Thursday, December 08, 2011

Windows Phone on iPhone, Android

Microsoft has prepared HTML5 demo pages
that look like Windows Phone / 8 "Metro Style",
and can be viewed from iPhone, Android, iPod Touch...

Is "Metro" really so good? It depends...
In some cases it could reduce number of "clicks/taps" to get the info.
Since Apple is already moving from GUI to Voice, the game is changing again...

XBOX is also getting Metro-Style Interface...
Xbox Update Adds Metro Interface, Cloud and Windows Phone App


Metro (design language) @ Wikipedia


Microsoft's design team says that the Metro UI is partly inspired by signs commonly found at public transport systems, for instance on the King County Metro Transit[5], a public transit system that serves the Seattle metropolitan area where Microsoft is headquartered. Metro places a large focus on typography and has large text that catches the eye. Microsoft says that Metro is designed to be "sleek, quick, modern" and a "refresh" from the icon-based interfaces of Android and iOS


The Metro design language was designed specifically to consolidate groups of common tasks to speed up usage. This is accomplished by excluding superfluous graphics and instead relying on the actual content to also function as the main UI. The resulting interfaces favour larger hubs over smaller buttons and often feature laterally scrolling full bleed canvases. Page titles are usually large and consequently also take advantage of lateral scrolling

Learn Windows Azure | Channel 9

Learn Windows Azure | Channel 9


On Tuesday December 13th Microsoft will be holding a special Windows Azure event for developers. Join us LIVE from the Microsoft Redmond Campus to learn how to get started building applications for the cloud from Microsoft technical leaders Scott Guthrie, Dave Campbell, and Mark Russinovich. All of the sessions will be broadcast live thanks to your friends from Channel9.

Microsoft is getting serious about Cloud/Azure...
Notice that focus it is not only .NET... there is also Java, PHP, even node.js...


Azure SDK downloads



Azure Challenge