Summary of Major Announcements at PDC 2008 Day 2

Final release this week of new .NET 3.5 WPF Toolkit controls: datagrid, date picker, calendar controls, visual state management.

CTP release this week of WPF ribbon control (on XP, Vista & Windows 7).

Download available today of jQuery IntelliSense for VS2008 from jquery.com.

Download available for IIS Smooth streaming (free addition for IIS on Windows Server 2008) – adaptive streaming of media for Silverlight clients via HTTP.

Release of Silverlight Toolkit for Silverlight 2 with source code for controls (at various levels of quality): Charting, TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, AutoComplete, NumericUpDown and more.

New major version of Silverlight next year.

Live Mesh is going into open Beta this week, inc. limited availability of Mac and Windows Mobile 6 clients. Live Mesh development is part of Live Framework.

CTP of Live Framework (invite only following registration through azure.com) to access non-production-ready Live Services inc. Mesh Beta. There’s a detailed diagram available too. There’s a Channel9 video.

Office 14 will include web-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint & OneNote, using Silverlight with high fidelity. Shared editing between desktop/web/mobile devices with presence indicators and live updates. There’s a Channel9 video. Limited CTP at end of 2008. Will be licensed to consumers through Office Live, and for businesses through Online Services subscription or as part of volume licensing on internal SharePoint servers.

Windows 7 may have these new features (with screenshots available):

New Taskbar: showing running and quick launchable apps – one icon per app type; Live preview on each icon shows all windows (and tabs for IE) running of that app type; get MRU for each app-type from the icon; can extend these menus; drag from start ment to taskbar to add; can re-arrange icons on taskbar.
Windows management: can drag and snap windows to left/right for each comparison; can drag up to top to maximise.
New Windows Explorer: Libraries = folders, desktop search combining multiple locations (on machine or on other machines); Search prompts with keywords; search term highlighting in search results.
New Home Group: can find all computers and devices added to home network with simple PIN; can control visibility of Pictures, Music, Videos, Documents or individual folders; home group appears as folder in Explorer; can find and play/show (e.g. music) across home network; work machine placed in home group can discover and access devices and computers; work machine in home group will not automatically share.
Extensible Libraries: present in Explorer, Media Player & Media Center, as well as common dialogs.
Windows Media Player: Has ‘Play to’ device (e.g. audio player or picture frame).
Device Stage: Show all devices, capabilities and access to resources (e.g. manuals) in one place.
Printing: Auto-switching of printer from home group and work.
Gadgets: Can be anywhere on desktop.
Desktop personalisation: can peek at desktop making windows transparent temporarily; can more fully customise and share desktop backgrounds.
System tray: User has better control of which icons are in tray and what notifications happen.
Action center: Central control of key system tasks
Multi-touch (already known): Menus better spaced if using touch; can control scroll and zoom (with two fingers) in non-aware apps; or in touch-aware apps, use an on-screen keyboard with premptive text and flick gestures such as back/forward.
Paint: New ribbon UI and multi-touch drawing
Wordpad: New ribbon UI and OpenXML support.
Bitlocker encryption: on usb memory sticks
Native VHD support: create, mount or boot from.
AppLocker: control of authorised local applications.
Direct Access to corporate network from the internet.
More responsiveness for start menu and task bar
Quicker boot time and device readiness

Get more business features information, general information and developer information.

.NET 4.0 may have these features:

Built-in support for multi-touch, deep zoom (like Silverlight) and Visual State Manager (like Silverlight)
Load CLR 2 (which includes 3 and 3.5 apps) and CLR 4 in same process.
More interop support
Dynamic Language Runtime included
Managed Extensibility Framework included – assemble apps from extensions

Visual Studio 2010 may have these features: