There’s a full–blown panic going on in Microsoft’s core third party developer community. After the big Windows 8 demonstration earlier this month where HTML5 and JavaScript were touted as a new way to create applications for Windows 8, speculation has gone through the roof – with developers panicking in the streets about the end of Silverlight and .NET and a HTML5/JS-only Windows 8 release. Looking more closely at the whole situation, though, it would seem that what we’re dealing with here is a miscommunication – one that Microsoft desperately needs to address since the web is blowing it way out of proportion. The tl;dr: no, HTML5 and JS are not going to be the only ways to write applications for Windows 8.
This is a subject I’ve been meaning to write about for a while now, but due to me not being, you know, a developer, I have to rely on the expertise of others to be able to inform you, and of course, in order to form my own opinion on the matter. From what I’ve read so far, it would seem that what we’re dealing with here is a miscommunication.
Let’s first go back to the presentation of Windows 8’s interface. Since it’s already been a while since this presentation took place, my memory was a little bit muddied, and judging by all the talk about HTML5/JS that has come since, I thought half of the presentation was about HTML5 and JS being the one and only development tools for Windows 8. Going back to the presentation, however, I was surprised to find that the comment about HTML5 and JS was made only once, and better yet, only when it came to the demo weather application.
As Julie Larson-Green was running through the new Mango-inspired Windows 8 interface, she loaded the weather application with current weather conditions and forecasts, she made her now infamous comment. “This is written with our new development platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript […] And so people can write new applications for Windows using the things that they, that they – are doing already on the internet,” she said.
It may be hard to believe, but that’s it. This is all that was said about HTML5 and JavaScript during the presentation. Larson-Green loaded a demo weather application, and stated this application was built using a new development platform that uses HTML5 and JS. Nothing more, nothing less.
She didn’t say this would be the only development platform. She didn’t say this was the preferred platform. All she said was – this specific application is built using a new development platform we’re working on. Considering this is a demo about new stuff, it makes sense to mention that for Windows 8, developers can now also use HTML5 and JS to write applications.
The comment was entirely ignored by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swischer, and Larson-Green, too, didn’t seem to think too much of it. The same thing was said in an article on Microsoft’s press website – one aspect of Windows 8 is “web-connected and web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC”.
If you think going from this to “zomg windows 8 will be 100% html5 and js only!11!” seems like somewhat of a stretch, you’re not alone. Comments from Microsoft employees since then would seem to indicate that, by golly, of course Windows 8 isn’t going to be HTML5/JS-only just because Microsoft is adding HTML5/JS as a way to write applications. It’s just that they’re not allowed to talk about it until the BUILD conference in September.
“Nowhere in there is a Microsoft person saying that HTML/Javascript are the exclusive way to write applications. It’s a new way, it’s an exciting way, and, let’s face it, a way that is likely to be hugely popular with web developers,” writes, Microsoft community program manager Pete Brown, “None of us at Microsoft can say anything until //build/ in September. No one likes that, including me. That’s all we can do, however.”
This seems like a pretty solid confirmation from Redmond that you’ll be able to use more than just HTML5 and JS to write applications for Windows 8. It wouldn’t make sense, either; Microsoft wants to unify their three screens, and do you really think they would invest so heavily in Silverlight and XNA on Windows Phone 7 and the Xbox 360, only to toss them out the window for Windows 8?
On top of that, if you’d been paying attention over the past few months, you would know that Windows 8 will include something called ‘Jupiter’. We reported on Jupiter earlier this year, and because of the whole HTML5/JS thing, Mary Jo Foley talked to her sources inside Microsoft, and they confirmed that Jupiter is still on track (and if her sources aren’t enough, evidence of Jupiter’s existence has already been uncovered in the leaked windows 8 builds).
“Jupiter is a user interface library for Windows and will allow developers to build immersive applications using a XAML-based approach with coming tools from Microsoft. Jupiter will allow users a choice of programming languages, namely, C#, Visual Basic and C++,” Foley writes, “Yes, it still exists, I hear from my contacts. And yes, this will enable support of native Silverlight applications.”
Jupiter applications will be part of the new fancy interface, and not the classic interface option Microsoft also showed off. In spite of this, however, Foley believes that Microsoft will eventually phase out Silverlight – just not any time soon. “It definitely seems Microsoft’s ultimate goal is to wean developers off Silverlight and to convince them to use HTML5 and JavaScript to write new apps for Windows, going forward,” she writes, “But until there’s better tooling for HTML5 (beyond what Microsoft provides via the F12 HTML tools in Internet Explorer), it seems the Softies are going to support .Net and Silverlight via new versions of Visual Studio, the .Net Framework and Expression.”
Another Microsoft blogger, Paul Thurrot, is also convinced that Microsoft is still pushing Jupiter ahead, but just like Foley, he acknowledges that Microsoft is undergoing a rather large communications kucf-up. He hints that Microsoft might be planning on some big reveal for its BUILD conference in September (Jupiter and the Windows application store), but that this many months with developers panicking in the street committing 切腹 is not a good thing. A short blog post addressing the issue with sparse details and a ‘yes, you can still use .NET/Silverlight/XNA/whatever, stay tuned for more at BUILD’ is all that’s needed to take most of the worries away.
I honestly don’t think Microsoft foresaw this kind of a reaction from a mere mention of HTML5 and JS, but at least they could acknowledge the unrest now and quell it right away. Instead, the company remains incredibly tight-lipped – and while that Sinofsky policy worked out great for Windows 7, I would call this an exception to the rule.
As a final note in my capacity as ordinary user, I must say that I honestly do not understand all of the complaints from the developer community. Take Windows Presentation Foundation for instance – developers lament the impeding demise of the technology, while I’ve yet to see, you know, actually useful applications written in WPF that aren’t eating up half my RAM while idling. If WPF is so great it’s worth knicker-twisting over, then show us ignorants why we should care!
It would appear to me that Microsoft has always had a somewhat disjointed and confusing strategy when it comes to its developer tools, and if the company is currently trying to address this, then that gets a big thumbs up from me. Toes will inevitably be stepped on during this process, but if it leads to a unification of the three screens in my home (Xbox 360, Windows Phone 7, and my desktop), then I’m all for it.
Just look at where Microsoft is going. Visually, the unification is already complete.
I noticed the “OH N035!!!1!!!” as well and wondered why everyone was flipping out. Thank you for trying to dispel that a little.
Said developers would in many ways deserve what they were getting if they had actually invested themselves entirely in one development framework.
I also find HTML5/Javascript ever so slightly haphazard for serious application development. It’s a web-development platform for goodness sake, nothing more, nothing less.
So thinking that Microsoft would just dump their entire, fairly advanced, very expensive framework at the drop of a hat in favor of something like HTML5/JS is indeed stupidity itself.
Though really, I could forgive someone for believing, somewhere deep inside, that Ballmer might just be the one person stupid enough to do it
Totally agree. I would never give up the portability of POSIX and frameworks like Qt. I just love the idea being able to easily port my software to almost any platform out there.
Heck, these two are even available on exotic platforms like Haiku and AmigaOS
.
Would never write any software using a platform-specific API like Cocoa or Win32. Even though my first applications were Win32/MFC-only, but that’s looooong time ago
.
Adrian
The reason microsoft has a history of supporting ‘old’ languages
Even within the relatively small companies I have worked at, there is always an app or two floating around written for a specific task. The original writers have left, it works, so why incur the expense of writing it again?
Were they to drop .net, many simply wouldnt upgrade to win8. Maybe re-writing in java or similar so they would become platform independent maybe moving to Mac or Linux.
Balmer might not be doing great (by many estimates), but he isnt going to sell out on what has made them the biggest software company in the world any time soon.
The only think I cant get my head around is why they have kept quiet and not set the record straight!
Did anyone seriously think that MS would scrap both Silverlight and .NET overnight? If you actually believe that you deserve to freak out.
agreed! they are having a hard problem phasing out Win32 let alone .Net
Well, Win32 was positioned as a lock in cash cow:
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Vendor_lock-in
.NET serves the same purpose and it would be surprising if Microsoft suddenly drops old practices.
Not over night, but the fear is that WPF (for being a big slow mess only enterprises like) and Silverlight (for not getting any traction besides DRM streaming) will get deprecated.
The current MS is scared of be seen as this big slow old fashioned behemoth that isn’t doing any hip stuff (besides Kinect).
So they want catchy stuff like one-true-dev-platform for everything (JS + HTML5) on their (fast and hip) IE browser.
They want to be lean and mean and run on tablets and WebOS has shown that doing everything in JS and HTML can work really well.
Don’t underestimate the current MS willingness to do radical things that they think they need to do to be relevant in the future.
But like every MS technology WPF and SL will still have a very long life as MS zombies ahead of them.
Well, if you read the comments from the Microsoft guy in the Silverlight forums, it very much looks like that they’re at least dropping development for Silverlight.
Cite:
“As to everything else: You all saw a very small technology demo of Windows 8, and a brief press release. We’re all being quiet right now because we can’t comment on this. It’s not because we don’t care, aren’t listening, have given up, or are agreeing or disagreeing with you on something. All I can say for now is to please wait until September. If we say more before then, that will be great, but there are no promises (and I’m not aware of any plans) to say more right now. I’m very sorry that there’s nothing else to share at the moment. I know that answer is terrible, but it’s all that we can say right now. Seriously.”
from http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/230502.aspx
I mean, if there are really absolutely no plans for dropping Silverlight, he could simply say so. But the way he is presenting it does neither support nor weaken the speculation about Silverlight being dropped, but from all the facts presented about Windows 8, indications about Silverlight’s death are definitely there and I absolutely understand the SL developers’ fears.
So I would be very very careful with the above statement. Mind that Microsoft is a profit-oriented enterprise (don’t get me wrong, I am not criticizing that at all), so they have to make certain decisions when they see a technology is not developing as they expected it to be.
Adrian
Edited 2011-06-13 21:14 UTC
Uhm, no. If the orders are not to talk about the development environment until BUILD, then he can’t “simply say say so”.
From your own article:
and I suppose those are even your own words because they don’t show up in Paul’s blog post.
In any case, I don’t see how exactly Microsoft would be leaking any “confidential” (putting that in quotes because we’re actually talking about a consumer product and not some military secret) information here, when they just make a statement about the future prospects of Silverlight
.
Their current PR is simply very confusing at the moment and Microsoft definitely owes their community some words of commitment.
Adrian
Hey, I agree with you that they ought to address this – but if the orders are “don’t talk about dev until BUILD”, then it makes sense to not talk about it. I’m just saying that for this specific case, they ought to make an exception.
If that happened, would there be another set of worries among users or developers or OEMs or administrators? Another press inspired frenzy? More forced comments, where the timing of information is determined by a press with dramatic headlines chasing eyeballs than any strategy? When is “no comment” a valued and satisfactory answer to a legitimate question?
Apple wouldn’t do this. Apple would say nothing, then say their piece at a large event at a time of their choosing.
The early replies to this story have the fear wrong. The fear was always that dotNet and silverlight wouldn’t have access to the newer win 8 interface. MS said very clearly that existing apps would continue to work in the windows 7 interface.
The people that have heavily invested in dotNet that MS doesn’t want to tick off are corporate users. Corporations are not going to immediately switch to the new interface, its been said that the win 7 interface may be the win 8 pro interface. So the deprecation, wouldn’t offend their large customers.
There has been enough info that has trickled out of MS since that video that leads me to believe they aren’t disallowing dotNet/silverlight to interact with the newer interface.
As the Balmer win 8 announcement and subsequent MS press release denial proved: Microsoft sucks at public relations. They’re trying to be all Apple hush hush and its causing people to freak out. When apple doesn’t mention something that often means its been killed off. Microsoft on the other hand usually denies something is dead until people forget that it was alive and stop asking.
Thom!
Not to spam but if you have not yet seen a great WPF application you should look at http://www.stoffiplayer.com
Hopefully the next version will use even less RAM and run even faster.
😀
Seriously, Are Windows programmers retarded of something?
Edited 2011-06-13 20:22 UTC
In general, no, I don’t think they are not retarded, but in my experience, for the most part, they are intellectually lazy. They never question anything from MS, they are resistant to change because change would require them learning something new.
Edited 2011-06-13 21:13 UTC
You nailed it. That is exactly what is happening.
Sorry, I had to pick you up on your freudian slip there. The two negatives there make a positive 🙂
Actually, getting back on topic, I have seen this kind of thing time and time again, esp. in commercial news. Someone jumps on a comment or story and twists it. No one bothers to check the source and it goes from there.
The problem is people are freaking out because it would be totally Microsoft to do something as stupid as dump a mature, great dev environment (.NET + Silverlight + C#/Visual Basic) that was already made to work with Metro for something that is good for web development, just to be like the other guys.
Edited 2011-06-14 00:35 UTC
So Thom, if they are going to support older programming languages, Windows 8 won’t be legacy free after all?
You might want to go back and re-read that article before trying to get clever, kid. Because, you know, this was all in there.
Lol, don’t be a weasel pundit Thom. Your words are right there to be read.
Anybody who has ever tasted of the fruit from the clue-tree knows that a “legacy-free” commercial OS (lolz whatever that means) would be the end of MS. Dumbest idea/article/rant ever.
One of the few good reasons to stick with MS over these many years from a technical perspective has been their committment and excellence in providing to their developer community a stable and backwards-compatible application development environment. Ditch that and you give everyone a chance to reevaluate their committment.
Kid? I have a kid brother older than you.
If your article somehow indicates how older programming languages will be supported while maintaining the Win 8 as ‘legacy free’, I somehow missed it. Or is WPF ‘legacy free’. In fact, I am not sure I’ve seen you actually define legacy free, which plays to your advantage as you can just make it mean whatever you want to suit the argument.
But your argumentation tactics appear to consist of calling people names and/or locking the thread. How about you present an actual argument for a change.
I explained all tis quite carefully in the article. It’s none of my concern you failed to read more than the headline.
Oh, and stop lying. I’ve never locked a thread because of an argument with a reader, and you know it. The story in question was locked because he past 25 comments were nothing but useless meta-chatter. Cold and harsh discussions were had in that thread, and nothing was locked because of it. Please, OSNews is one of the most tolerant and open websites there is when it comes to the abuse I get from people like you. If you don’t like it here, there’s the door.
I’m afraid even your article was quite clear and matched the headline, so going back and asking people to read it again to muddy what was said won’t do anything.
The headline………. Which was a description of the article and something you wrote, was it not?
ROTFL. Come on now Thom. There has been a lot of spectacular flamefests over the years under many articles where people have posted a hell of a lot more than 25 comments, a lot worse than what was on that discussion and they didn’t get locked.
I posted something, presumably there was a few long and difficult threads after that that I didn’t read and it then gets locked very quickly? OK. It’s your site. Whatever. I didn’t see anything in there that warranted locking it anyway now I’ve looked at it.
The problem with that story was that between comment 150-203, most of it was talk about the moderation system – useless meta chatter. This went on for hours and hours – with no relevant comments posted. The story was closed because of it. If you wanted to post something after that, all you would’ve needed to do what send me an email and I would’ve gladly opened the story back up for you. I have done so on quite a few occasions in the past where we locked a story because we thought it had run its course, only to find out someone wanted to posted an insightful comment.
But of course, whining in a comment on a different story is a far more constructive approach than spending that energy on sending me a quick email.
Yeah… all of this is because of the headline. A great headline is supposed to be somewhat mischievously contrarian. If you want people to read it, you label it something that riles people up and instils a sense of ” That can’t be right! I must read to learn more!” in them.
Old school newspaper guys like my dad got away with it, the only way to complain was to write a letter to the editor and send it in the mail. Then the Newspaper had to choose to print the complaint in their paper. Now a days, we have comments so we let you know sooner. More satisfying to readers, more of a pain for clever content creators.
Edited 2011-06-14 22:18 UTC
Well, quite. Thom can’t bare to admit that he comes up with that kind of tosh every time a new Windows version is upcoming.
Of course it will support older programming environments, because basically the Windows 7 desktop is still there and will be virtually unchanged and that’s what people will use when it comes to desktop applications. Running existing applications won’t be an issue.
The issue here is that Microsoft has stuck an additional mobile application shell on to the top that Thom now ludicrously thinks is a new legacy-free desktop, but Microsoft makes it extremely clear that the way to program within it is HTML5 and JavaScript. People are up in arms because those who know anything about Microsoft know that they don’t say that for nothing.
As I already pointed out to you last time – stop lying. Point me to where I’ve said this before. I’m incredibly curious. A helpful reminder: the articles about this subject in the Windows 7-era all made it very clear that it was all just hope (I specifically said Microsoft would NOT do it). It was all written in ‘should’, not ‘will’.
So, please, point me to where I said that. I’m dying over here. I’m getting a little sick of your lies, so it would be nice to have them corroborated.
On top of what? On top of Windows NT – duh, nobody ever claimed otherwise. But not on top of Explorer.
Again – where do they say this? Point us to it. I dare you.
Edited 2011-06-14 12:14 UTC
Come now Thom. This ‘legacy free’ mantra is something you banged on about before, when Microsoft farts it seems to be on the road to your grand plan as well as fawning over new versions of Windows that are rather less than spectacular when they’re looked at closely.
No, I’m not going to trawl your previous articles over many years. The ‘send someone off to do something that will take a long time’ ploy to sweep something under the carpet doesn’t work here ;-). It doesn’t invalidate what’s been said though.
That’s got nothing to do with the Windows 8 article, which is just plain wrong:
http://www.osnews.com/story/24814/Windows_8_The_Legacy-less_Windows…
The Legacy-less Windows we’ve been waiting for? I don’t know about you but it was clear to me when I read it.
I can only roll my eyes to that one. One would think someone could read their own articles.
You did Thom. You claimed that the diddy little mobile interface was the beginnings of a new desktop, or legacy-less as you put it, with nothing to back it up. I’m not too sure what Explorer has to do with it.
They do so right inside the video you linked to and they specifically mentioned HTML5 and JavaScript and nothing else. Given that you haven’t been able to program any local Microsoft interfaces with those two things before and this is entirely new, that’s curious, don’t you think?
What amuses me is that you’ve wrote a great deal of articles about Microsoft and Windows over the years and yet seem utterly clueless as to what happens when the reality hits home and something is released. There’s a reason why many Microsoft developers are kicking off over this – some have actually learned from history where you haven’t.
Any twit can claim it’s all malicious lies and rumours………until it happens, and it’s happened rather a lot.
In other words, you can’t corroborate your claims. Or, in even other words, you’re making stuff up that I have never said.
Uh, what? I claimed that the new interface was NOT running on Windows NT? Where?
Ah nevermind. You won’t back you claims up with anything, as I’ve already shown. Lots of talk, but nothing to back it up. I have no time for that. Come back when you’re willing to do more than just insult me.
Edited 2011-06-14 16:52 UTC
Nothing new, every time MS introduces something new, windows devs scream and holler that they will have to learn something, finally all the devs fall in line.
But in the end, MS say jump, and all the windows devs and users will ask how high. Windows devs , in general will never jump ship, ever, that is just the way they are. No matter how much better something else might be, they will simply use whatever MS tells them to. Just look at things like MFC, COM, J++, all the other crap dev tools from MS, the devs never questioned it, just used it.
In fairness to MS, unlike their previous crap (like MFC), C#/.net are nice, .net solves a huge problem of language interoperability, and C# is a well thought out, expressive language.
I think the point you were hinting at is that there are a large number of good reasons for not jumping ship for Microsoft developers. So, most of them, will not jump ship. Its not that all Microsoft devs are stupid. Their business may actually do a cost benefit analysis on weather or not to continue with Microsoft.
Right, I mean… if you’re writing an app that targets the desktop (god forbid anybody writes anything that doesn’t run in a f**king web browser) and you have an OS with an 85%+ marketshare and is pretty much the dominant desktop OS in the enterprise, of course you’re going to develop for that platform. Why wouldn’t you? The problem is trying to figure out where MS is going, as they seem to change frameworks/APIs like some people change underwear.
I think the litmus test is this… what technologies is MS writing their own apps in (excluding IE and Office, which will probably always be Win32)? I think if they’re seriously committed to a thing, developers should say ‘F**k you MS… if you want us to use this new thing, then you go first!’ For example, if they’re telling everybody to use HTML5/JS and their client-side apps are still in COM or .NET, then obviously they’re not that serious about it.
Edited 2011-06-13 22:16 UTC
Who believes in microsoft bilieves in santa claus, easter bunny, fairy tales and so on…
another crappy release, that will fool (again) the developers. I am lauching so loud… HA HA HA HA HA HA
Are Windows developers so dumb that news of support for new languages is interpreted as ditching an API? Are they unaware that QT is currently using JS as an alternate means to access it´s standard API? Do they really expect every announcement of new developments to come with pats on the head specifying exactly all the old stuff that MS is not depreciating?
They really believe Microsoft would just drop it all.
For example this response was brilliant:
http://forums.silverlight.net/forums/t/230725.aspx#562957
These kind of comments really do get them all “excited”.
I think it is funny, after all a large part of the income from Microsoft comes from the enterprise. No one in the right mind would think Microsoft wouldn’t keep supporting it atleast for an other 5 or 10 years.
Maybe I should sign up on the Silverlight forum and post some messages too. 🙂
I do understand it though, there wasn’t much new information about Silverlight at MIX either.
And even if it eventually happends, people will make tools. Even Microsoft will make tools, if they don’t provide the tools people won’t use it.
Edited 2011-06-13 23:31 UTC
After reading most of the discussion I think I know what Microsoft is gonna do. Start to use “native” (Windows Only or .Net only) code through ActiveX in HTML/JS again.
Just have a look at these links I found in the discussion:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-%28795…
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/26404-Windows-8-%28795…
So it will be integrated IE10 & Microsoft IDE generating the HTML/JS.
Edited 2011-06-14 11:53 UTC
The only way to create the new touch centric/tile Windows 8 UI is through HTML/Javascript.
Yes you can create a legacy style application using the old API’s and those will still run in ‘legacy’ mode.
Possibly Microsoft will somehow let you use other stuff to make these newfangled UI’s but that’s not in the current builds at the moment.
(I’ve heard their really against letting people make this stuff using Silverlight but in the end the developer pressure might force them too.)
]{
Do you have a source article you can link to? That is the speculation, but there hasn’t been anything solid to really say either way. A lot of rumours, mostly.
Heh, glad I use Java for the desktop and enterprise, and (Java-based) Google Web Toolkit for the Web – don’t care what Microsoft does. Me and most commercial developers (according to the Tiobe Index at least).
People are right to be concerned that Microsoft appears to be changing focus. Features and systems and insects and body parts get squished when any organization changes focus. Even if not right away…