Wrap-up on today's MIX11 keynote

mix11

Today was a superb day for both the Windows Telephone vii platform and the development customs backside the 13,000 Marketplace apps. Luckily nosotros were at the front (literally) of the action in Las Vegas and laying our hawk eyes on the live stream to bring you the best coverage of the keynote from a variety of angles. Not simply were we live blogging the entire session, we are also bringing you the latest bulletins roofing the Aroused Birds release date, IMDb working with Bing, Kik Messenger coming to WP7 and more.

Follow the break for a snappy list breaking down the of import topics covered in the keynote along with an in-depth summary.

Joe Belfoire explains the update process, why it took so long and how they've learned from the feedback received
Nearing 13,000 apps and developers are constantly producing quality over quantity
Improving programmer opportunities through calibration of user base and predictions of greatness by 2022 with market share
Nokia makes a brief appearance building excitement for joining the WP7 regime
16 more than languages will be supported in Mango, increasing the number countries you tin can submit apps to the Marketplace from (to be 38) and where you tin download apps (16 to 35)
Large changes to the app list in Mango with calculation a letter jump list, search feature with live filtering and Marketplace search integration
Podcast back up coming to The states in the fall of 2022
Installing complimentary apps from the Marketplace now only requires one click and download progress for all apps are shown in the app list
Built-in multitasking is shown with property downward the back push button, and more than tertiary party apps are existence included in hubs
Search feature heavily improved with Bing integration with movies used as an example, info card are displayed just like eatery searching
IE9 will be powering the spider web experience in Mango, bringing the same lawmaking base of operations and rendering engine used on desktop (hardware acceleration etc.)
HTML5 speed reading on Mango out-sped both Android and iOS in a live comparing
A plethora of introduced capabilities for native apps to get richer and better integration through employ of sensors, multiple live tiles, groundwork updates, SQL, data access and more
Gyroscope and compass support is added
Skype is appear and a demo presented with contacts and socket support
Personalized ringtones is displayed, adding new files with ease
Amazon's app demo uses sensors and tin can scan bar codes using the built-in camera through search to bring upward products (a book was used equally an example)
Live tiles tin can now exist "deep-linked" into an app - example beingness the Amazon app scanner, one click from the home screen compared to opening the app, hit search and then opening the scanner
Move sensor introduced, combining both the compass and the gyroscope
Implementation of fast-app switching with apps being put to slumber and and then re-awakened (demo with multitasking while Angry Birds was running)
As well as introducing multitasking with groundwork functions (music, downloads, alarms etc.), battery life was sought to be improved in Mango
Live Agents allow developers to balance the trouble in running groundwork code while allowing users to maintain good battery life and not to run processes manually
Qantas app shown off with multiple live tiles present on the home screen with seperate blitheness, content and deep-links, with background alarm management and GPS location along with processing calculations without user input
Joe Belfoire states the developer tools will exist released next month (May)
Visual Studio 2022 demo is ran past Scott Guthrie displaying the capabilities of the device emulator running the game Mobile Maze
WP7 emulator is improved with gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS and multiple locations support along with multiple pre-congenital gestures (shake device to refresh/reload etc.)
Debugging is much easier, troubleshooting performance problems and issues with apps in VS through GPU, CPU and execution measurements etc.
Mango performance increment is shown with a demo of a two WP7 devices (one without Mango) running the aforementioned apps and the same code
1500+ APIs coming to Mango and WP7 developers
Kik Messenger is headed to Windows Phone 7

Permit us kick off the summary past opening one-time (and in some cases however new) wounds surrounding the February NoDo update. While the update is however causing concern for AT&T customers among others who still haven't received the notification to update nonetheless, Joe Belfiore apologized for his previous postal service regarding his comment that "majority of users accept the update", which afterwards required him to state that he was mistaken.

Hats off to Joe though, he went on to explain that they located issues with devices that were being shipped from manufacturers with characteristics non originally present in earlier models. Microsoft besides patched the Zune PC customer and OS X Windows Phone 7 connector many times for the February update leading to more steps existence taken to safety guard the update process.

Microsoft released the updates for carriers about simultaneously -- however -- larger carriers (o2, Vodafone, AT&T, Verizon etc.) will take more time with their updates being rolled out to end-users due to the rigorous testing they carry out ensuring the update will not cause problems resulting in a larger volume of support required by customers. Joe also wanted to betoken out that,

"we've [Microsoft] brought many years of PC infrastructure and updates, simply it seems OEMs have much more code added in on WP7 compared to PCs".

The Where's my update folio volition be continuously updated throughout futurity updates.

Marketplace Related Apps

Moving (swiftly) onto the country of the Market, which is something Microsoft is extremely proud of. Almost 13,000 apps take been submitted within 6 months, and the majority of apps that pass the approval process are of high quality and include ESPN, New York Time amongst other big brands. Kudos where it's due. Nosotros covered -- not so long ago -- that Gartner predicted the WP7 platform would get 2nd in held marketshare by 2022, and so this obviously caught Microsoft's attention and was mentioned that the OS will enable developers reach a larger audience with the ecosystem supporting an audience on a huge scale.

Apps on the Marketplace volition accept improved information pages with pivots separating reviews, screenshots and a "related apps" feature. Something magical - free apps volition just require one click to install and all download progress bars volition be displayed on the installed app listing.

Nokia made a brief advent, pretty much simply proverb "hi" and "good day", Marco Argenti (caput of developer experience at Nokia) mentioned how excited the team are in edifice and developing for the WP7 platform. I of their aims is to bring tremendous calibration to the platform and explained that developers using their application environment (Qt) would let development for both WP7 and Symbian.

Countries Available

Next up is increased linguistic communication support and land deployment, this allows developers in 38 countries will exist able to submit apps to the Marketplace, while the number of countries that tin download apps from the Marketplace will be pushed up to 35. Don't forget that a total of 16 languages are being added in. This is all great news for users who have experienced issues when attempting to admission the Marketplace.

Joe displays his new toy to the audience, an ASUS device running the latest build of Mango. The top features that caught everyone's attention were the changes to the app list adjacent to the home screen. Letter bound list is implemented (just like in People hub etc.) also as search to allow alive filtering of installed apps, non to mention the ability to search the Market place direct. Staying on search for a while longer - the Market has received a revamp in results with added panes separating apps, music, podcasts (The states support coming late 2022) and more. Built-in app multitasking was shown by belongings downwardly the dorsum push to bring up a sort-of presentation of apps currently active.

The search role is heavily improved allowing Bing integration with location, reviews and more (which is already nowadays with some searches such every bit for restaurants). Joe ran an example with searching for the film Source Lawmaking and selected the result powered past Bing which brought up an information menu showing reviews, show times and too a list of apps installed that back up films - in this example: IMDb. Past clicking on the app listed you are deep-linked to the content in that selected app. Clicking on IMDB brought u.s.a. to the film summary page of Source Code, without whatever further clicking or searching. Saves a helluva lot of clicking and app-switching.

Internet Explorer nine will be included in Mango, bringing with information technology the same lawmaking base and rendering engine used on desktop platforms. Hardware dispatch is a well-known reward and the mobile IE will surely brand use of the WP7 hardware. What's more is the markup on both the mobile devices and desktops running IE volition be the aforementioned, less for developers to alter in code to accommodate multiple platforms. HTML5 speed reading was compared live on stage between WP7, iOS and Android showing the FPS (frames per second) that was maintained. IE9 on Mango scored an impressive victory with completing first and reaching 20FPS, while Android lagged behind on 11FPS and iOS was simply starting with 2FPS. This was all thanks to the hardware acceleration and HTML standard space native browsing from IE on the PC.

Platform capabilities for native apps to become richer and more functional in Mango with phone integration were introduced, enabling developers to use sensors and and date on the device. User feel enhancements, improved panorama views, enabling multiple live tiles per app with separate animation, groundwork updates without push, ringtone(s) button, built in SQL Db, more launchers and data access to contacts & calendar. Mango will prove to be a huge step up for developers and apps will have the space to become much more than feature rich, especially with the additional support for gyroscope and compass. Skype was presented in demo, which requires both contacts (address volume) and network back up - it's definitely coming to WP7.

Skype to Wp7

A highly requested feature by the community is personalized ringtones. This is something that will exist addressed in Mango and was demoed by Joe with downloading an audio file and using the API to add it to the ringtone listing and/or apply it as the device ringtone.

Naming the increase in capabilities and functionality would mean lilliputian without an app sit-in that took reward. Out comes the Amazon app using sensors on the device, namely the camera. Instead of searching for a product using text via the on-screen (or hardware) keyboard, one tin utilise the camera as a bar lawmaking scanner to have a motion-picture show of a volume (for example) and search Amazon for that book or other products. Deep-links (as mentioned somewhere above) also allows one to pin this bar code scanner within the Amazon app to their home screen for instant access. Really neat.

Motion Sensor was side by side to be introduced by Joe, which makes apps that use the gyroscope and compass easier to develop for developers (an example was demonstrated using the Layers app). Angry Birds was the side by side app used for Joe's pleasure aiding his caption to the audition about fast application switching and multitasking. With multitasking processes like background music (Spotify coming to WP7!), downloads and alarms normally comes a compromise in battery life, Joe stated that the squad is working hard to combat this with Live Agents. Developers will be able to utilize Live Agents to residue the trouble of running groundwork code and allowing users to maintain good battery life. The Qantas app was used for showing off the implementation and usage of Live Agents, showing flight time and status in multiple alive tiles, showing an warning about that flying and the Live Agent is checking GPS location, calculating the time required to catch the flying and then providing related flights should it detect that you'll miss the boarding time.

Mr Belfiore then finished with a note that Windows Phone vii will aid developers bring apps to their users faster and further develop the experience. Programmer tools will be released next calendar month (May), available for download.

Visual Studio 2022

Battling hard onto gaming development (still awake reading this? Nearly finished), Scott Guthrie took the stage to walk us through improvements that have been practical to Visual Studio 2022 Express for Windows Telephone. He boot-starts the Mobile Maze game in the emulator arranged with VS, which requires the accelerometer. The emulator now included support for non only the accelerometer, but for pre-congenital gestures too (shake device to refresh/reload etc.). Don't think for a second they have forgotten GPS and location support because this is all included through a demonstration using Jeff Wilcox's quaternary & Mayor app in the emulator.

Staying inside VS but moving off from the emulator, Scott takes us through improvements made to the coding side of the software that helps developers easily identify problems through dialogues and clever measurements ran by VS when testing applications. GPU, CPU and execution time can be measured confronting set up inputs, and tracking how many bytes of retentivity is generated along with CPU usage and more is a breeze with clear graphs showing second-by-second break downs.

Scott loves united states and leaves us with a video comparison the speed of pre-Mango with Mango through running applications and games with simply back end code altered - no lawmaking changes are required to be carried out past developers. The huge increase of operation for Mango is more often than not down to the UI thread being free for user input/output, loading images via network no longer blocks the UI thread and loads images as they're fetched rather than waiting until ready to begin rolling out. This ensures that at that place is next-to-no 'lag' when browsing effectually lists and panes. Less retentiveness usage when using apps (forth with more efficient allocation), garbage collection clears upward used RAM when possible and Mango (equally a whole) feels much more "buttery".

Finishing off, Scott re-announces 1500+ APIs volition be fabricated available for developers, including database manipulation with SQL CE management. This volition bring the much requested database search to the table that wasn't feasible earlier due to not being able to parse the code/files. As mentioned already, network sockets are at present available (Skype) and an IRC chat was presented on phase. Oh, and Kik Messenger is coming!

So, after reading all of the above and probably wishing you had stuck to the quick bullet point list, what do you think about the keynote? Did it answer questions that were raised in your mind, or are at that place things you still desire to see/hear from Microsoft?

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