My (very preliminary) Win8 + WinRT impression!
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Before you get all excited C++/Xaml is WinRT only. Means you can't use it for normal desktop apps or for WPF/SL. And WinRT apps will always be fullscreen / immersive. You can have 2+ apps side-by-side though but together they will still be fulscreen.
Regards, Nish
My technology blog: voidnish.wordpress.com
Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
And WinRT apps will always be fullscreen
Huh, missed that somehow in all the hoopla. I actually *like* that idea, non maximized windows drive me batty when I see them on other people's pc's while they are trying to work in some kind of tiny window.
There is no failure only feedback
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Nishant Sivakumar wrote:
C++/CX and cut down development time big time.
The problem with the new syntax is that people have to learn it. I still get confused with sometimes with the ^ syntax. Whereas in standard COM you do not have to do anything special. You get smart pointers, you know how to call a method and with smart types )_bstr_t,_variant_t things gets even more simple. The only thing available in the new syntax is . instead of ->. That may cut development time slightly as you have to type only 1 character instead of 2. Apart from that I do not see any other benefit.
The new ^ reminds me of pointers in Pascal. Ahh, the old days. C# is way more fun.
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Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
by requiring these applications to be full screen
I wonder how this will impact tasks that require one to look at two application at the same time. Will this ever allow this new approach to be the only? How is this gonna be in multi monitor environments? I still need to see this for myself, but I see problems of a full screen only on some scenarios. A phone and a tablet? ok, but on a desktop? Maybe not always.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson
Metro applications can be docked one next to the other, one application docked to the right and the other docked to the left, so you can see both at the same time.
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Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
apparently we'll be able to write WinRT code in standard C++ as well
I'm not sure where you've read this. AFAIK, you have to conform to the CX format to work with WinRT - you will still be able to use libraries such as boost, but you have to use this syntax for actual WinRT libraries if you want to actually have your code "Activatable".
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I was about to ask whether this means that MS decided to block out all cross-platform development, but decided to read up on that myself. ;) It turned out my (then uninformed) conclusion was valid after all, but your assertion that you cannot use C++ with WinRT is wrong. Check out for instance the screenshot and explanations in this article at readwriteweb.com. Seems like WinRT takes a similar place in Metro development as MFC used to take in Win32 desktop app development. And yes you can use C++ and even C to call the WinRT API. With that pic in mind I now finally understand what the MS marketing people meant by 'native' HTML - in this contect what they meant was the next best term to 'proprietary' and 'unportable', really; Metro offers developers a standard tool (HTML) to address an unportable, proprietary API (WinRT). Maybe it's just me not being a native english speaker, but I have some trouble associating the word 'native' with its intended (by MS) meaning ... :doh: All this makes me wonder what MS is thinking: in a world where the internet and open software development thrives, they close all the doors on cross platform development! Really? :confused: