While Windows 8 is ushering in an exciting new model for Windows development called "Metro style apps" that run a new "unified" Windows Runtime (WinRT), it's not necessarily the right choice for all new Windows software development. In fact, there are a lot scenarios where it's not a good choice.

In this over-simplified decision tree, I try to provide some crude logic for how to pick between your platform options. Clearly, there are many nuances not covered in this tree, but I'll work on expanding the "logic" to make it more bullet proof in the coming weeks.

The first decision is the most important, though: Do you need to continue...

Yesterday I summarized a few important topics that were auspiciously missing at Microsoft's BUILD conference after the first day of sessions and keynotes. Now as Day 2 nears its end, I thought I'd revisit some of yesterday's observations and see if those topics are still missing. With both keynotes now done, it's pretty safe to assume missing topics now aren't going to get much attention at BUILD 2011.

Not Missing Anymore
A few things that were missing yesterday did make appearances today:

1. WPF
   Half of the existing XAML story started to pop-up today. While it didn't make the keynotes, Soma and ScottGu talked about ...

With the California sun now rising in the sky, it's time for another fresh day of BUILD and the all important Day 2 keynote. Like yesterday, rather than compete with the live video stream, I've real-time condensed today's keynote in to the key moments you need to get the overall jist of what Microsoft shared. This isn't a blow-by-blow blog of the keynote, but if you spend 5 minutes reviewing this post, you'll know what you need to know from the second BUILD keynote.

Key Keynote Moments

1. Windows 8 Tablet Distraction
   Not explicitly said or part of the keynote, it's worth...

Silence speaks volumes. While there is coverage ad nauseum about what Microsoft did say at today's opening keynote and following sessions, there is much less attention on what's not being said. True, there is another keynote scheduled for tomorrow, and presumably many additional topics will be covered (like tooling and ALM), but certain important topics are conspicuously absent from the Day 1 conversations.

The Missing Topics

1. Silverlight and WPF?
   It's clear after today that Metro style XAML apps are Microsoft's vision of the future, but what does that mean for the future of Silverlight and WPF? Of course, SL and...

When a keynote is being streamed live to the interwebs, there's really little point in live blogging. Back when I first started Telerik Watch, live streaming events were very rare, so live blogs made more sense.

(This article is a re-post from the Telerik Watch blog by Todd Anglin)

By now, you've no doubt seen the first preview of Microsoft's follow-up to the hit Windows 7 release (if not, take five minutes and check-out the video on YouTube - don't worry, it's "official" and not a leak). Windows 8 finally has a name and a face, and we finally have a (public) glimpse of where Microsoft is driving the modern OS experience. The preview does not dive deep or provide the full story for Windows 8 (expect more details as Microsoft marches towards the September Windows 8 "BUILD" conference), but it does highlight...

[Cross-posted from TelerikWatch.com]

Sometimes people use the saying “Everyone’s a winner,” when in fact everyone is not a winner. If you join us tomorrow for the JustCode, JustMock and OpenAccess ORM webinar, though, you will be a winner! Everyone is truly a winner tomorrow because everyone that attends the Q2 2010 What’s New webinar will get free licenses for both JustCode and JustMock, Telerik’s powerful Visual Studio productivity tools. That’s $500 worth of software just for attending the live webinar event!

To get your complimentary licenses, register now for the webinar, and then join us tomorrow, July 22nd at 11:00 AM Eastern. You must attend the...

If you’re like me, the end of the year represents a time when most other projects are starting to wind down and you finally have a chance to get back to testing some of those “fun” Microsoft betas. Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 is probably at the top of the stack. Microsoft’s next major update to the flagship IDE is getting very close to RTM, so now is a great time to start checking-out the tool.

 

What you should be pleased to know is that almost all of Telerik’s developer tools already offer a lot of support for VS 2010- even...

[Cross posted from Telerik Watch]

Smell that? That's a freshly baked release from Telerik that's just about ready to "officially" launch. The Q2 2009 release is one of the biggest releases in Telerik's history, again delivering simultaneous updates to all 7 Telerik product lines at one time. An update of this scale is bound to have lots new and interesting stuff, and we can't wait to put it in your hands so you can start playing with it. The official launch of Q2 2009 is Monday, July 6th, and to help you jump-off with the new bits and maximize your productivity...

In a recent webinar, I showed an example of how you can build a superior user experience in an ASP.NET website by using RadChart for Silverlight. The Telerik Silverlight chart has animations, rich rendering, and is much more visual appealing than the “static” RadChart for ASP.NET. But while the Silverlight chart is a great way to enhance data visualizations in your ASP.NET site, how do you handle users that don’t have Silverlight installed?

One approach is to implement “graceful degradation.” Graceful degradation is an important and familiar principle in web design, and essentially it means this: if you build features into...