"Windows 8 apps will be created in HTML5 and JavaScript"

[Ric_NYC]

Microsoft needs to tell Windows 8 developers now about 'Jupiter' and Silverlight


Last week during the first public preview of the Windows 8 user interface, Microsoft officials said that new Windows 8 apps will be created in HTML5 and JavaScript. By deciding not to mention anything about .Net and Silverlight — telling developers they’d have to wait until the September Build conference to hear more — company officials ended up setting off new speculation that the company is poised to dump its current frameworks and programming interfaces.

(If you don’t think Microsoft’s developers are worried, I’d point you to this post about the future of Silverlight on the Silverlight Forums site, which had lots of vitriolic comments and more than seven million page views before the thread was locked and new threads complaining about Microsoft’s lack of information were started.)

More info on Zdnet.


Windows 8: Microsoft’s high-stakes .NET tablet gamble
No room in the HTML/Javascript lifeboat


Program Manager Jensen Harris says in the preview video:

We introduced a new platform based on standard web technologies

Microsoft made no mention of either Silverlight or .NET, even though Silverlight is used as the development platform in Windows Phone 7, from which Windows 8 Tiled mode draws its inspiration.

The fear of .NET developers is that Microsoft's Windows team now regards not only Silverlight but also .NET as a legacy technology. Everything will still run, but to take full advantage of Tiled mode you will need to use the new HTML and Javascript model. Here are a couple of sample comments. This:

My biggest fears coming into Windows 8 was that, as a mostly WPF+.NET developer, was that they would shift everything to Silverlight and leave the FULL platform (can you write a Visual Studio in Silverlight? of course not, not designed for that) in the dust. To my utter shock, they did something much, much, much worse.


http://www.channelregister.co.uk/201...light_dot_net/

[nidzo732]

And, we thought unity is bad

[Oxwivi]

Anyone betting on a new Mac interface?

[forrestcupp]

I think there will be a difference between phone/tablet style apps and full fledged programs. I don't see how you could efficiently develop a complete program like Quickbooks or Photoshop using HTML5 and JavaScript. They're just scripting languages without a hint of object oriented structure. That's like taking 5 steps backwards in programming technology.

They're still going to support the more full featured developing techniques; they will just have to be run in the legacy user interface.

[Oxwivi]

There is a legacy user interface that can be switched to like native apps. The preview video showed currently it looks exactly like Windows 7.

[Dragonbite]

Get all the .NET developers over to Linux and program in Mono and Vala (which is a C#-like syntax).

[Oxwivi]

Get all the .NET developers over to Linux and program in Mono and Vala (which is a C#-like syntax).

Red Hat ain't gonna be able to afford that much!

[lulled]

And, we thought unity is bad

Did anyone think Unity is bad???

[potrick]

I wrote about Unity on MakeUseOf recently; almost all of the comments have been about how Ubuntu should stop messing around with the interface and just try to be like Windows, because that's what people are familiar with.

And there were a lot of comments.

I have to wonder how much hate Microsoft's forward-looking move is going to generate.

Unity was necessary; the desktop needs to move forward or be abandoned. Ubuntu trying to do so is the source of no small outrage, but Microsoft is going to face a much harder battle with its users. My bet is this entire thing is dropped without months of release, like WinFS.

[spupy]

As I understood HTML5+JS will be mostly for apps for the new Tiles interface. You still have the old windows+taskbar desktop below.