No Flash in Windows8 Tablet

Microsoft has confirmed that tablets using Windows 8 OS will not use Flash but instead use a HTML 5, plug-in free Metro browser. At the moment, as far as we are aware, Adobe Flash will still be supported on the Windows 8 OS for both laptops and PCs.  Microsoft noted on the MSDN blog, "The reality today is that sites are already rapidly engineering for a plug-in free experience. Google, for example, recently launched their HTML5 YouTube site for phones."

In fact, research by Microsoft has discovered that plug-in free sites are becoming more popular than plug-in sites. Microsoft "examined the use of plug-ins across the top 97,000 sites world-wide, a corpus which includes local sites outside the US in significant depth. Many of the 62% of these sites that currently use Adobe Flash already fall back to HTML5 video in the absence of plug-in support. When serving ads in the absence of plug-ins, most sites already perform the equivalent of this fallback, showing that this approach is practical and scalable. There’s a steep drop-off in plug-in usage after Flash, with one control used on 2% of sites and a small collection of controls used on between 0.5% and 0.75% of sites."

Microsoft envisages most of these sites moving to HTML 5 in the near future.

Windows8 Power Efficiency

Microsoft knows that many of us use laptops rather than desktops these days and we also want to use a lot of apps at the same time. They also know that more memory equals more RAM, which means more battery usage, which in turn means lower run times for our laptops. So, what Microsoft has done is to identify ways to free up memory requirements and still have an efficient and effective operating system.

Microsoft has developed a way of combining memory so that memory takes up less space. What normally happens is that when you install an application, it will allocate some extra memory to that app in case you need it in future. Install lots of apps and you have lots of sets of allocated memory just sitting there, doing nothing, but taking up valuable memory space. By using memory combining, Windows 8 assesses the actual memory needs of an app and then deletes all duplicate memory entries across the system memory. In this way Microsoft has managed to free up to 100MBs of memory.

By looking at Task Manager they saw that using Windows 8 dramatically reduced the amount of memory needed by the OS. CPU usage was reduced by 4% and physical memory by 12% as attached.

CodeProject Reference

I was on a week vacation and getting ready to work.

My motto is continuous learning for self improvement and continuous sharing to motivate others. Glad that the second part worked well in one of the CodeProject article at http://www.codeproject.com/script/Articles/ArticleVersion.aspx?waid=31794&aid=442251

Jon Andersson is a PhD student in the field of production flow simulation and very interested in software development.  He is an active CodeProject member http://www.codeproject.com/Members/joncool

In his recent article (shared above), he quoted two reference as:

MSDNs latest guide
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms142571.aspx

A good Code Project article by GanesanSenthilvel explaining many things.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/315101/SQL-Full-Text-Search-Programming

Glad that my work is getting motivated for other members in CodeProject to explore on the emerging technology.  Thanks for the CodeProject opportunity towards continuous learning & sharing.

Windows8 TouchPad

On June 1, 2011 Microsoft launched the next generation of Windows, currently known as Windows 8, at the D9 Conference.

Windows 8 is a complete re-working of the windows operating system and one that will work on all devices from tiny touch screen phones to desktops. Windows 8 will work with traditional keyboards and mouse but also on touch screens too.

This is a huge project and they are re-examining and re-designing every aspect of the windows operating system architecture.

The key improvements to look out for in Windows 8 include:

• A start screen to replace the Windows Start menu. This will be made up from tiles that will enable you to launch apps faster.
• Each tile app will be 'live', that is, it will provide you with constantly updated information about your apps.
• Easier switching between running apps.
• The ability to snap and resize apps to have several open on your desktop at once.
• Touch optimized browsing using Internet Explorer 10.

To give users an idea of what to expect, they launched a video too, which you can find here:http://media.ch9.ms/ch9/cda16b03-c463-47e7-b604-9ef5011c5b25/Demo.mp4