New Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone OS 7.5 and second day MIX'11. Great review!
Yesterday, the second day of the largest developer conference held by Microsoft to showcase the latest innovations of the company in the areas of web and mobile technologies. During the plenary report, which opened the second day of the conference, Microsoft announced a number of new technologies and products, which will be discussed in this article.
Let me remind you that MIX is not just announcements of technologies, but also numerous technical reports, of which 125 will be presented at MIX'11, 47 of which will be read by invited experts and third-party speakers. Description of the MIX'11 conference topics can be found in this article .
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On the first day of the conference brought the announcements of such new technologies as: Internet Explorer 10, ASP.NET MVC3 Tools Update, Orchard CMS 1.1, Windows Azure update. More information about what was presented on the first day can be found in this article .
The second day of MIX'11 brought us interesting news on the following products and technologies:
- Windows Phone OS 7.5 platform update and new features: SQL storage, access to sensors, support for sockets, and more;
- Skype, Spotify and Angry Birds on Windows Phone;
- Windows Phone developer tools with gyroscope, GPS and other sensor emulators;
- released a new version of Silverlight 5 Beta with numerous innovations;
- Announcement and demonstration of the package for developers Kinect for Windows SDK.
Windows Phone OS 7.5
Windows Phone Development
Joe Belfiori told about the company's plans for the development of Windows Phone. Marco Argenti, head of development at Nokia, helped him with this.
It has officially announced the support for an additional 16 languages in Windows Phone 7, including the Russian language. Creating applications and placing them in the Windows Phone Marketplace application store will become available for eight more countries (in Russia it was available from day one).
The set of countries in which the Windows Phone Marketplace will be launched will also expand, in which it will be quite legal to purchase paid applications for Windows Phone-based phones. From 16 countries, this list will be expanded to 35 countries, including Russia.
Small innovations in design
After a review of the development of the platform, technical demonstrations of innovations began in Windows Phone OS 7.5, which will be available free of charge to phone users as early as 2011.First, there will be support for the Jump List for the list of applications, now the user can navigate through the list of applications in the same way as through the list of contacts. Plus, in the list of applications, a search appears on the part of the name, which is integrated with the Windows Phone Marketplace and allows you to search not only by phone, but also in the store.
In addition, the possibility of expanding media sections with additional services was announced. For example, services YouTube and Last.fm.
Internet Explorer 9 on Windows Phone OS
Windows Phone OS 7.5 will receive an update to the embedded browser. The new browser will have exactly the same code base as the new Internet Explorer 9 and offer all the same features for hardware accelerated graphics and JavaScript processing speed as the desktop version of IE9.Demonstrated a slight change in the browser UI and support for changing the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape.
Demonstrated support for hardware accelerated HTML5 Video in a new mobile browser. A visual comparison of the performance of browsers in modern phones was made: Apple iPhone 4, Samsung Nexus S and Windows Phone. In the test for working with graphics, the iPhone showed 2 FPS, Android - 11 FPS, Windows Phone - 26 FPS.
Direct access to sensors
With the release of Windows Phone OS 7.5, developers will have access to more than 1500 new APIs. Among them are direct access to the phone’s sensors: a camera for analyzing the video stream on the fly, a compass and a gyroscope. A big pleasant surprise was the announcement of Skype on Windows Phone, which will be released along with the update. Its interface was shown in the style of Metro and WP7.
As a demonstration of the possibility of direct access to the sensors, an application for Amazon was shown, which scans barcodes on the fly and searches for goods on the site. At the same time, a new feature of Windows Phone OS 7.5 was shown to attach not just tiles with a link to the application to the main menu, but also tiles with a link to a specific section or functionality in the application, for example, immediately to scan a bar code in Amazon (screenshot below).
Announcement of Motion Sensor
Microsoft has announced a new set of tools for creating applications of the new type of Motion Sensor. This set will combine the ability to work with sensors and camera movement for easy creation of applications such as augmented reality. Such an application was demonstrated directly from the scene.
Multitasking on Windows Phone
Update Windows Phone OS 7.5 will bring support for full-fledged multitasking, which is based on the amount of free memory. Programs will be available to switch while there is enough memory. As a demonstration, they showed the official Spotify service application, which will be available with the platform update.
In Spotify, they started playing music and switched to another application using the special function to switch between running programs. This application turned out to be the famous game Angry Birds, which also comes on Windows Phone, but much earlier, on May 25th. While the speaker was playing Angry Birds, Spotify music was playing in the background.
Multitasking in Windows Phone OS 7.5 will have a number of features:
- programs will be able to update live tiles (Live Tiles) in the main menu;
- battery consumption will be monitored by a scheduler who will try to reduce battery consumption;
- background agents will be available that allow, for example, to play music in the background for third-party radio stations or music services.
Socket support
The long-awaited support for working with sockets will appear in Windows Phone OS 7.5. As a demo right on the scene, the wpIRC application was shown, which offers work with the IRC protocol on Windows Phone OS.
SQL storage support
In Windows Phone OS 7.5, developers will be granted access to embedded SQL storage based on SQL Server Compact 4.0. Developers will be able to take full advantage of LINQ when working with the database and the data itself.Developer Tools
Scott Guthrie appeared on the scene and spoke about the innovations in the application development tools for Windows Phone. The new version of the tools will be available absolutely free of charge in the next month.
Sensor Support in Development Tools
To work with sensors in the new version of the development tools added sensor emulation. It was shown how to work with a gyroscope and GPS.
The user controls the position of the phone in space through a special window and thus emulates the sensor behavior in the application. Looks very comfortable.
When working with GPS, the user has a map on which he can mark the current position, which immediately affects the operation of the application that works with geodata:
Application profiling
A profiler will be added to the new version of the Windows Phone developer tools, which will allow you to fully analyze and monitor the performance and resource consumption of applications.
During the demonstration, real cases of finding bottlenecks in the application using profiling and their elimination were shown.
Platform Performance Improvement
Scott Guthrie announced that updating Windows Phone OS 7.5 will improve system performance in four ways. And it will not require any changes in user programs, they just will start to work faster.
The following Windows Phone subsystems will be improved:
- scrolling and input will be much more responsive and smoother, especially in scenarios with background data loading;
- images will be displayed faster due to improved decoding;
- the garbage collector was improved, which increased the responsiveness of applications and their performance and reduced by one third the memory consumption of applications without reworking them;
- reducing memory consumption is also important because the multitasking of Windows Phone will depend on the available memory.
Silverlight + XNA
Scott Guthrie announced the integration of XNA and Silverlight platforms in the next version of Windows Phone OS 7.5. Developers will be able to use both frameworks within the same application. For example, use three-dimensional XNA models in a Silverlight application.
Over 1500 new APIs
In total, over 1500 new APIs will be available to developers of Windows Phone OS 7.5 for convenient work and creating applications.
Silverlight 5
After a stunning demonstration of the new features of Windows Phone, the Silverlight 5 technology has arrived. Silverlight is developing at a tremendous pace and the developers already knew what to expect from the platform. Earlier this year, a major event featured major innovations in Silverlight 5.However, on MIX'11, developers were in for a surprise - the release of the Silverlight 5 beta version and development tools.
You can download all the new components and developer tools from the following link http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-5-beta/ .
In addition, I recommend to get acquainted with useful resources:
- Balder 3D engine supports Silverlight 5 http://www.ingebrigtsen.info/post/2011/04/13/Silverlight-5-and-Balder.aspx
- a detailed description of the new features of Silverlight 5 http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2011/04/13/whats-new-in-silverlight-5-a-guide.aspx
- official document describing Silverlight 5 features http://i1.silverlight.net/content/downloads/silverlight_5_beta_features.pdf?cdn_id=1
- Microsoft Expression Blend Preview for Silverlight 5 ( link );
- updated version of WCF RIA Services V1.0 SP2 Preview (April 2011) http://jeffhandley.com/archive/2011/04/13/MIX11Releases.aspx
Silverlight 5 - what's new?
The Silverlight 5 platform introduces the following innovations:
Media
- hardware video decoding;
- Trickplay function to speed up or slow down the playback of media content;
- support of control panels;
- management of the screen saver in the system;
- improvements in content protection features;
- real-time audio processing with low latency;
- over 100 new APIs;
- Improvements in working with text: multicolumn layout, typographical functions, improved text clarity, support for enhanced OpenType features;
- Postscript vector printing support;
- added double-click and combobox control;
- numerous improvements when working with the MVVM pattern and debugging, for example, the possibility of breakpoints on the binding;
- improvements in the network subsystem: reduced delays, support for the WS-Trust standard;
- Improved XAML-parser, which led to an increase in overall performance and speed of launching applications;
- 64-systems and browsers are officially supported;
- multi-core JIT compiler optimizations;
- performance subsystem display and layout of the text;
- XNA and Silverlight integration so that in one project you can use both by embedding XNA models in Silverlight and vice versa;
- XNA 3D API support with hardware accelerated display of 3D graphics;
- utilization of hardware accelerated graphics acceleration by the browser;
- graphic stack has undergone changes and acquired improvements ported from Windows Phone;
- Pivot control added;
- the possibility of placing HTML-content inside the application, not only outside the browser, but also in the browser-based applications;
- the same with access to files;
- a trusted Silverlight-signed application on Silverlight has access to launch other applications, for example, Outlook to send a letter or Word to generate a report;
- access to devices and other functions of the system, for example, to USB-card readers for access to smart cards;
- full keyboard support when working in full screen mode;
- access native code directly from Silverlight via PInvoke;
- now the silverlight application can generate several child windows;
- added access to the entire file system, not just to the user's folders;
- Silverlight application profiler added to Visual Studio;
- Added support for Visual Studio Team Test.
Silverlight 5 demo
During the plenary report, some features of Silverlight 5 were demonstrated. For example, a project to create 3D-models of houses with interiors and so on.
The demonstration showed high performance when working with accelerated 3D graphics.
Kinect for Windows SDK
In the conclusion of the plenary report of the second day MIX'11, it was a completely new tool and development platform - Kinect. Microsoft announced the quick availability of the Kinect for Windows SDK toolkit, which will offer not just access to the 3D sensor, but also all the other Kinect features — an array of microphones, a video camera, image processing algorithms, and data arrays. The SDK will offer work with C # / VB / C ++ languages.
In just a few minutes, a simple hand-drawing application was created using Visual Studio and Kinect SDK.
Then began the demonstration of projects from enthusiasts, for example, the chair is completely controlled by gestures through Kinect.
The second demonstration was the integration of the WorldWide Telesope and Kinect telescope, which allows you to view the universe yourself.
Then he showed a project for people with limited vision, which can help to move around in a building without sight. The project tracks obstacles and other people and with the help of feedback lets the person know where to go.
The latest project created with Kinect is a game in which you need a pair of players to take a position to pass through the scene. I would have played a game like this on the Xbox. Sea of fun.
The event ended with the announcement that all visitors in the hall will receive Kinect for free.
Conclusion
The second day of the MIX'11 conference began with a demonstration of new features of Windows Phone OS 7.5: market distribution, change in UI, IE9 browser, direct access to sensors and sockets, Skype for Windows Phone, multitasking, Sql-storage, new tools with profiling capability and sensor emulations and more.The huge progress and advancement of the Silverlight platform was demonstrated and the official release of Silverlight 5 for developers and everyone.
Announced Kinect for Windows Sdk with full support for sensor capabilities and new projects based on it. In general, the MIX'11 conference brought a number of large announcements and a lot of tools for developers. Download install, understand. On the way are still tools for Windows Phone OS 7.5 and new announcements at the developer conference in September.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/117454/
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