notes the following details:

XPM is built on the next generation Microsoft Virtual PC 7 product line, which requires processor-based virtualization support (Intel and AMD) to be present and enabled on the underlying PC XP Mode consists of the Virtual PC-based virtual environment and a fully licensed copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (SP3). It will be made available, for free, to users of Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions via a download from the Microsoft web site. (That is, it will not be included in the box with Windows 7, but is considered an out-of-band update, like Windows Live Essentials.) XPM works much like today's Virtual PC products, but with one important exception: As with the enterprise-based MED-V (Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization) product, XPM does not require you to run the virtual environment as a separate Windows desktop. Instead, as you install applications inside the virtual XP environment, they are published to the host (Windows 7) OS as well. (With shortcuts placed in the Start Menu.) That way, users can run Windows XP-based applications (like IE 6) alongside Windows 7 applications under a single desktop.

This is a very important move, many companies are unable to use Windows Vista and would be unable to use Windows 7 because they need to support a Windows XP application that would fail to run under these newer environment. Using Virtual PC or Virtual Server does is difficult for end users as it is not seamless on the desktop and requires a Windows XP license. Windows XP Mode would solve both issues. Expect Microsoft to strip out much of Windows’ backward compatibility support in future versions in favour of making Windows XP mode an standard part of a Windows install.

Possibly jumping the gun before tomorrow’s MIX09 keynote by the head of the Internet Explorer group, Microsoft has announced the availability of Internet Explorer 8. In their announcement Microsoft focuses on security. They state:

It can be downloaded in 25 languages at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at noon EDT on March 19. Internet Explorer 8 is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety. A new study commissioned by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. shows that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online threats in the current economic climate, and 78 percent are more likely to choose a Web browser with built-in security than they were two years ago. “Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.” In response to extensive customer research and input from tens of millions of customer sessions, Microsoft developed Internet Explorer 8 to focus on what matters most to people. The security enhancements offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online. It blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services they use daily and the browser used to access the Internet.

Scott Guthrie’s MIX09 Day 1 keynote is now available online. During this talk he and other presenters announced a number of new technologies including:

• Silverlight 3 Beta
• Expression Blend 3 Preview
• Microsoft Web Platform
• Microsoft Commerce Server 2009
• Visual Studio 2010
• ASP.NET 4.0
• ASP.NET MVC 1.0
• Expression Web 3 SuperPreview
• Azure Services improvements

Guy Burstein lists the newly released packages that are now available, including the production release of the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 framwork and Microsoft® Silverlight™ 3 Software Development Kit Beta 1.

MIX09, Microsoft’s annual conference for web developers, designers, and enthusiasts, starts Wednesday and runs through Friday in Las Vegas. Wednesday’s keynote is with Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President of the .NET Developer Platform on the future of Web and Client focused products and technologies. Thursday’s keynote is by Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer . Many expect the announcement of the production release of Internet Explorer 8 at that time.

Fortunately not everything that happens in Vegas needs to stay there. Microsoft will have downloadable videos of the keynotes and developer sessions. Twitter users can search for hash tag #MIX09 for instant updates by attendees.

Ars technica is reporting that the new SilverSprite library on Microsoft’s shared source site CodePlex can be used to easily convert 2D XNA games to be playable in the browser based Silverlight 2 enivronment. Currently XNA runs on PCs, Xbox 360 and Zunes.

Bill Reiss, the creator of SilverSprite plans to open Silver arcade, a casual online gaming site later this March to host games using this technology.

In January Microsoft enthusiast Long Zheng blogged about the “Microsoft Retail Experience Center”, a 20,000 square foot fake store located on the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington that simulates the entire retail experience from “from point of service to receiving dock” using and selling Microsoft products. Zheng asked why couldn’t Microsoft use this fake store as a template to emulate Apple’s very successful retail stores.

Microsoft executives must have asked the same question, today they announced the hiring of David Porter as corporate vice president of Retail Stores with one aspect of his job being to open MS branded retail stores.

Will these stores be the domain of fancy Windows laptops, Zunes, Xbox 360s and Window Mobile devices, or will Microsoft also focus on software? Will they have their own Experts on hand?

One constant source of complaints by some about Windows Vista was its numerous versions. For developed markets they were (ignoring court ordered versions without Windows Media Player):

• Windows Vista Home Basic – For budget users – lacks Windows Aero
• Windows Vista Home Premium – For home users – includes Windows Aero
• Windows Vista Business – For business users, missing multimedia features
• Windows Vista Enterprise – Superset of Windows Vista Business distributed by volume license
• Windows Vista Ultimate – Combines all features of Windows Vista Home Premium and Enterprise editions

In announcing the Windows 7 version line-up Microsoft has slightly altered this list. The new developed market line-up is:
Windows 7 Starter – lightweight restricted version – including 3 running application limit
• Windows 7 Home Premium – For home users
• Windows 7 Professional – For business users but includes all multimedia and other features of Windows 7 Home Premium
• Windows 7 Enterprise – Superset of Windows 7 Professional distributed by volume license
• Windows 7 Ultimate – Same as Windows 7 Enterprise but sold at retail.

Only Home Premium and Professional will be widely available at retail.

Importantly the two track system of Windows Vista in which Home editions lacked some Business edition features and vice-versa has been limited, each version is a superset of the less powerful versions. This change and the elimination of Home Basic in developed markets should home reduce confusion over which Windows to buy. If you are a customer buy Home Premium, small business Windows 7 Professional, larger businesses with volume licenses will get Windows 7 Enterprise.

Mary Jo-Foley states that Microsoft will take the next step in putting Vista behind it as it makes the Windows 7 Beta 1 release available to Connect testers, Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) and TechNet subscribers in parallel to CEO Steve Ballmer Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote which begins at 6:30 p.m. PT.

Microsoft has a webcast of the keynote and a set of prepared videos on Windows 7, Windows Mobile and the future of computing.

Update: 9:50 EST - Microsoft has a link on MSDN through the target page is not yet available.

More information is available on the Windows team blog and the new Windows 7 page.

A post on Zuneboards.com claims to have isolated the bug in the source code for the Zune's clock driver which resulted in all 30GB 1st generation Zunes freezing after midnight December 31st.

The Zune's real-time clock stores the time in terms of days and seconds since January 1st, 1980. When the Zune's clock is accessed, the driver turns the number of days into years/months/days and the number of seconds into hours/minutes/seconds. Likewise, when the clock is set, the driver does the opposite.

The Zune frontend first accesses the clock toward the end of the boot sequence. Doing this triggers the code that reads the clock and converts it to a date and time. Below is the part of this code that determines the year component of the date:

Code:

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
 if (IsLeapYear(year))
  {
   if (days > 366)
   {
     days -= 366;
     year += 1;
   }
  }
    else
  {
     days -= 365;
     year += 1;
  }
}

Under normal circumstances, this works just fine. The function keeps subtracting either 365 or 366 until it gets down to less than a year's worth of days, which it then turns into the month and day of month. Thing is, in the case of the last day of a leap year, it keeps going until it hits 366. Thanks to the if (days > 366), it stops subtracting anything if the loop happens to be on a leap year. But 366 is too large to break out of the main loop, meaning that the Zune keeps looping forever and doesn't do anything else.

Solution: Break out of the loop if day > 366 is false

year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */

while (days > 365)
{
 if (IsLeapYear(year))
  {
   if (days > 366)
   {
     days -= 366;
     year += 1;
   }
   else
   {
    break;
   }
  }
   else
  {
     days -= 365;
     year += 1;
  }
}

Tech sites are reporting that 30GB 1st generation Microsoft Zune MP3 players that have been upgraded to the 3.X firmware are freezing once they are connected to a PC after midnight last night. Speculatiion is that the lockups are related to this year being a leap year (the first since the Zune was released). Microsoft is working on a fix.

Update: Dec 31/08

Microsoft confirms it is a timing related issue and says it will go away in a day:

Early this morning we were alerted by our customers that there was a widespread issue affecting our 2006 model Zune 30GB devices (a large number of which are still actively being used). The technical team jumped on the problem immediately and isolated the issue: a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year.

The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30GB devices will automatically reset tomorrow (noon, GMT). By tomorrow you should allow the battery to fully run out of power before the unit can restart successfully then simply ensure that your device is recharged, then turn it back on. If you’re a Zune Pass subscriber, you may need to sync your device with your PC to refresh the rights to the subscription content you have downloaded to your device.

Microsoft has announced that it is dropping its Windows Live OneCare subscription service effective June 30, 2009 in favour of a free application focusing on security issues. By dropping non-security functionality such as printer sharing and automated PC tune-up Microsoft hopes to make the new application lighter weight and less resource intensive. No doubt they hope it will less reduce anti-trust concerns. Microsoft says this move is will help emerging markets. The release states:

“Customers around the world have told us that they need comprehensive, ongoing protection from new and existing threats, and we take that concern seriously,” said Amy Barzdukas, senior director of product management for the Online Services and Windows Division at Microsoft. “This new, no-cost offering will give us the ability to protect an even greater number of consumers, especially in markets where the growth of new PC purchases is outpaced only by the growth of malware.”

As part of this move the Equipt subscription service that includes Windows Live OneCare and Microsoft Office Home & Student edition will be dropped. Users will get to keep their Office Home & Student edition subscription extended indefinitely.

After nearly two years, Microsoft’s long nightmare of poor reviews, user downgrades, Apple ads, and general unhappiness with Windows Vista may be coming to an end as it unveiled details of Vista’s successor, Windows 7 at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles to a positive reaction.

Attendees at the event received a copy of a pre-beta version (about six weeks older than that demoed) of Windows 7 and a number of media outlets received loaner laptops with it installed.
Ars Technica, Gizmodo, Engadget, Neowin, SuperSite for Windows, and many others have walkthroughs of the pre-beta’s UI.

In addition to posting the keynotes and technical sessions from the PDC, Microsoft’s normal developer sites have related content. One interesting video/podcast is with Windows Kernel guru Mark Russinovich who explained a number of internal enhancements in the Windows 7 kernel over Vista, promised compatibility with Vista device drivers, and gave a good description of what MinWin actually is.

Overall just as Windows 3.1 fixed issues in Windows 3.0, Windows 98 fixed those in Windows 95, Windows XP SP2 fixed up Windows XP, Windows 7 is looking like Windows Vista done right. Call it the "Make it Right" version of Windows Vista.

Ed Bott has word that Microsoft VP Mike Nash announced that Microsoft is returning to one of its earlier naming schemes (Windows 3, Windows 3.1) and so the code name Windows 7 will be the final name for Microsoft’s successor to Windows Vista.

Clearly Vista 2 or something like that is a non starter and year based names (Windows 2010) present problems for an operating system that Microsoft will sell for several years. On the other hand if Windows XP was known as Windows 2001, Microsoft could have an easier time convincing people to upgrade to Windows Vista (aka Windows 2007) as that would remind people how old Windows XP is.

Update: October 14, 2008

To clear up alot of online discussions Mike Nash has an explanation of the counting that makes Windows 7 the "7th version" of Windows and also confirms that Windows 7 will be internally Windows 6.1 as seem by commands such as ver. He states that the use of version number 6.1 should not be taken that Windows 7 is only a minor change from Windows Vista (version 6.0). He writes:

Windows 7 is a significant and evolutionary advancement of the client operating system. It is in every way a major effort in design, engineering and innovation. The only thing to read into the code versioning is that we are absolutely committed to making sure application compatibility is optimized for our customers.

Microsoft has announced the release of Silverlight 2, the second version of its cross-browser, cross-platform .NET based rich media plugin with availability on Tuesday. In terms of existing plugins, Silverlight is mostly compared with Adobe Flash. Features include:

.NET Framework support with a rich base class library. This is a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.
• Powerful built-in controls. These include DataGrid, ListBox, Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar controls and more.
• Advanced skinning and templating support. This makes it easy to customize the look and feel of an application.
• Deep zoom. This enables unparalleled interactivity and navigation of ultrahigh resolution imagery.
• Comprehensive networking support. Out-of-the-box support allows calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS and standard HTTP services, enabling users to create applications that easily integrate with existing back-end systems.
• Expanded .NET Framework language support. Unlike other runtimes, Silverlight 2 supports a variety of programming languages, including Visual Basic, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby, making it easier for developers already familiar with one of these languages to repurpose their existing skill sets.
• Advanced content protection. This now includes Silverlight DRM, powered by PlayReady, offering robust content protection for connected Silverlight experiences.
• Improved server scalability and expanded advertiser support. This includes new streaming and progressive download capabilities, superior search engine optimization techniques, and next-generation in-stream advertising support.
• Vibrant partner ecosystem. Visual Studio Industry Partners such as ComponentOne LLC, Infragistics Inc. and Telerik Inc. are providing products that further enhance developer capabilities when creating Silverlight applications using Visual Studio.
• Cross-platform and cross-browser support. This includes support for Mac, Windows and Linux in Firefox, Safari and Windows Internet Explorer.

The main issues Microsoft must address is explaining which of these features exceed the capabilities of Adobe Flash and what are the best ways to develop in Silverlight. Making sure that desktop developers can easy move between Silverlight and WPF is also important.

In a move that may be (most likely?) earlier than planned Microsoft, is ending the Jerry Seinfeld-Bill Gates commercials in favour of ones that directly challenging Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads. Introduced by a Microsoft engineer than looks like John Hodgman, who plays the unhip, loser PC in the Apple ads numerous Microsoft employees, celebrates and users proclaim they are PCs.

The ads include the email addresses of the Microsoft employees in the commercials. Interestingly the John Hodgman-lookalike; Sean Siler is the IPv6 Program Manager. Here’s an example of his technical writing:

Not that I think these kind of examples are relevant, but I tried to come up with the same sort of scenario last year. Here’s what I figured out: If you shrunk the entire IPv4 address space into a single Hydrogen nucleus (10^-14M) how big would IPv6 be in comparison? I will spare you the math, but you would have to travel at the speed of light for 30 days to get the end of the string of nuclei that would be the size of the IPv6 address space. The numbers are just too large; there is no way to comprehend how large 2^128 is. Sean Siler IPv6 Program Manager Microsoft

TechCrunch has two additional ads.

The second Jerry Seinfeld - Bill Gates ad has been released. At 4 minutes, 30 seconds the lengthy ads shows the two staying at a family's home to connect with real people. It's funnier than the first ad and while not directly mentioning Microsoft products should be accessible to more people than the first.

All the ads can be seen at Microsoft's new Windows site.

Many Windows Vista users are reporting that installing iTunes 8 causes their systems to crash. Ed Bott has determined that not only is iTunes being updated but various devices drivers are also. Errors in the latter could cause Windows to crash.

I think at this point Microsoft should include special code in Windows to pop-up a warning for the user whenever they try to install a QuickTime or iTunes update. Something like “Warning: Apple often includes additional software in its updates for the Windows platform not listed in the update’s description. Installing this update may cause your system to crash!”

The first ad in Microsoft's $300 million rebranding exercise aired Thursday during the NFL kickoff game. The ad showed Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates in a shoe store "Shoe Circus" where Jerry Seinfeld gives Bill Gates tips such as suggesting he wear his clothes in the shower so that both he and his clothes are cleaned at the same time.
After about one minute of "nothing" Jerry Seinfeld asks Gates about Microsoft's future direction, stating:

Just wondering, are they ever going to come out with something that will make our computers moist and chewy like cakes so we can just eat them while we are working?"

Bill Gates signals that they are by responding to Jerry's request to "adjust his shorts".

Current reviews by tech bloggers are uniformly harsh but I found it funny and am waiting word on its success from a non-tech audience.

As one would expect there was a lot of web chatter following the launch of Microsoft of video clips from The 'Mojave Experiment'. In this test session Microsoft had a salesman demo the so-called next-generation Windows Mojave to 120 people (mostly Windows XP users) who expressed a dislike of Windows Vista. Most were impressed by Windows Mojave which turned out to be nothing more than Windows Vista under a different name. The Windows Team blog details the results:

• The focus group took place over three days in San Francisco and was conducted earlier this month.
• All participants were either Mac, Linux, or users of versions of Windows that came before Windows Vista. Respondents were chosen from the focus group organizer's database, called at random, but then selected based on having a low perception of Vista (<5 rating on a scale of 1-10).
• The participants were given a demo by a trained retail salesperson - geared towards the experiences they seemed most interested in following a series of interviews. While the retail salesperson drove the demo, it was geared by the interests and direction of the participant.
• We did not use some geeked out or custom built PC. We used an HP Pavilion DV2500. It had 2GB of RAM and was running an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz. The OS was a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate.
• Of the 120 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 where 10 was the highest rating, the average pre-rating for Windows Vista was 4.4. After they saw the demo, respondents rated Mojave an average of 8.5.

Some such as Robert Scoble and Joe Wilcox applaud the experiment as good marketing. Others take issue with it being simply a short demo that cannot show what it is like to use Vista for a lengthy period of time while a few go nuts including the person accusing Microsoft of crimes against humanity. Finally Mary-Jo Foley uses the botched Apple MobileMe launch to ask how would people have reacted if Apple had conducted a similar experiment in an attempt to recover from initial bad publicity?

Recognizing that early reports of problems, continuing negative press and those Apple ads have badly damaged their Windows Vista brand, Microsoft did an experiment in which a group of Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista received a demonstration of a new Microsoft operating system, code named “Mojave”. 90% of the people had positive impressions of the release which was in fact Windows Vista. Microsoft may use video of this session in commercials touting Windows Vista. No word if any of the people who were impressed by “Mojave” had ever used Vista before or just believed whatever the Apple ads told them.

Meanwhile, during Thursday’s financial analyst briefing newly appointed senior vice president of the Online Services & Windows Business Group Bill Veghte indicated that Windows 7 is on track for a late 2009 release, three years after Windows Vista was released.

Update: July 29/08

Microsoft has video from their Mojave sessions online at The Mojave Experiment.

In a blog posting on Cnet News.com Open Source advocate Matt Asay claims that an Evans Data report showing that only 8% of developers are writing applications for Windows Vista this year compared to 49% for Windows XP and 13% for Linux indicate that Windows Vista is in trouble. Many comments in reply to this posting mirror my own thoughts, without the actual wording of the survey, which Evans Data does not seem to be making available it is hard to draw any conclusions from the report. For example what constitutes a Vista program? Unless one is targeting Direct X 10 most Vista APIs are available in Windows XP.

In fact a program could use Windows XP APIs but when running on Vista could gain extra security through OS features like Windows Vista Address Space Load Randomization. Overall this is a poor posting and most of the stories that quote it in as listed by Techmeme are poor also.

Of course Microsoft should be working hard at making developers aware of the benefits of using new Windows Vista APIs but writers should realize that with its huge installed base most developers are not going to stop supporting Windows XP for a long time.

During part of a keynote featuring Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates at the D: All Things Digital Conference, Microsoft Corporate VP Julie Larson-Green (who previously led the team redesigning the MS Office UI) demonstrated the multi-touch features, taken from MS Surface that will be part of Windows 7. Included in the demo were photographs being organized, maps, a paint program, and a piano program. A touch-screen laptop and a tablet PC were used during the demo.

Video: Multi-Touch in Windows 7

Following the demo there was numerous blog postings and comments bashing the idea of including multi-touch in Windows 7. Clearly multi-touch is only useful in some cases and not others. I really don’t see a use when writing code, but it would be useful on a large monitor or a tablet during a design session.

Some of the first official information about Windows 7, which is the code name for the successor to Window Vista came out today from Microsoft in an interview of Windows development chief Steven Sinofsky by Ina Fried of CNET News.com.

Reading the interview transcript I note that Sinofsky said that Microsoft was limiting information about Windows 7 until the “the information we share is accurate and reliable.” He stated that Windows 7 is on track to be available by January 2010, three years after the release of Windows Vista and that there will be 32- and 64-bit versions built on the existing Vista and Windows Server 2008 foundation.

The most important question concerned drivers and software compatibility – issues that bedevilled Vista.

Q: know you said you don't really want to look back, so maybe looking forward a little bit...We haven't heard a lot about Windows 7, but we've heard about a couple of things discussed. The real areas I've heard a lot about are this idea of a new kernel, a minimum Windows kernel that came up in a speech, and then some stuff around new user interfaces. Can you tell us a little bit more about where those things fit in with how you guys are thinking about Windows 7?

Sinofsky: We're very clear that drivers and software that work on Windows Vista are going to work really well on Windows 7; in fact, they'll work the same. We're going to not introduce additional compatibilities, particularly in the driver model. Windows Vista was about improving those things. We are going to build on the success and the strength of the Windows Server 2008 kernel, and that has all of this work that you've been talking about. The key there is that the kernel in Windows Server 08 is an evolution of the kernel in Windows Vista, and then Windows 7 will be a further evolution of that kernel as well. So, memory management, networking, process management, all of the security hardening, all of those things will carry forth, and maintain the compatibility with applications that people expect. Finally, we are going to make sure that the release is available both in 32 bit and 64 bit, which is an additional help for maintaining compatibility, particularly with device drivers. As the 64-bit ecosystem catches up, we expect more and more people, particularly enthusiasts, to be running 64 bit. For many people that's a great scenario today. I know I run 64 bit on most of my machines, including my primary laptop.

In light of this interview, people that were expecting a complete kernel rewrite are wrong; Windows 7 can be considered Windows Server 2008 SP2 at a kernel level. Fortunately for Microsoft, people like the Windows Server SP1 kernel, giving Microsoft a solid foundation to build on.

Windows 7 may be emerging from its lockdown. Blogger Long Zheng states that he has received information that Windows 7 will be publicly disclosed for the first time at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference hosted by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, May 27 to 29, 2008. He notes that Microsoft has previously used this conference to announce grand announcements such as the Surface computer. A demo of Windows 7 is rumoured.

Update: May 27, 2008

D: All Things Digital Organizers have confirmed Windows 7's UI will be demoed. A posting states:

During tonight’s interview with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates, Microsoft (MSFT) will demonstrate Windows 7’s all-new user interface.

Microsoft has released the May 2008 version 4 of the Microsoft Patterns & Practices Enterprise Library. Microsoft describes the Enterprise Library as:

Enterprise Library consists of a collection of application blocks and a set of core features such as object generation and configuration mechanisms. All of these are reusable software components designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges. Application blocks help address the common problems that developers face from one project to the next. Their design encapsulates the Microsoft recommended best practices for .NET applications; developers can add them to .NET applications quickly and easily.

The new release is described as:

This release of Enterprise Library includes a new application block (see The Unity Application Block). Unity is a lightweight, extensible dependency injection container with support for constructor, property, and method call injection. You can use the Unity Application Block as a stand-alone dependency injection mechanism without requiring installation of Enterprise Library. However, this release of Enterprise Library incorporates integration with Unity that provides new opportunities for generating instances of Enterprise Library objects. There are also additions in functionality to several of the existing application blocks. The following sections discuss these and other changes in the current release. In addition, this release has been adapted to work with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) version 2.0, and the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Microsoft has announced the release of a public beta of the upcoming .NET 3.5 SP1 and VS 2008 SP1 releases. Both include a roll-up of bug fixes since November’s release and new features for ASP.NET, client development, the return of classic ASP debugging (sadly this could be very useful for me!), improved peformance and better Visual Studio javascript formating and intellisense. Among the new features ASP.NET Dynamic Data which Scott Guthrie described as:

a rich ASP.NET data "scaffolding" framework that enables you to quickly build functional data-driven web application. With the ASP.NET Dynamic Data feature you can automatically build web UI (with full CRUD - create, read, update, delete - support) against a variety of data object models (including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, REST Services, and any other ORM or object model with a dynamic data provider). SP1 adds this new functionality to the existing GridView, ListView, DetailsView and FormView controls in ASP.NET, and enables smart validation and flexible data templating options. It also delivers new smart filtering server controls, as well as adds support for automatically traversing primary-key/foreign-key relationships and displaying friendly foreign key names - all of which saves you from having to write a ton of code.

A second item added is the ASP.NET Routing Engine (System.Web.Routing) which is:

a flexible new URL routing engine that allows you to map incoming URLs to route handlers. It includes support for both parsing parameters from clean URLs (for example: /Products/Browse/Beverages), as well as support to dynamically calculate and generate new URLs from route registrations. This new routing engine is used by both ASP.NET Dynamic Data as well as the new ASP.NET MVC framework. It will support both WebForms and MVC based requests.

An update for the ASP.Net MVC is not part of the SP1, it’s last update was a CodePlex source refresh preview in April 16.

Microsoft has stated and experts agree that contrary to some news reports (such as this particularly poor one) the recent outbreak of hacking attacks against web sites running Internet Information Services and Microsoft SQL Server is not the result of flaws in the products but rather poor coding practices in the scripts making up the sites. Developers need to follow secure practices in accepting user input.

One odd statement is found in Wired.com’s Compiler blog which states:

While the attack is not Microsoft's fault, it is unique to the company's IIS server.
The automated attack takes advantage to the fact that Microsoft’s IIS servers allow generic commands that don’t require specific table-level arguments.

The link in turn goes to a page with some of the source from the attack which states:

Crackers put together a clever SQL procedure capable of polluting any Microsoft SQL Server database in a generic way, with no need of knowing the specific table and fields layouts:

DECLARE @T varchar(255),@C varchar(255) DECLARE Table_Cursor CURSOR
FOR select a.name,b.name from sysobjects a,syscolumns b where
a.id=b.id and a.xtype='u' and
(b.xtype=99 or b.xtype=35 or b.xtype=231 or b.xtype=167)
OPEN
Table_Cursor FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
WHILE(@@FETCH_STATUS=0) BEGIN
exec('update ['+@T+'] set ['+@C+']=rtrim(convert(varchar,['+@C+']))+
''''')
FETCH NEXT FROM Table_Cursor INTO @T,@C
END
CLOSE Table_Cursor
DEALLOCATE Table_Cursor;

This is T-SQL which is run by MS SQL Server. It has nothing to do with MS IIS with is a web server. Cursors are of course standard SQL elements and sysobjects, syscolumns and exec or their equivalents are found in all databases.

Still developing Visual Basic 6 apps? Microsoft would like you to move to .NET. While it says it has tested the VB6 IDE under Vista and Windows 2008, Microsoft has ended support for the VB6 IDE as of this month.

The runtime will continue to be supported running under Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2000.

My suggestion is to skip VB.NET and move to C#. If you intend to move any web development the Framework source code and the interesting examples such as ones onMVC are in C#.

This could get expensive for Microsoft: The US Supreme Court has rejected Microsoft's attempts to halt an antitrust lawsuit filed by Novell in 2004, in which Novell accuses Microsoft of anticompetitive practices in the office software market.

According to Novell, Microsoft withheld technical information necessary to get WordPerfect and Quattro Pro running under Windows 95 and has what it claims is an email from Bill Gates ordering important APIs to be withheld

Or maybe WordPerfect for Windows wasn’t any good.

Word for Windows 6.0 and Excel for Windows 6.0 are perfectly usable software programs. The first version of WordPerfect for Windows was a mess that was not sure if it really wanted to be a GUI program or keyboard driven using its array of hotkeys you needed to memorize.

Microsoft unveiled Internet Explorer 8 during the MIX08 keynote today in Las Vegas and then made a developer beta publically available for download. The key features of IE8 are full CSS 2.1 support in the final IE8 product, improved scripting performance, start of support for HTML 5, and “Actives” and “Webslices.” Microsoft describes Activies as contextual services that provide quick access to external services from any webpage and WebSlices as portions of web pages that users can subscribe to and bring that content with them on their links bar wherever they are on the web. Users receive update notifications when the content changes. Microsoft has a weather webslice example and blogging, search, mapping and other Activities defined.

Microsoft notes that this release is targeted at developers and suggests users should wait until the next beta for a better experience. As with other versions of IE you cannot run the beta side-by-side with IE7 but a proconfigured Virtual PC image containing the beta is available.

Microsoft has bowed to widespread pressure by web development groups and announced that Internet Explorer 8 will default to its most standards compliant behaviour unless the web page explicitly requires an Internet Explorer 7 compatibility mode or pre-dates standards so much that a “Quirks” mode is used.

This is a change from what Microsoft previously announced in which IE7 compatibility would be applied unless the most standards compliant IE8 behaviour was explicitly requested.

One question is will Microsoft include a force IE7 mode command? Some IE7 compatible sites are no longer maintained and could end up looking poorly under the new default more standards compliant IE8 mode.

It’s expected that Microsoft will unveil IE8 at the MIX08 conference in Las Vegas, March 5-7.

A week after Microsoft announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was complete but would not be made available until mid-March it partially reversed course and has announced that the update will be available sooner to several groups of people. Windows Product Manager Mike Nash writes:
• Late Friday we made SP1 RTM available to individuals and companies who participated in the SP1 beta program
• At the end of this week we will be making the English version of Windows Vista SP1 available to Volume Licensing customers. Other languages will follow soon after
• Later this month, SP1 will be available to MSDN and TechNet Plus subscribers

As previously noted SP1 will be released on Windows Update in mid-March and in mid-April be pushed automatically to users that have enabled auto updates.

This faster release schedule is much better, I just seems weird to announce an update is ready and then sit on it for a month.

In Canada the Microsoft-Yahoo merger would create a funny situation. As noted by The Canadian Press, Rogers Communications has a partnership with Yahoo for its Rogers Yahoo! Internet service , while competitor Bell Canada links with Microsoft's MSN for its MSN Sympatico service.

Can Microsoft-Yahoo have ties to both companies? Could one switch and link up with Google?

With Microsoft’s announcement of a $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo at $31 per share in stock and cash, tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of people may be wondering what will happen if their web e-mail, on-line photos, portal home page and numerous other web sites and tools that the two companies offer.

Long Zheng has posted a table that summaries the huge overlap of competing Microsoft and Yahoo offering. Among the overlaps are:

Yahoo.com vs. Msn.com, Yahoo Mail vs. Live Hotmail, Yahoo Messenger vs. Live Messenger, Yahoo Search vs. Live Search, etc.

He notes:

Now imagine for each and every one of these you have to make a decision - to keep it as is, integrate Yahoo’s into Microsoft’s, integrate Microsoft’s into Yahoo’s or even come up with a new hybrid. Simple branding aside, I think the developers are going to have to work quite a few late nights to integrate what I believe are two monolithic systems together.

I agree with his final note: Whatever they do, they better not ruin Flickr.

Engadget reports that Microsoft has responded to claims that Window Vista’s successor – code named Windows 7 would be ready in 2009 by stating to WinVistaClub.com that Windows 7 is in "planning stages," and development will take approximately three years putting its release in the 2011 timeframe.

However Engadget later pointed to another story on Windows 7 that includes a statement that the next version of Windows is being planned for three years after the release of Windows Vista, which is 2009.

Regardless of when the next version of Windows will be out, Microsoft would rather have consumers focus on Windows Vista. Unless there is a dramatic shift to Linux or the Macintosh OS, Microsoft will want to be keep talk of Windows 7 minimized.

I guess Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is right - I've changed my mind - it's not too soon to think about Windows 7.

In a follow-up to the announcement that development builds of Internet Explorer 8 has successfully passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid2 test, Microsoft's IE Platform Architect, Chris Wilson has given details of what IE8’s rendering modes will be. Surprisingly Microsoft backed some members of the Web Standards Project have proposed that IE 8’s “standards mode” which is enabled by the presence of a DOCTYPE tag not follow standards but be the IE7 compatibility mode. Only by using an additional tag to specify that IE8 is targeted would IE8’s full standard mode is used.

This is absurd! If an html page has a DOCTYPE tag the browser should follow it. If the author inserted the tag without knowing what it means they will find out soon enough when their site looks different in IE8.

In a massive case of jumping the gun, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asks if “Windows 7” the successor to Windows Vista could be the best version of Windows yet even though the operating system is years away from even the most optimistic release date and very few details are known about it.

Wait until Microsoft announces something or at least a confirmed description of a milestone release is made public by a tester.

The Microsoft Internet Explorer Product Team announced on Wednesday that an internal build of Internet Explorer 8 has successfully passed the Web Standard Project Acid2 rendering test, thereby completing a feature that many have demanded – even to the point of lawsuits.

In the announcement, General Manager Dean Hachamovitch describes the team’s communication strategy.

For IE8, we want to communicate facts, not aspirations. We’re posting this information now because we have real working code checked in and we’re confident about delivering it in the final product. We’re listening to the feedback about IE, and at the same time, we are committed to responsible disclosure and setting expectations properly. Now that we’ve run the test on multiple machines and seen it work, we’re excited to be able to share definitive information.

However is this the best strategy? How confident should Microsoft be that a feature will be supported before announcing it? Could much of the frustration evident in the comments to Hachamovitch’s post of December 8th in which people were basically demanding to know what Microsoft was up to have been avoided if a few months ago Hachamovitch simply posted: “we are working hard on making IE8 pass Acid2”?

The post states that more details of IE8 will be released in the MIX08 developer conference in March in Las Vegas and a beta will be released in the first half of 2008.

Microsoft has announced the release of Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.

MSDN subscribers can download VS2008 from the MSDN subscription site; a 90-day free trial of Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite is available now with a 90-day trial edition of Visual Studio 2008 Professional being available next week. Free copies of Visual Studio 2008 Express editions are also available as is the standalone .NET 3.5 runtime.

Scott Guthrie recommends uninstalling all Beta 2 components before installing VS2008. He also notes that VS2008 and VS2005 will run side-by-side on the same machine. However with ability to build applications that target multiple versions of the .NET Framework including .NET 2.0, maybe you won’t need VS2005 anymore.

At the TechEd Developer conference in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft developer division corporate vice president S. Somasegar stated that Visual Studio 2008 and .NET FX 3.5 are on track for a release by the end of November. The marketing launch for these products along with Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 will be at the end of February.

Also announced where Microsoft Sync Framework and Popfly Explorer which described as:

• Popfly Explorer which is an add-in to Visual Studio. This enables you to easily add a Silverlight gadget that you built using Popfly to your Web page and to easily publish your Web page to Popfly. In essence this makes it very easy for you to make your Web site look that much cooler.
• CTP for the Microsoft Sync Framework that enables you to build on the offline synchronization capability in Visual Studio 2008 and deliver great peer-to-peer and offline synchronization capabilities that let you sync-enable your application. This in turns enables data (irrespective of the protocol or the data type or the data store) to follow your customer no matter where they are and no matter what device they use.

Earlier in the month Scott Guthrie announced that Microsoft is working on a Model-View-Controller Framework for ASP.NET which will ship as a fully supported ASP.NET feature in the first half of next year.

Update:

Scott Guthrie has posted the first of a series of posts on developing a simple e-commerce storefront application using the ASP.NET MVC framework and the Northwind database. Part 2 - URL Routing, Part 3 - Passing Data From Controllers to Views and Part 4 - Handling Form Edit and Post Scenarios are also not online.

Scott Guthrie, General Manager in the Microsoft Developer Division has announced that Microsoft will be releasing the .NET source code for developers to download and browse, and to use when debugging their applications. Guthrie states that Visual Studio 2008 will support the ability to configure the debugger to dynamically download the .NET Framework debugger symbols (and corresponding source code) from a web server hosted by Microsoft, as needed or all at once.

Developers will not be able to change or redistribution of the source code so if they spot bugs it will be up to Microsoft to add the fixes, but this release should help developers better determine the source of bugs – their code or Microsoft’s.

Here’s an example of how the design of the Microsoft GridView control caused one of Microsoft’s own tutorials to fail. Having the source code of the GridView would make it easier to find the cause of problems such as this one.

SeattlePi.com reports that Microsoft and Eolas Technologies Inc. have settled their patent dispute over technologies used by Internet Explorer in a case that has gone on since 1999. Terms of the agreement have not been disclosed but Eolas did receive some money. The Wikipedia has a good summary of the lawsuit which saw an initial $500 million judgment against Microsoft in a case that had numerous experts such as Tim Berners-Lee oppose Eolas claims.

Important questions:

• Will Microsoft now change Internet Explorer to eliminate its “click to activate” work around?
• Will Eolas now go after other commercial browser developers such as Apple for its Safari browser or Opera Software for its Opera browser or even noncommercial developers such as the Mozilla Foundation which received millions in revenue via search engine agreements with Google?
• If Eolas goes after others will they fight or just pay up?

Microsoft has announced the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Beta to a small group of beta testers. The planned released date will likely align with that of Windows Server 2008 which is being targeted to the first quarter of 2008. A white paper has details of the changes.

In addition to announcing Vista SP1, Microsoft is downplaying the importance of service packs, noting that patches and upgrades delivered on a constant basis over the internet via Windows Update lessen the need for these items to be grouped together into a service pack.

Will releasing SP1 be enough to convince corporate users to switch to Vista or are the advantages that Vista offers over Windows XP and Windows 2000 too few to warrant a change?

Last month, the Mercury News published an interview with Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group in which the interviewer repeatedly tried to get Mr. Holmdahl to respond to concerns about the quality of the Xbox 360 and the so called “red ring of death”. Mr. Holmdahl however merely stated that “each product that comes out of the factory is rigorously tested. To ensure highest quality for our customer” and “I would say we don’t have a high defect rate.”

Today with retailers estimating that the Xbox 360 failure rate is as high as 33%, Microsoft announced that they are giving all buyers a three year warranty against general hardware failures indicated by the“ red ring of death” and will retroactively reimburse those who paid for repairs related to problems indicated by this error message in the past. Furthermore the Xbox 360 itself has been redesigned to help address the underlying factors that could cause this problem.

This warranty extension is estimated to cost $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion. Meanwhile Sony is reportedly cutting the price of the PS3 by $100. Let the better (working) console win.

One widely promoted feature of Windows Vista is Windows Gadgets which can be placed on the Windows Sidebar or on the Desktop. Unfortunately the Gadgets that ship with Vista are too basic to be of much use. Tow that I used and found lacking are the Weather and RSS Feeds Gadgets.

The Weather Gadget simply shows the current temperature, and indicates if it is clear, cloudy, snowing or raining. During the night time it shows the current phase of the moon. While Windows Gadgets can expand to show more information in response to user mouse clicks the Weather Gadget does not include the obvious functionality of showing the weather forecast when clicked upon.


Why not include the ability to see a weather forecast?

The RSS Feed Gadget displays your RSS Feeds as set up in Internet Explorer 7. It has a number of failing. Only four headlines are displayed at a time, and the size of the Gadget cannot be changed. When a headline is clicked upon a preview of the story is displayed which you can click upon to open. There is no functionality to indicate that you don’t want to read the story and therefore it should be removed from the list of headlines. In fact there is no way to refresh the headline list or more all existing headlines as read. In the example below late on February 18th the RSS Feeds Gadget was still showing headlines from the 10th.

It's the 18th, I should be able to mark articles from the 10th as read.

Microsoft should enhance these gadgets which are sorely lacking in functionality if they want to continue to use Windows Gadgets and the Windows Sidebar as a Vista selling point.

In addition to releasing Windows Vista to consumers on January 30th Microsoft will also release Microsoft 2007 Office System which in my opinion has a greater change to its interface than Windows Vista. While somewhat different, Windows Vista still has Window XP and Windows 2000’s Start menu, Taskbar, Desktop, Control Panel, folder based file system and most of their other items. Office 2007’s user interface is completely different from its predecessors. In his review, the Wall Street Journal Personal Technology columnist Walter S. Mossberg describes the change:

And the latest version of the software suite, called Office 2007, due out Jan. 30, is a radical revision, the most dramatic overhaul in a decade or more. I don't use the word "radical" lightly. The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaced with something new. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone -- every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen called the Ribbon. And there is no option to go back to the classic interface.

Mossberg states that after months of using the new version of Office and its Ribbon he finds it an improvement that allows users to more easily find the hidden features that already exist in the Office programs but they don’t know about. He suggests that Office 2007 is appropriate for non-power users concerned with the layout and design of documents. However the more knowledgeable you are about the commands in older versions the less the need for a change. Similarly the less complex your documents are, the less likely you need “hidden features” made available to you.

PC Magazine has an in-depth review while for more on the decision to revamp Office’s UI see Newsweek’s feature article.

The Washington Post has published an AP story that finds another small business person unable to obtain an Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificate. As a result she is afraid that internet users will bypass her site in favour of larger online businesses that meet the Certification Authority/Browser Forum requirements for the newer certificates. The story has a large amount of details on the background of the Forum's decision to introduce the certificates while a related story examines the checks that an issuer must do before issuing a EV SSL certificate.

The Wall Street Journal has an article on the potential problems posed by Microsoft's scheme for handling Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates. Starting in the new year Internet Explorer 7 will turn the address bar green when the user browses to a site that has been assigned a Extended Validation SSL Certificate. Sites without a Extended Validation SSL Certificate will default to the white address bar. IE7's phishing filter will mark suspected phishing sites in yellow and blacklisted sites in red. The problem faced by small businesses is that it may not be possible for them to acquire the Extended Validation SSL Certificates. The article states that sole proprietorships, general partnerships and individuals won't be eligible for the new certificates because the rules for assigning them to smaller businesses has not been agreed upon. The small business owners feel that if users see that larger sites like Amazon.com are marked in green while their sites are not, lack of a green address bar may become a signal to web surfers to avoid a site.

Microsoft should make it clear that the decision to assign Extended Validation SSL Certificates to different classes of business is solely up to the certificate signing authorities, otherwise its probably looking at a lawsuit.

Update: December 22, 2006

The IEBlog has a posting by Markellos Diorinos a product manager with the Internet Explorer team responding to the Wall Street Journal article on the impact of IE7 identifying sites using Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates. In the article he notes that the EV SSL Certificates Guidelines are controlled by the a third party, the CA/Browser forum, not Microsoft and he offer methods by which small businesses can access EV SSL Certificates via 3rd party agreements, such as accepting PayPal or eBay or Yahoo! Stores.

After more than five years of work and various changes in direction, Microsoft officially released its Microsoft Windows Vista operating system to business customers. Also released were the 2007 Microsoft Office System and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Consumer released of Vista and Office is scheduled for January 30th, 2007.

One of the most widely known of Vista’s new features is the new Windows Aero graphics user interface that uses 3D graphics accelerator technology. However unlike consumers, business users may not find the Aero interface a selling point. Both PC Magazine’s and eWeek’s review of Vista’s business features note its improvements in security, deployment, diagnostics, and manageability but state that business user do not need to upgrade to use Vista under the 3D Aero interface. eWeek

As far as graphics are concerned, little of Vista's new functionality actually depends on the gaming-level graphics required to earn Microsoft's Vista Capable or Vista Premium designations. Vista's interface steps down rather smoothly from the bells-and-whistles Aero Glass to the rather similar-looking but 3-D-free Aero to the Windows 2000-style Classic interface.

Both reviews that Vista’s main competitor is existing installations of Windows XP. PC Magazine takes the view that business’ should move to Vista when possible but outlines a conservative plan for doing so:

Windows Vista is a better business operating system, all things considered. For many organizations, this release will prove to have been worth the long wait. But businesses need to evaluate thoroughly, plan rigorously, and move carefully as they transition from older versions to Vista. In many cases, this isn't going to happen overnight, and, as always, up-front planning will make a very big difference. Expect a long adoption cycle, especially since much business software will take some time to work properly in Vista. But businesses should welcome this new OS and never look back.

Vista Round Up:

• eWeek
• PC Magazine
• PC World

On Monday a number of technology news sites such as Ars Technica posted a link to a new site called, The Power of Together which stated it was a Microsoft site in which by watching webcasts or completing virtual labs qualified people could receive copies of Microsoft Vista Business Edition and Microsoft Office profession 2007. Given that these two pieces of software have a value of hundreds of dollars the question arises: it this legit, or is it a scam designed to get your credit card or other personal information?

In this case Ars Technica posted a series of follow-ups including links to a posting by a Microsoft employee that the offer and site was legit (through for US residents only). However the concern was a real one, even in the case of viral marking campaigns Microsoft should have included a link back to a page hosted in a Microsoft.com domain indicating the lesser known site was a legitimate Microsoft site.

Microsoft has a released a beta version of Windows Live Writer, a desktop WYSIWYG blogging application designed to work with existing blogging tools such as Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType and WordPress. The tool is describes as enabling true WYSIWYG blog authoring. The developers’ blog states:

You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles. Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode.

There is also photo inserting and preview, Windows Live Local map publishing, an extensible SDK and it plugins into the Microsoft Windows Live Toolbar for one-click posting. The team developing the software is led by J. J. Allaire, founder of Allaire Corp., which developed the still widely used ColdFusion application server and software development framework which Adobe now owns.

Ed Bott and Zdnet’s Phil Wainewrigh really like it. I’ll give it a try and post a view to see if it is better than my current edit in Word and copy-and-paste routine.