The OSNN PDC '05 Blog

End of an awesome conference!

2005-09-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

This concludes OSNN's coverage of PDC '05. Once again, make sure you visit Channel9 and check out all the videos that were posted up this week. There's lots of interesting content there.

I wanted to post my personal thoughts about the conference in general, as well as a list of all the swag I was able to get a hold of during the last four days since so many people wanted to know. In the spirit of keeping this blog as factual and objective as possible, I have posted my concluding thoughts on my personal blog here.

Hope all of you enjoyed reading as much as I did posting all the content here! :)

Pictures from the LA Convention Center...

2005-09-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

Didn't get a chance to take pictures of the place in general earlier this week...I was spending pretty much all of my time attending sessions. :)

So I got them on Friday afternoon, after the conference was almost over - pictures of the Hands On Lab, Track Lounges, Marketplace, Internet Alley, etc. Unfortunately, the Expo Hall and the Channel9 Lounge (with the little 9Guy bean bags) were closed by then.

Tags: PDC05

Speech recognition and synthesis in Windows Vista

2005-09-17T14:26:00.000-07:00

One of the talks I attended yesterday was about speech recognition and synthesis in Windows Vista and how developers can leverage the System.Speech APIs to make their own applications "speech-enabled." The session was presented by Robert Brown (whom we were first introduced to in an old Channel9 video), Philipp Schmid and Steve Chang.

In Robert's first demo, he showed us how it's now possible to control the entire Windows UI using just speech. He was able to change his desktop wallpaper, open applications and dictate text to them, and even navigate through a MSN Virtual Earth map without touching his keyboard or mouse. It was clear that the speech recognition engine in Vista is already miles ahead of what it currently is in XP, and there's still almost a year for them to improve upon it.

He then gave us a preview of the new speech synthesis engine in Vista. Microsoft Sam and Mary, the two robotic voices in XP, have been replaced by Anna, who sounds much more natural. Even better, Vista will ship with recognition and synthesis support for 8 different languages. Robert showed us how the system reads Chinese text. Lili, the Chinese voice, doesn't sound anything like the English voice and is much more suited for reading Chinese text, for example.

Philipp Schmid then took the stage and showed us how ISV's can enable speech recognition and synthesis in their own applications. Microsoft's goal with Vista is to take speech mainstream, and in order to facilitate this, the System.Speech API's are both easy to use and very powerful. For example, in order to enable speech recognition in an existing application, all one has to do is create an instance of SpeechRecognizer and Grammar, load the Grammar instance into the recognizer, and subscribe to the SpeechRecognized event. The grammar simply consists of a finite state machine that goes through the different states to build up a sentence or command.

Finally, Steve Chang, who manages the Microsoft Speech Server team, demonstrated how applications can become even more ubiquitous by making them accessible through any telephone line. The first demo app was a simple one that allowed users to dial in and book concert tickets. The second one was more interesting and was developed by a team of SDETs at Microsoft. It allows users to dial in, let the system know where they're leaving from, where they want to go, and at what time, and the system responds by giving them the time that the next shuttle is scheduled to arrive. However, it goes one step further and even calls the user back five minutes before the shuttle arrives. Speech Server, like the speech engine in Vista, is also multilingual, and to demonstrate that, Steve interacted with the system in French. :)

Finally, he explained the concept of "mixed initiative," which allows speech recognition systems to be more natural. In most current applications, the system prompts you for something, and you respond and this cycle continues until the system has asked you for all the information that it needs. This becomes tedious after a while. Wouldn't it be nice if you could, in one go, tell the system everything it needed to know, and it could intelligently break up what you said into multiple pieces and do its job? That's what "mixed initiative" is all about - the user and system jointly control the dialog flow. As an example, Steve called the shuttle service app and, in one go told the system where he was leaving from, where he wanted to go and at what time. The system then broke down his command into pieces, recognized the source, destination and time separately and replied with the time the next shuttle was going to arrive. :)

Perfecting speech recognition engines is an incredibly difficult problem to solve, and it was great to see how much progress has been made since the release of XP a few years ago. The presentation was pretty fascinating, and I'm now curious to see how Build 5219 responds to my voice!

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, Speech, PDC05

The RSS platform in Windows Vista...

2005-09-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

Amar Gandhi, a Group Program Manager on the Internet Explorer team and a general RSS evangelist, had a great session today describing the RSS platform in Windows Vista and explaining how developers can leverage the capabilities built into the system to rapidly build RSS-enabled applications. The session was very interactive and well presented.

The overall architecture of the RSS platform in Vista consists of three general layers - the service, the RSS store itself, and the API's that can be used to leverage the platform. One significant aspect of the sync/download engine, which synchronizes the contents of feeds and associated enclosures with the server, is that it makes use of BITS - the Background Intelligent Transfer Service, just like Automatic Update does today. The advantage of this is that it uses network resources intelligently. If the user is making use of his/her connection, the sync engine throttles down so that it doesn't interrupt the user's primary activities.

The service then condenses all types of feeds - RSS 0.9x, 1.0, 2.0, and Atom - into a single format (based on RSS 2.0) for internal purposes. This makes it easy for application developers using the API's to consume the feed in their apps without having to worry about the differences berween the various formats.

Coming to the API's themselves - they're actually pretty powerful and, at the same time, very simple to use. Although they're made available as a COM object (so as to prevent any forced dependencies on the CLR), the format and conventions used in the API's follow the .NET model, making it easy for .NET developers to work with them. Amar showed us some great examples of how one can write RSS-enabled applications using a minimal amount of code:

- A photo screensaver that dynamically populates itself with images from a photo-blog feed.
- An application that extracts the enclosures from the Channel9 video feed, builds a playlist out of them, and automatically adds the playlist to WMP10.
- An application that pulls events from the PDC schedule and adds them to the Outlook calendar.

I approached Amar after the session and asked him if he could post the code samples from the session on the Team RSS blog, and he readily agreed to do so. I'm guessing it should be up within the next few days, so take a look if you're curious to see how apps can take advantage of the RSS platform in Vista.

On a related note, here's an image of what the RSS implementation in IE7 is probably going to look like in the new build that's being released next month. Notice the ability to sort feed items by custom types/categories ("Speaker" in this case). Also notice how feed items can be grouped into one or more custom categories (Session Type and Level in this case).

Beta 2 of IE 7 is then expected to ship in December this year.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, RSS, IE7, PDC05

Windows Sidebar and Gadgets...

2005-09-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

Attended a session on creating Sidebar gadgets today. A Windows Gadget can be either a WPF (Avalon) application or a DHTML page, and is simply a packaged .gadget file that contains the following items:

- The XAML/C# application itself, or the DHTML page and associated resources (images etc.)
- An XML file that describes the gadget, the author, the version of the gadget and the version of Sidebar that it's designed to work with, and other settings that determine the runlevel for security.
- A PNG icon that's displayed in the gadget picker.

The goal is to bridge the gap between Start.com and Sidebar gadgets as far as possible; i.e., you should be able to create DHTML gadgets that work on Start.com as well as on your desktop - in the Sidebar or as separate entities. The method used to build gadgets for Sideshow, the auxiliary display system, is different at this time and gadgets built for one cannot be used with the other as a result.

Here are some pictures showing a Launcher (similar to the current quick launch bar, but prettier), the fancy WMP gadget that we first saw in the keynote presentation on Tuesday, a mailbox gadget that displays a summary of new messages in your inbox, and the gadget picker that displays all the available gadgets that can be added to the Sidebar.

Sidebar: coming soon to an XP box near you!

One significant announcement that was made during the session was that the Sidebar is being backported to XP as well. This was seen by most attendees as a good move, since it'll only help to speed up the development of gadgets by the community and third-party developers.

Here's a picture of the Sidebar running on XP. Notice the build tag on the lower-right hand corner of the screen:

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, Sidebar, Gadgets, PDC05

If you're here for the WMP or Start button images...

2005-09-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks. The images were removed at Microsoft's request. If you got a glimpse earlier, consider yourself lucky. :)

In any case, keep watching this space. We will continue to bring you more good info and pictures from the PDC this week.

Cheers,
Kunal (aka NetRyder)

New Start button again, and other differences...

2005-09-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Here's another picture showing that new Start button again, along with new Shutdown and Lock buttons in the Start menu as well.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Could this be Windows Media Player 11?

2005-09-15T12:43:00.000-07:00

The following images were displayed in Tjeerd Hoek's session just a few minutes ago - "PRS319: Building Applications That Look Great in Windows Vista"

The last image also shows "Windows Digital Gallery" in the background, which appears to be a new photo management application. :)

One interesting thing to note about both applications is how similar they looks to Windows Explorer! Take a closer look at the third WMP image. Notice the breadcrumb bar and the back/forward buttons for navigation, the different views (tiles, details etc.) and the same search box that's used everywhere else in the system. It's a nice, consistent look and feel.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, Aero, WMP11, PDC05

Windows Vista homepage updated!

2005-09-15T00:12:00.000-07:00

The official Windows Vista homepage has been updated to sport a new look and now includes concise descriptions of some of the major new features coming for end-users in the new OS. It's a nice summary of a lot of information we have been gathering during the last few months.

Go take a look.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn

Windows Vista has a new Start button?

2005-09-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

Most of us know that the current look-and-feel of Vista still has a period of change to go through before RTM. However, Brandon LeBlanc over at LonghornBlogs noticed an interesting little detail when browsing through Microsoft's official screenshots gallery.

(Thumbnail courtesy of Brandon)
A different Start button? By looking at the build tag, Brandon notes that the screenshot was taken in Build 5212. An important thing to notice, though, is that this is a VBL UX build - a build from the UX labs. A lot of the stuff that they're working on hasn't actually made it back into the main trunk yet. We should be seeing lots of similar interesting things as time goes on.

This Start button definitely looks nice though. :)

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

New Games in Windows Vista 5219...

2005-09-14T22:05:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, there was speculation about the possibility of new games in Vista 5219 when a bunch of "mystery" images were posted on The Hive, Microsoft's forum for community leaders.

And sure enough, they're in there, oozing with Avalon deliciousness. :)

1) Games Explorer
2) Chess Titans
3) Solitaire
4) Shanghai Solitaire
5) Minesweeper
6) Purble Place

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Day 2: Hotmail Beta - built with "Atlas"

2005-09-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

PRSL02 Case Study: How Hotmail Used Atlas and ASP.NET to Build a Great User Experience.

Some pictures from the session:

What you see:

1) The overall user interface now closely resembles Outlook, with the three-pane view that can be customized to have the preview pane at the right side or bottom (or turned off completely).
2) A phishing filter is built into the system to protect users from fraudulent messages.
3) Search results are automatically displayed in a new folder, again similar to the way Outlook does it.

We also had a chance to sign up for the beta at the end of the session. :)

Tags: Hotmail, Atlas, PDC05

Day 2: Eric Rudder's keynote and Expression Studio

2005-09-14T20:33:00.000-07:00

At Eric Rudder's keynote this morning, Microsoft officially announced the Expression Studio family or products for design and development. The press release details this well. Here are some of the key points about each of the products from the press release document:

“Acrylic Graphic Designer”
- Dynamic visual effects. Designers can explore their creativity with innovative styles and graphic properties such as textures, fringes and dimensionality. New image effects such as blurs, drop shadows, color correction and filters can be accomplished by using nondestructive, editable Live Effects. “Acrylic Graphic Designer” also includes advanced features such as PhotoMontage.
- Flexible hybrid graphics environment. Built-in flexibility enables designers to alternate between vector-based and pixel-based elements within a hybrid graphics environment.
- Easy hand-over from design to development. Users can easily incorporate graphics into a variety of other software tools and industry formats, including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio and XAML.

“Sparkle Interactive Designer”
- Rich visual design environment. The design environment of “Sparkle Interactive Designer” enables the combination of multiple media elements such as vectors, pixel images, 3-D content, video, high-quality text, and animation for rich, cinematic user interfaces. Content can be contextualized by applying custom styles and layout to assist end-user interaction and comprehension.
- Custom styles and adaptive layout. With the inclusion of adaptive layout for various screen resolutions and form factors, customers can combine visual styles into compelling new interface elements.
- Easy hand-over from design to development. XAML enables the translation of the graphic user interface into the code environment, fostering seamless collaboration between developers and designers. Prototype, design and development stages within the software development process are optimized through the sharing of a common platform and integration with Visual Studio.

“Quartz Web Designer”
- Advanced Web site design. “Quartz Web Designer” enables the direct manipulation of positioning, sizing and padding with CSS page layouts. The flexible, designer-focused work space provides easy access to task panes, toolbars and features. In addition, the rich design-time experience combined with integrated design and code views helps to deliver differentiated Web sites.
- Standards-based design. Web designers can create accessible, standards-based Web sites by default and configure flexible schema settings to support all combinations of HTML, XHTML and CSS standards as well as browser schemas. Built-in compatibility and accessibility checkers ensure that Web sites render properly in any browser.
- Easy hand-over from design to development. Support for XML, ASP.NET and XHTML offers easy integration between Web design and development teams with “Quartz Web Designer” and Visual Studio.

Tags: Expression, Acrylic, Sparkle, Quartz, PDC05

Day 1: Vista, Superfetch and the magic of USB flash drives!

2005-09-14T20:17:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my account of Jim Allchin's keynote.

Jim did an impressive demo during the keynote yesterday of the performance gains attained using Vista's Superfetch functionality. Superfetch is an extension of the Prefetcher that first made its way into XP when it was released. The purpose is similar - to speed up application launch times. The way Superfetch improves load times is by pre-loading commonly used applications and DLL's into memory even before they're actually launched. The result is that apps launch just as fast after a cold boot as they do after the prefetcher has kicked in.

The really cool part about the demo was what happened when Jim plugged in a USB flash drive - Vista instantly recognized the drive, and began using the free space on the drive like regular system memory; i.e., the Superfetcher actually began to load prefetch data onto the drive to augment the available RAM and speed up app launch times. And in order to ensure that the contents of the flash drive cannot be misused if it's unplugged, the contents are encrypted as they're written to it. Great stuff!

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Day 1: Hillel Cooperman's presentation

2005-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Didn't get a chance to talk about all of Day 1's highlights yesterday, so I'll continue with those before I move on to today's stuff.

One neat session that I attended yesterday was presented by Hillel Cooperman. It was called "PRS223: Getting Users to Fall in Love with Your Software" and it was sort of meant to be a session on best practices for UI design.

Cooperman was very entertaining and he poked fun at Microsoft throughout the session for some of the silly things they have done with the UI over the years - things like poorly worded error dialogs, annoying incessant balloon popups and so on. However, by doing so, he was trying to illustrate an important point - the importance of good UI design. He acknowledged the mistakes that were made in the past and assured us that it's been a learning process. Project "Max" is a good example of an application that takes a nice approach to UI design, with friendlier, more informal messages in error dialogs, and layouts/designs that facilitate ease of use and ease of discovery. I've been noticing similar changes in recent Vista builds as well, and that's definitely a good sign. UI should not be an after-thought!

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Channel9 is booming this week!

2005-09-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

C9 has plenty of new videos on Windows Vista, Office 12, WinFX and so on that'll keep you busy for a long, long time. Looks like Scoble's been really busy during the last few weeks. :)

So much to do, so little time! I doubt I'm going to have a chance to watch any of these until the weekend. Do let me know what you find particularly exciting or cool so that I can watch those videos first. Just leave a comment here, or drop me a message on the PDC thread.

Microsoft Gadgets...

2005-09-14T00:20:00.000-07:00

There's an official resource up for Sidebar and Sideshow gadgets for Windows Vista.
Take a look at Microsoft Gadgets, where members of the team will be blogging throughout the PDC and perhaps beyond that as well.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

"The Goods" - almost 30GB of software...

2005-09-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

People have been asking me this all day. Yes, I did pick up "The Goods" :)

It's a nice black package with all the DVD's inside and a little booklet with the CD keys and other information. The second page of the booklet says:

You're holding nearly 30GB of geek goodness.
Can you feel it?

What's included, you ask?

Disc 1: Windows Vista Beta 1 (Build 5112) - x86, x64, SDK
Disc 2: Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 2
Disc 3: SQL Server 2005 (June CTP for x86, x64, IA64), Virtual PC 2004 (full license), Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition (full license), Virtual Server 2005 R2 Beta (x86, x64), Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition RC0 (x86, x64)
Disc 4: WinFX runtimes, WinFX September CTP, WinFS Beta 1, LINQ Tech Preview and lots of other stuff.
Disc 5: Windows Vista CTP: PDC '05 Ultimate Edition (x86, x64) - Build 5219
Disc 6: Windows Server Codename "Longhorn" - Advanced Server, Enterprise, Server Core (x86 and x64)

And the obligatory picture:

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Get your hands on Project "Max"

2005-09-13T23:24:00.000-07:00

Hillel Cooperman showcased an impressive new "sample" application that was created to highlight the combined power of Avalon and Indigo during the keynotes today - Project "Max"

If you have a decent graphics card in your machine, the effects and animations in this app are sexy as hell! You owe it to yourself to at least give it a shot. Bear in mind that it does use beta WinFX bits and is a beta application itself, so consider yourself warned if you decide to install it on a production machine (although that didn't stop me from installing it on mine! :P)

So I guess this is what the mystical "Project-M" was all about; not a replacement shell for Windows Vista after all. Cooperman is an awesomely talented guy who really cares about attention to detail and aesthetics, so the "coolness" of this new app didn't come as a surprise at all. Give it a shot and see for yourself. :)

Edit: The "Max" team has a blog too. :)

Tags: ProjectMax, Max, PDC05

What's new in Internet Explorer 7...

2005-09-13T23:00:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've posted quite a bit of information in the last few posts, so I thought I'd throw in some screenshots of some of the new stuff in IE 7 that we saw during the keynotes as well as in the "What's new in IE 7" breakout session towards the end of the day.

What you see:

1) The tab UI has been cleaned up and made a little flashier since the IE 7 Beta 1 build.
2) A quick preview of all the tabs that are currently open - thumbnails of each webpage are tiled so that the user can clearly see what's open and close any tabs that are no longer necessary. This is pretty nice functionality!
3) The famous Complexspiral CSS test/demo - this build of IE 7 finally passes this test, along with many other CSS tests. Whew!
4) Web Developer Toolbar - an addon for IE 7 that works like the web developer extension for Firefox today. This toolbar (and the Firefox extension) is an indispensable tool for web developers and includes plenty of little tools and features for "debugging" webpages, especially those involving complex layouts.
5) A zoomed-in picture of the web developer toolbar showing the various menus and functions available.
6) One of the tools provided with the toolbar functions like the DOM Inspector tool in Firefox that allows web developers to inspect the document object model of their web pages.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, IE7, PDC05

Day 1: Jim Allchin's keynote and associated demos

2005-09-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

Jim started off his keynote on a pretty amusing note - by showing us a running version of Windows 1.0, just to show us how far computers - hardware, software and operating systems have come since then. I had honestly never seen Windows 1.0 running on a real machine ever before (only screenshots online) - I used MS-DOS when we first got our personal computer, and Windows 3.1 after that, but never Windows 1.0, so that was fun to see.

But the two major highlights of the keynote for me were the Netflix demo that showcased the power and versatility of the .NET framework and the code sessions with some incredibly smart people - Don Box, Chris Anderson, Anders Hejlsberg, and Scott Guthrie. It was awesome to see the very same Netflix app running (with small differences) on a Windows desktop, a Tablet PC, a Media Center PC, and more importantly, a Windows Mobile powered phone/PDA device. The code sessions were pure, hardcore, geeky fun, and it was inspiring to see the enthusiasm and energy in some of Microsoft's most well-known software architects.

Other significant things from Allchin's keynote worth mentioning are:
- Atlas: an object-oriented clientside framework that allows developers to build cross-browser, cross-platform AJAX web applications that integrate with ASP.NET and Indigo.
- LINQ: a great way to programatically perform complex SQL queries directly in applications using C#/VB.NET.
- InfoCard: an online identity management platform that allows for secure and trustworthy web transactions.

Tags: PDC05, .NET, Avalon, Indigo

The BillG keynote - a look at Office 12 (Part 2)

2005-09-13T22:14:00.000-07:00

After the set of Vista demos, Chris Caposella moved onto something a large number of people in the audience were waiting for - the very first public preview of Office 12.

One of the major focuses of this new upcoming version of Office is simplification of the user interface - making things easier to discover, making complex tasks easier to perform faster. Chris admitted that the current UI of Office tends to be rather complex, with features buried deep inside menus and dialog boxes. The goal is for this to change in Office 12.

My first reaction when I saw the new user interface was - yikes, it's big! And it is. The toolbars are probably twice (or maybe more) as thick as they are in Office 2003, and many of the toolbar icons are much larger. But when he started actually demonstrating the way one would go about doing simple little things, or more complex tasks, it became clear to me how this is going to be beneficial. The Excel demos truly showed how the new UI makes doing complex tasks with spreadsheets a one or two click process. As I mentioned earlier, the goal is to make common tasks easier to discover, and the new UI does just that...perhaps at the expense of some screen real-estate, but I'm guessing Microsoft assumes that more and more people are moving to higher resolution displays everyday. I mean, one can go and pick up a laptop with a 1920x1200 WUXGA display today, and screen real-estate on something like that is hardly something someone needs to worry about. And for people using lower resolution displays, the toolbars can be hidden with a single click, leaving more room to work with the document itself.

There also seems to be tighter integration between the various apps in the Office suite. As an example, Chris showed us how Powerpoint presentations that an information worker receives as an email attachment in Outlook can be opened and played within Outlook itself. Not something revolutionary, but it's the little things that make things simpler. Outlook Tasks now have deadlines associated with them like calendar events and can be displayed as a new pane, just like the mail preview pane. Again, this ends up using a lot of screen space, but it can be turned off on lower resolution displays. Outlook 12 also has built-in support for RSS feeds, which is currently made possible in Outlook 2003 through third-party addons like Newsgator and intraVnews. The difference is that Outlook 12 leverages the system-wide, common RSS data store in Windows Vista.

All in all, the Vista 5219 and Office 12 demos got me quite charged up! There are obviously some quirks and things I don't like, but that's what external beta tests are for. I'm looking forward to the Office 12 beta, and I hope to be able to participate and share my feedback with the team.

Tags: Office12, PDC05

Day 1: PDC '05 kicks off with BillG's keynote (Part 1)

2005-09-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

I actually arrived a few minutes late to the keynote this morning, thanks to the horrible, but predictable traffic on the I-5 freeway. Luckily, I did manage to get a pretty good seat not too far from the front.

I hope all of you had a chance to watch the live video stream of the keynote! Gates started off the conference with his views of the industry and his vision for the future. An amusing highlight of his talk was the Napolean Dynamite video which was originally created for his college/university visits.

Gates later turned the stage over to Chris Caposella who gave us some great demos of Windows Vista Build 5219 and a build of Office 12.

Highlights of Vista 5219:

- Quick previews when hovering over taskbar tiles for open applications. This is especially handy when you have lots of windows open and all you can see on the taskbar tile is an ellipsis. The "wow-factor" comes from the fact that these previews are live, meaning that if you hover over the taskbar tile of something like a WMP window, the video continues to play in the preview that's displayed.
- The new Alt+Tab UI is pretty slick, and again, displays "live" previews of open windows/apps.
- The 3D card-stack of window previews that we saw in earlier builds but later disappeared is back.
- The Sidebar is back and looks quite a bit cleaner than it used to be. Developers can create their own "gadgets" that pin themselves to the sidebar and can also be dragged off onto the desktop. Chris showed off a custom WMP gadget with some fancy animation effects.
- Sideshow: The concept of gadgets moves beyond the sidebar/desktop and onto auxiliary displays built into Vista-generation laptops that we saw at WinHEC in April. Developers can create custom gadgets for these displays that display useful information when the laptop is off (or on, depending on what the gadget does). One of the custom gadgets we saw was displayed flight information from Expedia.
- IE 7 tabbed browsing: People previously wondered if Microsoft was just playing catch-up with Opera, Firefox and other browsers with regards to the tabbed browsing implementation in IE 7. Turns out there was something we hadn't seen before - tab previews. Clicking a little button on the toolbar opens up a tiled view of all the tabs so that you can quickly see what's open in each tab. This solves the clutter problem when lots of tabs are open simultaneously. You can also close individual tabs from this live preview view. Cool stuff.

I may have missed some stuff since I'm trying to write this post while simultaneously listening in to a breakout session. I'll update this post if I remember anything else later. I'll also post more about the Office 12 demo, and Jim Allchin's keynote (along with the associated demos) soon.

Tags: Vista, Longhorn, PDC05

Official PDC '05 discussion thread...

2005-09-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

OSNN members (and you're welcome to join if you aren't one already!):

I have just started a new discussion thread on the forum. Use it to voice your thoughts and comments on the events that are about to take place during the upcoming week, or ask questions if you think I might be able to answer them (or get an answer for you).

Of course, you can leave comments here on the blog as well if you like. :)

Registration complete!

2005-09-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Just visited the Convention Center this evening to finish up registration/check-in. Even though I've lived in LA for almost five years now, I've never actually been to the Convention Center before! The place is just enormous, and I instantly recognized this (photo courtesy of Jeff Sandquist) as soon as I stepped in and looked up. For those of you who don't know, it was one of the Longhorn wallpapers. ;)

So registration is done, and I have officially received "the goods" - well, some of it, at least. Doesn't look like the Vista and Office 12 builds are in the bag yet, but I'm sure we'll be seeing them soon. And there's bound to be all sorts of cool swag to grab all throughout the week. For now, there's plenty of reading material, a notepad, the colorful Vista thingy, a(nother) Channel9 foam guy, the awesome PDC shoulder-bag, a PDC'05 T-shirt, and my Media badge. :)

Tags: PDC05