For almost 20 years, Windows has been an ever-evolving graphical environment which has focused on providing users, as well as developers, easy access to the latest technologies, hardware, and services. “Longhorn”, the codename for the next version of Windows, represents a significant jump in the definition of what a Windows Application is, and is capable of achieving. In this episode of the .NET Show, MSDN TV provides a general overview of the larger technology “pillars” of Longhorn, introducing their concepts, as well as showing some of the coding techniques for gaining access to them. Use Windows Media Player on Mac/Windows or Win32_Codecs on Unix/Linux to view the videos.
Longhorn Overview at MSDN TV
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
What if Adobe and Macromedia never had ported their software to Windows, or decided to stop supporting the platform?
That’s a big if. Word Perfect is gone. God knows what happened to Lotus 1-2-3. But the trend is obvious for Microsoft and the computing world.
Computing is going towards DMA and so is Windows. Yuck
Wordperfect isn’t gone. Lotus 1-2-3 is not gone, either.
What if Adobe and Macromedia never had ported their software to Windows, or decided to stop supporting the platform?
There would probably be a lot of people switching platforms
Adobe and Macromedia are both huge, especially Flash and Dreamweaver.
“What if Adobe and Macromedia never had ported their software to Windows, or decided to stop supporting the platform? ”
They would have suffered big time. They wouldn’t have been able to grow. The world didn’t need adobe, adobe needed the world. If they had only remained on Mac they would have sold to everyone who will ever buy their products. The had to supoort windows. With the windows versions of their software it opened up customers who would have never tried their products since they didn’t have a mac or access to or couldn’t afford. Adobe would have remained a small company. Also that would mean no widespread pdf adoption. If your a company that wants to grow your not going to care much what a company like MS does, cause you want to make money, MS has made lots of company very wealthy.
Also someone would have done what adobe has for windows, that company would have grown, ported to Mac and adobe would be dead. Sticking with a platform like mac only, only will work if you want to remain a niche. But in the end niche players die, someone else will do the same as the niche player but go bigtime, then they become the place to be and the niche will have no market.
This is the same fate that Apple has, they are a niche, a good niche but still one. They are doing fine for now in time their market share will decline, even if their sales are up and all is well, their overall importantance will shrink and it will be less important for companies to make software for them. This is why Apple needs to increase their market share, not just have increase in sales each quarter. Apple has said they want to get to 5% they know that at their rate in another 20 years they may simple not exist not for any lack of sales, or quality or any of that but simple no one cares. They will be come more of a freak system. They can survive on their own software and niche players who don’t face competition, but in the end they will all but have disapeared.
as if that will ever happen.
you see all these articles trumpeting longhorn, but where is longhorn?! and will these features really see the light of day? and if they do, will they really be anything useful?
i must agree that the .NET framework for microsoft is a step forward…but not everything that comes out of redmond is “ooh ahh wow” material
Will the “Mobile devices version (63 MB file)” work on a PC?
I want to try it out.
It’s just you (and maybe a few others reading too much into things).
This isn’t a news channel. It’s a semi-monthly web show for developers that use Microsoft technologies. It gives those developers insight into current and future technologies, and directs them to information about how to best take advantage of the technologies. It’s as simple as that.
The show’s hosts are Microsoft developers that do the show in addition to their regular jobs at MS.
What else would you “plug” if you had a show targeting your developer audience on a site that targets your developer audience? You’d (hopefully) “plug” technologies relevant to that audience.
The mobile version works on a PC. The bitrate, framerate, and resolution are just lower.
If you listen to the entire show, you will notice that Longhorn will be, as rumors had it, fully vector graphics (i.e. very much like the Quake engine).
The reason for not coming out any sooner than 2006? My guesses:
* graphic card manufacturers must adopt
* their own apps must be ported to vector graphics
* back-compatability with pixelised software take longer than expected
* enough customers must already have bought good enough hardware (possibly at the level of GeForce 256 and above)
My guess, this will be as much of a breakthrough as the step from Doom to Quake.
The only difference is that the OS will take advantage of the 3D chip that is on your card to draw the graphics, thus taking the load off the main CPU. But it will use the current API calls so there’s no need to “port” your apps.
Apple is allready doing this with their Quartz extreme and freedesktop.org is on their way. Also, Stardock is doing this in WindowBlinds on Windows.
As a user you won’t notice much difference expect for the loads of eyecandy that will be possible to add now that it won’t slow down your performance that much.
I think with vector graphics they mean the font, so you can enlarge the font withouth all those big pixels, this is good as you can have the font look the same at any resolution. And quake3 does’t have that kind of a font, quake3 font is just some texture on a polygon and if you enlarge it you see pixels. And the reseaon it takes so long i think is because they rebuilding there api’s to c# and all the software neet to be converted from c/c++ to c#
Fonts are allready vector graphics in that meaning. The technology you are talking about is anti-aliasing and it has been used in OS’s for a long time, and it’s also used in games. There’s nothing groundbreaking about the font engine in Longhorn as far as I know.
Since when was Longhorn about vector graphics? Quartz can be considered a semi-vector graphics engine; but as for now, vector is impractical for everyday use. It is one thing to have vector fonts and vector icons (the first is already available, the second is possible) than to have a completely vector-based desktop (no pixel-maping involved (except in backward compatibility), as with Fresco/Berlin).
rajan r, personally I can’t see any real advantage of not using vector graphics for most of the GUI. Why wouldn’t it be practical? Being able to resize the whole desktop or individual windows would be a lovely feature IMO. Bitmap images won’t go away just because the GUI is vectorbased. And vector graphics is likely to be cached in bitmaps anyway.
Since when was Longhorn about vector graphics?…
Longhorn’s presentation layer, Avalon, is exactly about this. The desktop and applications will be rendered using vectors. Avalon has 2D and 3D vector graphics APIs (the 3D APIs haven’t been made public yet). The desktop, applications, fonts, etc., will be rendered using the GPU (through Direct 3D), and can take advantage of features like pixel/vertex shaders. It also lets the desktop be resolution independent.
Cleartype 2.0 is GPU-accelerated to speed up font rendering, and uses pixel shaders for higher quality. Effects such as shadowing and frosted glass used in the Aero Glass experience shown at PDC also use shaders.
There is also support for vector animation and mesh-based animation. Some of the animations like those used in the file copy dialog that used to be AVIs, are now mesh based. Vector/Mesh icons are also possible, however, there is discussion about whether to use up to 256×256 bitmaps by default for desktop icons.
Not almost twenty years. Just a this past weekend, we had the 20th anniversary of the Mac. Windows 3.0 didn’t show up til 1989 (any earlier version doesn’t count). This is only 15 years of kludged graphics.
But microsoft as a company is 20 years old. Apple did the same thing a few years ago. Actually wasn’t the G4 Cube supposed to be the 20th year of Apple?? I might be wrong on that.
Technically Longhorn will be impressive, but how many people will have it copied by the time it gets here. We still have 3-4 years to wait for it.
I wonder if OSX will have released a 64 bit version of a fully vectored GUI by the time Longhorn hits. Also no says if Longhorn will be 32 or 64 bit. I would assume 64bit, with need of a 64 bit graphics bus???? who truely knows.
Longhorn’s presentation layer, Avalon, is exactly about this. The desktop and applications will be rendered using vectors. Avalon has 2D and 3D vector graphics APIs (the 3D APIs haven’t been made public yet). The desktop, applications, fonts, etc., will be rendered using the GPU (through Direct 3D), and can take advantage of features like pixel/vertex shaders. It also lets the desktop be resolution independent.
Being GPU-accelerated and having vector-based features does not mean it is a vector-based UI. The same goes for vector-based APIs. fd.o’s X plans to have similar features – yet it doesn’t make it vector too.
If Microsoft continues to expand its software line to include titles that match the macs iLife it will eventually cut it’s own nose off. Many of the machines sold come with all the software you need. If computer continue to head in this trend It won’t matter to many consumers if they buy a mac or a windows machine. At a price point Microsoft will always dominate, but the mac will always be relevant. This does not apply to the corporate IT world.
Microsoft, as a company, is almost 30 years old (Founded in 1975).
Windows 1.0 does count. MS announced it in 1983, and it was available through retail in 1985.
XP’s marketshare has been around 40% for the past year+.
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-960270.html
http://www.channelminds.com/article.php3?id_article=1095
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist_nov03.html
[i]Being GPU-accelerated and having vector-based features does not mean it is a vector-based UI. The same goes for vector-based APIs. fd.o’s X plans to have similar features – yet it doesn’t make it vector too.<i/>
Can you go into further detail? Are you saying that you believe that the same bitmap UI is simply being redirected through the GPU? For legacy apps, I think this is the case, but not for the Aero GUI, nor Avalon-based apps.
Can you go into further detail? Are you saying that you believe that the same bitmap UI is simply being redirected through the GPU? For legacy apps, I think this is the case, but not for the Aero GUI, nor Avalon-based apps.
There’s very little information about Avalon other than it is drawn using a GPU as opposed to currently using the CPU, thus making it faster. Howeveryou are the first person I cam around that says that Avalon is a vector-based graphics engine.
Here’s a couple of links:
http://www.longhornblogs.com/mmielke/archive/2003/11/21/1513.aspx
http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/ffortes/PermaLink.aspx/f60a939a-bfe6-4c4…
http://longhorn.msdn.microsoft.com/lhsdk/port_tech_graphics.aspx