Microsoft officials confirmed off a number of the new performance the provider plans to provide within the Floor two.0 software program development kit this summer time on April 12 in the Combine ‘11 conference.
The Floor two.0 product, if you need a refresher, is the “smaller ass table” cousin to the Surface area 1.0 (known affectionately in some circles as the “big ass table”). Surface area 2.0, which is being manufactured and distributed via Samsung,
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, is expected to be priced at around $7,600 when it debuts later this year. The Floor two.0 is expected to be thinner, cheaper and more versatile (able to be used horizontally or vertically) than the Surface 1.0.
At Combine ‘11, Floor developer Luis Cabrera touted the coming SDK as enabling developers to create “write once, touch anywhere” applications. He noted that the SDK will allow programmers to create applications targeting both
Windows 7 and Floor 2.0 devices, which makes sense, given the underlying UI within the Floor 2.0 is
Windows 7.
On top of the core
Windows 7 operating system inside the Surface two.0,
microsoft Office 2010 Activation, Microsoft is providing a Windows integration layer, as well as a shell UI (user interface) and relevant application programming interfaces (APIs). There will be “core” APIs and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) APIs. The core APIs supported will be for raw images and touch events that are not tied to a particular framework, and mostly used for XNA. The WPF APIs will include framework APIs,
Office Professional Plus 2007 Key, common controls and specialized controls, Cabrera said.
The Surface area team created its own common controls — things like SurfaceWindow, SurfaceButton, SurfaceInkCanvas and SurfaceSlider. These controls were necessary because Windows isn’t touch-optimized,
Microsoft Office Pro 2007, and existing comparable controls were designed for a mouse. Microsoft also has built an Input Simulator,
Microsoft Office 2010 Pro Plus, which will allow developers to create Floor APIs on any
Windows 7 PC. The Input Simulator will allow programmers to use a mouse to simulate multi-touch experiences, like grabbing a photo in two places and stretching it to enlarge it, as Cabrera demonstrated during his standing-room-only session at Combine.
Cabrera said there will be a Surface 2.0 configuration tool that will allow developers to choose color themes, backgrounds and specific Surface area applications to launch. There also will be a Floor Migration PowerToy tool to allow devs to move Floor 1.0 applications to the Floor two.0, he said.
I’m curious whether any from the shell/API functionality that Microsoft is building and supporting with Floor will be carried over to Windows 8 — at least concept-wise. And it looks like I’m not the only one with that question:
Cabrera said the Floor 2.0 SDK will be free and on MSDN when it is ready this summer time. In the interim, he advised developers interested in Floor 2.0 to use the existing toolkit for Windows Touch, calling it a “step in right direction.”