Microsoft releases new options for its lightweight web development tool
Microsoft is deepening its commitment to the cloud and even a hint of open source, as its Windows Azure is now more compatible than ever with its WebMatrix 3 development tool. Fresh off the press, the new tool comes with deeper Windows Azure integration — that’s Microsoft’s cloud server — and support for GitHub.
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IE11 and All Those WebGL Rumors
There’s been a lot of buzz over whether WebGL might be supported in the Internet Explorer 11 that is due out with Windows 8 “Blue.” The Within Windows blog reports that WebGL is incomplete now, but “is coming and can be enabled for experimentation.” And there are some initial instructions for how to do it.
Microsoft has resisted supporting WebGL in Internet Explorer in any previous iteration, citing risk involved in directly exposing hardware functionality. They also pointed to WebGL as an “ongoing source of hard-to-fix vulnerabilities.” In June 2011, Microsoft concluded that, “in its current form, WebGL is not a technology that Microsoft can endorse from a security perspective.”
It would appear that the perception has now changed.
A leaked build of Windows “Blue” — Windows 8.1 — has revealed an early version of IE 11 as well. Early reports on the details of the updated browser confirm that IE 11 supports WebGL.
I still remember the launch date when .NET was announced to the world. I was working at Microsoft on the Visual Studio.NET team, and it was the day we could finally start talking about all the top secret .NET technology we had been developing. At the time, websites were very simple and web apps had just started emerging. Technologies like Javascript and CSS were fragmented and incompatible twinkles in our browser vendor’s eyes. Chrome and Safari had yet to be conceived. Since HTML was still a new paradigm for most developers, Microsoft created an object-oriented framework that sheltered most of the complexity around html with a simple drag and drop interface that lets you build apps visually. I fell immediately in love.
Izenda was one of the first companies to deploy applications on Azure as part of the Azure incubation week in 2009. At the time, Platform as a Service (PaaS) was the only option. This limited the customers who were willing to have their data and applications on Microsoft cloud to smaller businesses. With the addition of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), you can quickly and easily create virtual machines and give customers direct access if needed for security and compliance reasons. Once this became available, there was no reason not to move everything at Izenda to Microsoft’s cloud. Between IaaS, Skype and SkyDrive, we are running out of legacy on-premise infrastructure.
It makes us wonder if we will even need a server room or data center in 2013.
This article featured on ZDNet summarizes the latest release of Windows Azure and why it has become a serious contender for the top spot in cloud platforms.
At Izenda, we see many organizations shift from ASP.NET and MVC to use pure JavaScript for their front end. The advantage is, the database developer can focus on creating a secure and scalable backend, while HTML designers can craft a slick UI. We are focused on HTML5 being the front-technology for future versions of our ad-hoc reporting products while retaining a .NET backend that integrates with RESTful services. In this video, Anders Hejlsber, a developer at Microsoft, demonstrates a superset of JavaScript called TypeScript, which is designed to overcome the limits of JavaScript.
This is probably the biggest launch of Visual Studio since the original .NET version that launched in 2000 when I was working on the Visual Studio team. Over half a million developers have already downloaded visual studio. Don’t get left behind.
Check out the virtual launch to see how it fits on your roadmap.
Out of 20,000+ ISV’s in the ecosystem, Microsoft has selected Izenda as one of the High Potential ISV’s. Izenda’s software revolutionizes the relationship between the user and IT professional by shifting the reporting function to the user community, while letting IT focus on more strategic priorities. After being recognized as one of the ‘2012 Hottest Georgia Companies for technology, this is another sign that Izenda is being noticed. Izenda announced Ad Hoc Reporting for Windows 8, which will enable a level of integration that organizations and users need by integrating reports into Windows search, thereby giving them single-click access to their report library. This will save costs and create additional competitive advantages for customers accessing real-time data. A recent Microsoft case study revealed that Izenda’s software saves organizations $250,000 in support and development costs.
With HTML 5 on the horizon and a ever increasing competition between browsers, Microsoft has shifted its cross-platform strategy to the new web standard. This is great news for ASP.NET developers everywhere, as it means that we can continue to support the true web in all of its ubiquity. Silverlight will be focused on the mobile app store which makes a lot of sense. I’m very excited about hardware acceleration becoming a standard in browsers.
