The .NET Show Longhorn News

[Phantasm66]

Whilst researching some links for my next generation PC thread, I came across The Microsoft .NET Show.

"The .NET Show keeps you up to date on the cutting-edge technologies that can make a difference in your Windows and Web applications. We've designed the .NET Show to include a balanced blend of technology, education, and coding examples, as well as a little light-hearted entertainment. Each episode focuses on an individual technology and provides you the background you need, from high-level issues to ground-level coding, to take advantage of that technology."

Its a great place for developers, technicians, system administrators, hackers, tinkerers and anyone else interested in what's happening in the world of Longhorn, .Net and other future Microsoft products. You will, of course, require a broadband connection to download the programs.

Topics I've already seen under interesting discussion were MSH (the new "Microsoft Shell"), Avalon (the longhorn graphics subsystem), WinFS and much more! Listen to the lead developers of these technologies explain what they will do and how they can make our computing experience better.

 

[Phantasm66]

This of course isn't exactly news because the show has been around for a while, but its a first class resource for up to the minute news about what state-of-the-art stuff is going into Longhorn and other Microsoft products.

From what I have seen, the next version of Windows is a very ambitious affair, with all sorts of new concepts. The user interface in particular, and the stuff about Avalon is very interesting.

 

[agissi]

Cool, I just downloaded two 300MB videos of the .NET show from the site, they are extracting now

 

[Phantasm66]

It definately looks like Longhorn is Microsoft's answer to Linux in a big way, and addressed a number of other problems in the computing experience as well.

I'm looking at something right now that you can use to address the registry and active directory as if they are files and folders on the local machine, just like in UNIX.

The Avalon stuff was very interesting as well. Its really nice to see some hard work in making some of the annoying things that the interface does go away.

 

[Nic]

I'm downloading the last one now. The Avalon show runs for about 2 hours, but was was good seeing the demos and the direction Microsoft is taking in Longhorn. Looks like they are rewriting everything from the ground up. The windows desktop will be 3D hardware accelerated, but the desktop is not 3D (though it could be). The windows forms controls (GUI components) are all new, and will be designed with these new features in mind. This means that existing .Net application will need to have a new GUI built if they wish to use the new Longhorn GUI features. Everything will be based on XAML (eXtensible Avalon Markup Language), which seems to be built into everything, and can even be used as a programming language (can be compiled into MSIL code, much as C# or VB.NET are currently).

It's also good to see Microsoft supporting open standards, and the bit about web designers being able to take advantage of the very powerful new GUI features of Longhorn for their websites (if Longhorn OS is detected on the client) will offer amazing potential, if developers choose to use it.

 

[Phantasm66]

What I found interesting was that the 3D acceleration was being used not to do 3D on the desktop but basically just to render the desktop faster and in more detail.

Avalon will "know" about how things should look - to make them look nice to the human eye in a way that existing GUIs do not. It will also be able to adjust automatically if you have a very high resolution monitor so that you get more detail instead of tiny icons and fonts, etc.

 

[BrownPaper]

I am overwhelmed with the many things that MS is trying to do. I wonder if they can actually do all they want to do?

 

[abc]

Here's to hoping Avalon is more stable than Explorer. haha

Really though, Longhorn sounds cool. If they make Avalon stable, it will fix my main gripe with WinXP, explorer dying every other time I turn around.

 

[agissi]

Originally posted by BrownPaper
I am overwhelmed with the many things that MS is trying to do. I wonder if they can actually do all they want to do?

Oh ya defently, if you watch the show this stuff is already way into development, and is already starting to come through.