All posts by onlyconnect

development, software development, visual studio, windows

VLC is coming to Windows Phone

The popular media playback app VLC is coming to Windows Phone as well as Windows tablets, according to an email sent to supporters of its Kickstarter project for VLC for WinRT (Windows Runtime).

A new preview release has been made available on the Windows Store, with the following changes:

  • using libVLC 2.2.0 core,
  • redesign of the interface,
  • huge performance improvements,
  • use of Winsock for networking instead of WinRTsock,
  • use of Windows 8.1 widgets,
  • move the interface code to Universal to prepare Windows Phone 8.1 port.

The app is currently x86 only, and this will have to change before a Windows Phone version is possible, since Windows Phone currently runs only on ARM chipsets. The VLC developers say:

While this release is still x86-only, we’ve made great advances on the ARM port. More news soon.

The progress of apps like VLC will be interesting to watch following the release of Windows 10 next year, which (from the user’s perspective) blurs the distinction between desktop apps (like the old version of VLC) and Store apps (like this new one). Can the Store app be good enough that users will not feel the need to have the desktop version installed? Even if it is, of course, the desktop version will remain the only choice for those on Windows 7 and earlier. In fact, make that Windows 8.0 and earlier, since the new version requires Windows 8.1.

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.net, microsoft, software development

Is this why it is Windows 10 (not 9): avoiding Windows 95 detection?

Why did Microsoft call the Windows release after 8 version 10 rather than 9?

Windows boss Terry Myerson said it was because it was such a huge release – but then he would say that.

A more prosaic reason could be the old software problem of false version detection. After all, we have had Windows 9x before – that is, Windows 95 and Windows 98.

Former Windows chief Steven Sinofsky tweeted this a few hours ago:

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which if you follow the link gets this:

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The first of these throws an exception if the name of the OS starts with “Windows 9”; and there are plenty of others like it.

Now, Windows version numbers are complex (Windows 95 actually reported itself as version 4.0) and well-written applications would get this right. There is also a year or so before Windows 10 is released, which gives time for developers, and the suppliers of runtimes like Java, to fix their code if necessary.

Still, it seems to me plausible that avoiding a version headache was a factor behind the naming of Windows 10.

android, development, linux, open source

LibreOffice is four years old, plans Android version

Four years ago, on 28th September 2010, the open source LibreOffice productivity suite was created by forking OpenOffice. This Microsoft Office alternative offers a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation graphics, vector drawing package, and database manager. Its origins are in a German suite called Star Office, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1999. In an effort to disrupt Microsoft, Sun made Star Office free and open source, creating OpenOffice.org. However Sun itself was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010, and LibreOffice was created by a breakaway group of OpenOffice contributors who were wary of what might happen to the project under Oracle’s stewardship.

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They probably need not have worried, since Oracle donated OpenOffice to the Apache foundation in 2011. It is still performing its intended function as a Microsoft disruptor; see for example this report of the Italian city of Udine moving from Microsoft Windows and Office to Linux and OpenOffice.

A key motivation is that it is easier to keep free software up to date, and organisations like having all their users on the same version:

"Some of our PCs are stuck with pretty old software like Office 2000, which is no longer supported, as we haven’t had the resources to upgrade," Gabriele Giacomini, the innovation and economic development councillor for the municipality of Udine, told ZDNet.

"By switching to open source, we will have the chance to allow our employees to work with the latest version of the suite”

Microsoft, of course, wants to address this by persuading users to subscribe to Office rather than buying it outright; though this does not solve the problem of out of date Windows versions (but watch this space).

But what about LibreOffice? What is the point of having two major open source productivity suites based on essentially the same products?

Good question; but one possible differentiator is that LibreOffice is working on an Android port. The Document Foundation, which runs the LibreOffice project, is inviting tenders for implementation of the suite on Android, complete with a basic interface for integrating with the user’s “preferred cloud storage”.

Another point of interest is that the Foundation is asking for commercial tenders rather than hiring its own coders to work with the open source community.

That said, there is already an Android port of OpenOffice, called AndrOpen Office, though this is a fork and not an official Apache OpenOffice project.

Are these multiple forks healthy proliferation, or open source confusion? That depends on your point of view, though it does show the ability of the open source community to respond to obvious needs.

It seems to me though that the suite would be more attractive to businesses if LibreOffice and OpenOffice could merge, and develop an official Android version of the suite.

My guess is that productivity software on tablets (and phablets) will be a key battleground as users do an increasing proportion of their work on mobile devices rather than PCs or laptops. Microsoft already has an iOS version of Office, and one for Android in preparation. There is also a version of Office for the Windows 8 “Metro” personality in preparation.

Open source advocate Glyn Moody has posted about the LibreOffice project here.

android, ios, mobile, software development

Testing mobile apps: Xamarin goes live with Test Cloud for iOS and Android (but no Windows Phone)

Testing a mobile app is challenging, thanks to operating system fragmentation combined with diversity of hardware. In April 2013 Xamarin acquired a company called LessPainful, specialists in functional testing for mobile apps, which had created a mobile app testing tool called Calabash. Calabash is based on Cucumber, and lets you define test steps and then combine them into natural language tests. LessPainful also had a cloud testing service which let you run tests on remote physical devices and see visual test reports.

Eighteen months on, Xamarin has now gone live with Test Cloud, and has announced some big names which it says are using the service, including Dropbox, Flipboard and eBay.

There are currently 1036 devices (the number changes regularly) in the Test Cloud, including 273 iOS and 763 Android (Windows Phone is not supported, but Amazon’s Fire Phone and Kindle Fire does appear in the list).

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You write your tests either in Calabash or in C#, upload your app and the tests to Test Cloud, wait a while, and then get notification that the tests are done and a report ready to view.

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You can simulate events such as changes in location, device rotation, network dropouts, and of course user interactions like taps and gestures. You get screenshots and performance data (memory and CPU usage) for each test step.

You can also integrate with CI (Continuous Integration) systems like TFS, Jenkins and TeamCity to automate testing.

Writing and maintaining tests is hard work, of course, but for businesses that can afford the investment in both time and money, Test Cloud is likely to be a great improvement on manually gathering up as many devices as you can find and installing your app on all of them.

The cost is significant though, starting at $1000 per month for up to 2 apps and 200 device hours. You have to pay annually too, so it looks like a strategy of just buying one month towards the end of your development cycle will not work.

That said, I have been told that Xamarin will be coming out with an Indie version in the future that has a lower price.

android, google, mobile, software development, Web

Android apps on Chrome: how it works and what it may become

Google announced at its I/O conference in June 2014 that Android apps are coming to its Chrome OS. Earlier this month product managers Ken Mixter and Josh Woodward announced that the first four Android apps are available in the Chromebook app store: Duolingo, Evernote, Sight Words and Vine.

I delayed posting about this until I found the time to investigate a little into how it works. I fired up an Acer C720 and installed Evernote from the Chrome web store (in addition to Evernote Web which was already installed).

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When you install your first Android app, Chrome installs the App Runtime for Chrome (Beta) (ARC) automatically.

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Incidentally, I found Evernote slightly odd on Chromebook since it is runs in a window although the app is designed to run full screen, as it would on a phone or tablet. This caught me out when I went to settings, which looks like a dialog, and closed it with the x at the top right of the window. Of course that closes the app entirely. If you want to navigate the app, you have to click the back arrow at top left of the window instead.

But what is the App Runtime for Chrome? This seems to be an implementation of the Android runtime for NaCl (Native Client), which lets you run compiled C and C++ code in the browser. If you browse the parts of ARC which are open source, you can see how it implements the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) for arch-nacl: a virtual processor running as a browser extension.

Not all of ARC is open source. The docs say:

Getting Started with ARC Open Source on Linux

=============================================

A small set of shared objects can be built which are part of ARC currently.

A fully running system cannot currently be built.

It is early days, with just four apps available, ARC in beta, and developers asked to contact Google if they are interested in having their Android apps run on Chrome OS. However, an independent developer has already ported ARC to desktop Chrome:

ARChon runtime lets you run unlimited number of Android APKs created with chromeos-apk on Chrome OS and across any desktop platform that supports Chrome.

The desktop version is unstable, and apps that need Google Play services run into problems. Still, think of it as a proof of concept.

In particular, note that this is Android Runtime for Chrome, not Android Runtime for Chrome OS. Google is targeting the browser, not the operating system. This means that ARC can, if Google chooses, become an Android runtime for every operating system where Chrome runs – with the exception, I imagine, of Chrome for iOS, which is really a wrapper for Apple’s web browser engine and cannot support NaCl, and Chrome for Android which does not need it.

Imagine that Google gets ARC running well on Windows and Mac. What are the implications?

The answer is that Android will become a cross-platform runtime, alongside others such as Flash (the engine in Adobe AIR) and Java. There has to be some performance penalty for apps written in Java for Android running in an Android VM in the browser; but NaCl runs native code and I would expect performance to be good enough.

This would make Android an even more attractive target for developers, since apps will run on desktop computers as well as on Android itself.

Might this get to the point where developers drop dedicated Windows or Mac versions of their apps, arguing that users can just run the Android version? An ARC app will be compromised not only in performance, but also in the way it integrates with the OS, so you would not expect this to happen with major apps. However, it could happen with some apps, since it greatly simplifies development.

azure, cloud computing, microsoft, software development

Microsoft Azure: new preview portal is “designed like an operating system” but is it better?

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How important is the Azure portal, the web-based user interface for managing Microsoft’s cloud computing platform? You can argue that it is not all that important. Developers and users care more about the performance and reliability of the services themselves. You can also control Azure services through PowerShell scripts.

My view is the opposite though. The portal is the entry point for Azure and a good experience makes developers more likely to continue. It is also a dashboard, with an overview of everything you have running (or not running) on Azure, the health of your services, and how much they are costing you. I also think of the portal as an index of resources. Can you do this on Azure? Browsing through the portal gives you a quick answer.

The original Azure portal was pretty bad. I wish I had more screenshots; this 2009 post comparing getting started on Google App Engine with Azure may bring back some memories. In 2011 there were some big management changes at Microsoft, and Scott Guthrie moved over to Azure along with various other executives. Usability and capability improved fast, and one of the notable changes was the appearance of a new portal. Written in HTML 5, it was excellent, showing all the service categories in a left-hand column. Select a category, and all your services in that category are listed. Select a service and you get a detailed dashboard. This portal has evolved somewhat since it was introduced, notably through the addition of many more services, but the design is essentially the same.

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The New button lets you create a new service:

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The portal also shows credit status right there – no need to hunt through links to account management pages:

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It is an excellent portal, in other words, logically laid out, easy to use, and effective.

That is the old portal though. Microsoft has introduced a new portal, first demonstrated at the Build conference in April. The new portal is at http://portal.azure.com, versus http://manage.windowsazure.com for the old one.

The new portal is different in look and feel:

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Why a new portal and how does it work? Microsoft’s Justin Beckwith, a program manager, has a detailed explanatory post. He says that the old portal worked well at first but became difficult to manage:

As we started ramping up the number of services in Azure, it became infeasible for one team to write all of the UI. The teams which owned the service were now responsible (mostly) for writing their own UI, inside of the portal source repository. This had the benefit of allowing individual teams to control their own destiny. However – it now mean that we had hundreds of developers all writing code in the same repository. A change made to the SQL Server management experience could break the Azure Web Sites experience. A change to a CSS file by a developer working on virtual machines could break the experience in storage. Coordinating the 3 week ship schedule became really hard. The team was tracking dependencies across multiple organizations, the underlying REST APIs that powered the experiences, and the release cadence of ~40 teams across the company that were delivering cloud services.

The new portal is the outcome of some deep thinking about the future. It is architected, according to Beckwith, more like an operating system than like a web application.

The new portal is designed like an operating system. It provides a set of UI widgets, a navigation framework, data management APIs, and other various services one would expect to find with any UI framework. The portal team is responsible for building the operating system (or the shell, as we like to call it), and for the overall health of the portal.

Each service has its own extension, or “application”, which runs in an iframe (inline frame) and is isolated from other extensions. Unusually, the iframes are not used to render content, but only to run scripts. These scripts communicate with the main frame using the window.postMessage API call – familiar territory for Windows developers, since messages also drive the Windows desktop operating system.

Microsoft is also using TypeScript, a high-level language that compiles to JavaScript, and open source resources including Less and Knockout.

Beckwith’s post is good reading, but the crunch question is this: how does the new portal compare to the old one?

I get the sense that Microsoft has put a lot of effort into the new portal (which is still in preview) and that it is responsive to feedback. I expect that the new portal will in time be excellent. Currently though I have mixed feeling about it, and often prefer to use the old portal. The new portal is busier, slower and more confusing. Here is the equivalent to the previous New screen shown above:

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The icons are prettier, but there is something suspiciously like an ad at top right; I would rather see more services, with bigger text and smaller icons; the text conveys more information.

Let’s look at scaling a website. In the old portal, you select a website, then click Scale in the top menu to get to a nice scaling screen where you can set up autoscaling, define the number of instances and so on.

How do you find this in the new portal? You get this screen when you select a website (I have blanked out the name of the site).

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This screen scrolls vertically and if you scroll down you can find a small Scale panel. Click it and you get to the scaling panel, which has a nicely done UI though the way panels constantly appear and disappear is something you have to get used to.

There are also additional scaling options in the preview portal (the old one only offers scaling based on CPU usage):

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The preview portal also integrates with Visual Studio online for cloud-based devops.

The challenge for Microsoft is that the old portal set a high bar for clarity and usability. The preview portal does more than the old, and is more fit for purpose as the number and capability of Azure services increases, but its designers need to resist the temptation to let prettiness obstruct performance and efficiency.

Developers can give feedback on the portal here.

cloud computing, microsoft, sharepoint, windows

Microsoft OneDrive and OneDrive for Business: a guide for the perplexed

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Microsoft’s price plans for additional cloud storage are odd:

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Hmm, £1.60 per month for 1TB or £3.99 for 200GB. Difficult decision? Especially as OneDrive for Business appears to be a superset of OneDrive:

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It is not that simple of course (and see below for how you can get 1TB OneDrive for less). The two products have different ancestries. OneDrive was once SkyDrive and before that Windows Live Folders and before that Windows Live Drive. It was designed from the beginning as a cloud storage and client sync service.

OneDrive for Business on the other hand is essentially SharePoint: team portal including online document storage and collaboration. The original design goal of SharePoint (a feature of Windows Server 2003) was to enable businesses to share Office documents with document history, comments, secure access and so on, and to provide a workplace for teams. See the history here. SharePoint supported a technology called WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) to allow clients to access content programmatically, and this could be used in Windows to make online documents appear in Windows Explorer (the file utility), but there was no synchronization client. SharePoint was not intended for storage of arbitrary file types; the system allowed it, but full features only light up with Office documents. In other words, not shared storage so much as content management system. Documents are stored in Microsoft SQL Server database.

SharePoint was bolted into Microsoft BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) which later became Office 365. In response to demand for document synchronization between client and cloud, Microsoft came up with SharePoint Workspace, based on Groove, a synchronization technology acquired along with Groove Networks in 2005.

I have no idea how much original Groove code remains in the the OneDrive for Business client, nor the extent to which SharePoint Online really runs the same code as the SharePoint you get in Windows Server; but that is the history and explains a bit about why the products are as they are. The OneDrive for Business client for Windows is an application called Groove.exe.

OneDrive and OneDrive for Business are different products, despite the misleading impression given by the name and the little feature table above. This is why the Windows, Mac and Mobile clients are all different and do different things.

OneDrive for Business is reasonable as an online document collaboration tool, but the sync client has always been poor and I prefer not to use it (do not click that Sync button in Office 365). You may find that it syncs a large number of documents, then starts giving puzzling errors for which there is no obvious fix. Finally Microsoft will recommend that you zap your local cache and start again, with some uncertainty about whether you might have lost some work. Microsoft has been working hard to improve it but I do not know if it is yet reliable; personally I think there are intractable problems with Groove and it should be replaced.

The mobile clients for OneDrive for Business are hopeless as DropBox replacements. The iOS client app is particularly odd: you can view files but not upload them. Photo sync, a feature highly valued by users, is not supported. However you can create new folders through the app – but not put anything in them.

Office on iOS on the other hand is a lovely set of applications which use OneDrive for Business for online storage, which actually makes sense in this context. It can also be used with consumer OneDrive or SharePoint, once it is activated.

The consumer version of OneDrive is mostly better than OneDrive for Business for online storage. It is less good for document collaboration and security (the original design goals of SharePoint) but more suitable for arbitrary file types and with a nice UI for things like picture sharing. The Windows and mobile clients are not perfect, but work well enough. The iOS OneDrive client supports automatic sync of photos and you can upload items as you would expect, subject to the design limitations of Apple’s operating system.

Even for document collaboration, consumer OneDrive is not that bad. It supports Office Web Apps, for creating and editing documents in the browser, and you can share documents with others with various levels of permission. 

What this means for you:

  • Do not trust the OneDrive for Business sync client
  • Do not even think about migrating from OneDrive to OneDrive for Business to get cheap cloud storage
  • No, you mostly cannot use the same software to access OneDrive and OneDrive for Business
  • Despite what you are paying for your Office 365 subscription, consumer OneDrive is a better cloud storage service
  • SharePoint online also known as OneDrive for Business has merit for document collaboration and team portal services, beyond the scope of consumer OneDrive

Finally, what Microsoft should do:

  • Create a new sync client for OneDrive for Business that works reliably and fast, with mobile apps that do what users expect
  • Either unify the technology in OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, or stop calling them by the same name

I do understand Microsoft’s problem. SharePoint has a huge and complex API, and Microsoft’s business users like the cloud-hosted versions of major server applications to work the same way as those that are on premise. However SharePoint will never be a optimal technology for generic cloud storage.

If I were running Office 365, I think I would bring consumer OneDrive into Office 365 for general cloud storage, and I would retain SharePoint online for what it is good at, which is the portal, application platform, and document collaboration aspect. This would be similar to how many businesses use their Windows servers: simple file shares for most shared files, and SharePoint for documents where advanced collaboration features are needed.

In the meantime, it is a mess, and with the explosive growth of Office 365, a tricky one to resolve without pain.

Microsoft has a relatively frank FAQ here.

Postscript: here is a tip if you need large amounts of OneDrive storage. If you buy Office 365 Home for £7.99 per month or £79.99 per year (which works out at £6.66 per month) you get 1TB additional storage for consumer OneDrive for up to 4 users, as well as the main Office applications:

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The way this works is that each user activates Office using a Microsoft account. The OneDrive storage linked to that account gets the 1TB extra storage while the subscription is active.

Another option is Office 365 Personal – same deal but for one user at £5.99 per month, or £59.99 per year (£4.99 per month).

Even for one user, it is cheaper to subscribe to Office 365 Home or Personal than to buy 1TB storage at £3.99 per month per 200GB. When you add the benefit of Office applications, it is a great deal.

Despite the name, these products have little to do with Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-hosted Exchange, SharePoint and more. These are desktop applications plus consumer OneDrive.

.net, development, microsoft, mobile, open source, professional, software development, web authoring

Microsoft releases WinJS cross-browser JavaScript library but why?

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Microsoft has announced WinJS 3.0:

The Windows Library for JavaScript (WinJS) project is pleased to announce the general availability of its first release – WinJS 3.0 – since the open source project began at //BUILD 2014.

Much of WinJS will run on any modern browser but the browser support matrix has a number of gaps:

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You can also see what runs where from this status table.

But what is WinJS? Note that it comes from the Windows apps team, not the web development team at Microsoft. WinJS was designed to enable app development for Windows 8 “Metro” (also known as the Windows Runtime) using JavaScript, CSS and HTML. Back in 2010, when Microsoft signalled the end of Silverlight and the rise of HTML 5 for browser-based applications, early versions of WinJS would already have been in preparation. Using WinJS you can share code across a Windows 8 app, web apps, and via an app packager like Apache Cordova, in apps for Android and iOS as well.

Note that Cordova is now integrated into Visual Studio, using the catchy name Multi-Device Hybrid App:

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If you want to know what kind of controls and components are on offer in WinJS, you can find out using the excellent demo site here. This is Firefox:

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Quick summary then: WinJS lets you build apps that look like Windows 8 Store apps, but which run cross-browser and cross-platform. But who wants to do that?

Maybe Microsoft does. The messaging from the company, especially since CEO Satya Nadella took over from Windows guy Steve Ballmer, is “any device”, provided of course that they hook up to Microsoft’s services. That messaging is intended for developers outside the company too. Check out the current campaign for Microsoft Azure, which says “consume on any device”.

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This could be a web application, or it could be a client app using Azure Mobile Services or an ASP.NET Web API application to connect to cloud data.

You do not have to use WinJS to consume Microsoft’s services of course. Why would developers want to use the look and feel of a rather unloved app platform, rather than the native look and feel of Android or iOS? That is an excellent question, and in most cases they will not. There could be cases though, for example for internal business apps where users care most about functionality. What is the current stock? What is the lead time? Show me this customer’s order history. A WinJS app might not look right for the platform, but the UI will be touch-friendly, and ease of rollout across the major mobile platforms could trump Apple’s design guidelines.

If you are writing a pure web application, users expectations concerning native look and feel are not so high. The touch-oriented design of WinJS is its main appeal, though other web frameworks like JQuery Mobile also offer this. The “Metro” design language is distinctive, and Microsoft will be making a renewed push for Windows Store apps, or Universal Apps, as part of the new wave of Windows called Windows 9 or “Threshold”. WinJS is the way to build apps for that platform using JavaScript and HTML, with the added bonus of easy porting to a broad range of devices.

This is a hard sell though. I am impressed by the effort Microsoft has put into making WinJS work cross-platform, but will be surprised to see much usage outside Windows Store apps (including Windows Phone). On the other hand, it does help to keep the code honest: this really is HTML and JavaScript, not just a wrapper for Windows Runtime APIs.

.net, microsoft, mobile, professional, software development

Lifetime registration as a Windows Store developer, now from £12

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Microsoft has removed some friction from developing for the Windows Store (whether phone or Windows 8) by removing the requirement to pay an annual subscription:

As we continue to execute on the vision to integrate the Windows and Windows Phone developer experiences, we have taken another step by moving to a one-time lifelong Dev Center registration fee.

says Microsoft’s Todd Brix in a post today. He adds that the 600,000 developers already registered are covered, with no additional fee required.

How much is the fee? Brix does not say, and I could not find it quickly, so I started the signup process. I was offered individual registration for just £12.00. A company registration is £65.00.

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Both fees are of course negligible for a developer, compared to the cost of developing an app that is worth installing. Considering that Microsoft has had problems with junk apps filling its store, you could argue that fees are justifiable as a means of restraining the flow of meaningless or malicious apps.

The counter-argument is that fees deter developers from getting started, and that today’s hobbyist may come up with the next Minecraft. It is better to control quality with a robust checking process before apps are admitted into the store.

I had a quick glance today, and have the impression that Microsoft has made progress in removing the worst offenders, following some agitation at the end of last month.

Microsoft is laying the foundation for another go at its app platform with the launch of Windows 9, about which we will hear more in a couple of weeks time.

.net, azure, cloud computing, microsoft, professional

Microsoft integrates Azure websites with hybrid cloud

Microsoft has announced the integration of Azure websites with Azure virtual networks, including access to on-premise resources if you have a site-to-site VPN.

The Virtual Network feature grants your website access to resources running your VNET that includes being able to access web services or databases running on your Azure Virtual Machines. If your VNET is connected to your on premise network with Site to Site VPN, then your Azure Website will now be able to access on premise systems through the Azure Websites Virtual Network feature.

Azure websites let you deploy web applications running on IIS (Microsoft’s web server) hosted in Microsoft’s cloud. The application platform can be framework can be ASP.NET, Java, PHP, Node.js or Python. There are Free, Shared and Basic tiers which are mainly for prototyping, and a Standard tier which has auto-scaling features, managed through Microsoft’s web portal:

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The development tool is Visual Studio, which now has strong integration with Azure.

Integration with virtual networks is a significant feature. You could now host what is in effect an intranet application on Azure if it is convenient. If it is only used in working hours, say, or mainly used in the first couple of hours in the morning, you could scale it accordingly.

Have a look at that web configuration page above, and compare it with the intricacies of System Center. It is a huge difference and shows that some parts of Microsoft have learned that usability matters, even for systems aimed at IT professionals.