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The rumor of Vista RTM on Monday didn’t pan out, but Mary Jo Foley says today’s the real deal:
The day has finally come: Windows Vista is going gold. And the public announcement that Windows Vista has been released to manufacturing is going to happen tomorrow, November 8, around 11 a.m. PST, sources close to the company are saying.
The main course must be close, because yesterday we got the appetizers as Microsoft released the .NET Framework 3.0, Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for the 2007 Microsoft Office system, ASP.NET AJAX and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition:
The technologies announced today include the following:
• The release to manufacturing of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, which provides advances for building rich, interactive client applications (Windows Presentation Foundation), communication and workflow (Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation) and online identity management (Windows CardSpace).
• The availability to MSDN® Premium subscribers of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office system on release to manufacturing.
• The availability of Visual Studio 2005 extensions for the .NET Framework 3.0, a series of plug-ins and project templates that enable developers to use Visual Studio 2005 to build .NET Framework 3.0 solutions.
• The release to manufacturing of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for the 2007 Microsoft Office system to build solutions for the six major applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system: Office Word, Office Excel®, Office Outlook®, Office PowerPoint®, Office Visio® and Office InfoPath®. Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office for the 2007 Microsoft Office system enables developers to build scalable, robust line-of-business applications that leverage the functionality of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
• Beta 2 of ASP.NET AJAX Extensions and the Microsoft Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) Library (collectively called ASP.NET AJAX), formerly codenamed “Atlas,” is a free framework that allows developers to quickly create a new generation of more-efficient, more-interactive and highly personalized Web experiences that work across the most popular browsers.
• The release candidate of Microsoft SQL Server™ 2005 Compact Edition, a new offering for essential relational database functionality in a compact footprint. By sharing a familiar SQL Server syntax and common ADO.NET programming model with other editions of SQL Server, SQL Server Compact Edition allows developers and administrators to apply their existing skills and be immediately productive. The release candidate is available via download at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/compact.
All of the above are available now. Still in the oven however is SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) for which a new Community Technology Preview (CTP) was released yesterday. It’s required for Vista because, as mentioned here previously, it provides SQL Server Express Edition which replaces the Microsoft Desktop Engine (MSDE) used by some Microsoft and 3rd party applications, but which is not supported on Vista.
Ensuring Vista application compatibility isn’t glamorous, but it’s critical for rapid Vista uptake (particularly in large organizations) and Microsoft is trying to ease the pain with the release candidate of the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5 which was just posted.
Microsoft has been working on their “Atlas” technology for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) Web applications so popular in the Web 2.0 world and Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie has the latest:
Many people have asked us to deliver a fully-supported 1.0 release of “Atlas” before the next release of Visual Studio. “Fully supported” means that Microsoft product support services are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and that any customer can obtain hotfixes if they encounter a bug affecting their application. It also means that the product has a committed servicing product lifetime of 10 years – which provides companies with the ability to depend on it for mission critical applications.
I am excited to announce today that we are going to ship this fully supported “Atlas” 1.0 release on top of ASP.NET 2.0 and ensure that it works with Visual Studio 2005. Our goal is to ship the “Atlas” 1.0 release around the end of this year. The plan is to first have a Beta, then an RC, and then decide on the final date based on customer feedback.
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Things will get even better next year with Visual Studio “Orcas” where we are adding rich JavaScript intellisense, debugging and WYSIWYG designer support for the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions within Visual Studio and many other great features to take advantage of.
There are more details on the feature set and “Go-Live” license by following the link.
As far as the renaming, Microsoft had been having a contest to decide on the final product name, but predictably, the end result wasn’t any funky Web 2.0 name. Guthrie again:
1) The client-side “Atlas” javascript library is going to be called the Microsoft AJAX Library. This will work with any browser, and also support any backend web server (read these blog posts to see how to run it on PHP and ColdFusion).
2) The server-side “Atlas” functionality that nicely integrates with ASP.NET will be called the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. As part of this change the tag prefix for the “Atlas” controls will change from <atlas :> to <asp :>. These controls will also be built-in to ASP.NET vNext.
3) The “Atlas” Control Toolkit today is a set of free, shared source controls and components that help you get the most value from the ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. Going forward, the name of the project will change to be the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.
Betanews says that digital music sales are soaring and “may finally have enough impetus to boost the industry.”
The Windows Vista Team Blog has screenshots of the latest iteration on the Windows Basic Theme that Vista users will get if they can’t run or don’t want the Aero user experience.
Chris Morris at CNN reports that Nintendo’s Wii game console may ship earlier (October) than expected. Coincidentally, Reuters reports that Nintendo rules Japan H1 videogame sales. Maybe Microsoft and Sony should worry less about each other? Speaking of which, Sony is talking up its E-distribution competitor to Xbox Live.
Microsoft released the ASP.NET “Atlas” June 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP) of their ASP.NET support for spiffy Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) Web applications.
Carlos Bergfeld at BusinessWeek online has the latest alarming report on online advertising click fraud although Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft deny it’s a problem. What’s even more chilling:
Outsell’s study may only add to the concern. According to the Burlingame (Calif.)-based firm, 27% of advertisers reported they had already decreased their online ad spending, by an average of 33%. An additional 10% said they plan to reduce online spending until search-ad publishers come up with a plan to protect their investment. “I think it’s a piece of the drip, drip, drip—the Chinese water torture effect,” Outsell Vice-President and lead analyst Chuck Richard says of the study and the increased scrutiny of search engine companies
Nancy Gohring at PCWorld reports that Microsoft and and Yahoo Instant Messaging interoperability still isn’t there although promised for the second quarter. And speaking of IM, the::unwired has a preview of the Windows Live Messenger client for Windows Mobile.
Speaking of Windows Mobile, Microsoft just released Microsoft ActiveSync 4.2, the latest iteration in their utility for synching your Windows Mobile and regular Windows systems.
Microsoft announced a deal with France’s Bouygues Telecom:
Bouygues Telecom and Microsoft Corp. today announced collaboration to incorporate Microsoft® Windows Media® technologies progressively in Bouygues Telecom’s next-generation mobile music offering set to launch in the first half of 2007. In addition to the service, various Bouygues Telecom handsets will be tailored for the service and include support for core Windows Media technologies including Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Digital Rights Management and Microsoft’s Media Transfer Protocol as handset platforms’ capabilities evolve. Bouygues Telecom will also evaluate the use of other Windows Media platform components including Windows Media Video, Microsoft’s implementation of the SMPTE VC-1 standard, for use in future mobile media initiatives.
Gregg Keizer at CRN reports that:
Microsoft has released an add-on to Windows XP that creates a password-protected “My Private Folder” for storing private documents and files. Some enterprise administrators immediately objected.
John Pocaro at Gamerscoreblog lists some of the humorous reactions to the news that Microsoft received an exclusive contract to provide electronic control units for Formula 1 race cars. Follow the link to Pitpass for more.
Stuart J. Johnston at ENT News:
Microsoft this week released the April Community Technology Preview (CTP) of ASP.NET, code-named “Atlas.”
Atlas is an ASP.NET 2.0 framework for building cross-browser, cross-platform AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) applications. The company announced with last month’s CTP that it feels Atlas is stable enough to issue a “go-live license” that lets developers put their Atlas applications into production.
There are more details at the ASP.NET Atlas Announcements weblog including a pointer to the spiffy new Atlas website where you can download the CTP.
