Programmer's Vista

There's an excellent article on Ars Technica called Windows Vista: more than just a pretty face that examines Windows Vista from a programmer's perspective, looking particularly at WinFX, the managed API that replaces the very creaky old Win32 API used in previous versions of Windows. WinFX is also known as .NET 3.0, and it actually sounds rather good, which is a bit of a surprise. I'd become a little used to a steady progression of Microsoft development products that don't add much, or change the way things are built but magically don't provide any payback for doing so. WinFX fixes a lot of the rough, painful and idiotic bits of Win32, and offers quite a few powerful new features, like vector graphics and managed code. Unfortunately it also implements a fairly evil DRM system to protect media content within its infrastructure, but hopefully there's a service patch to remove that. Yep, that's really likely.

Despite the inflated reports of its launch success, it'll be quite a while before Vista is the dominant Windows platform and WinFX development becomes a reasonable option. At my workplace, the help desk have landed in the marvellous situation where users bring in their swanky new Vista laptops, and they have no way at all to print, because the printer drivers simply don't exist. Gamers are still worried about the fact that GeForce 8800 drivers are still in beta, and there are many other reports of poorly-supported or non-existent Vista drivers around the place. This will almost certainly improve by the end of the year, but it means that Vista's uptake will be slow, which will mean WinFX is still a tinkerer's business.

It is interesting that Microsoft have, once again, followed their "third time's the charm" rule, where they release two versions of a product that lack real quality and appeal, and then finally get their shit together with their third iteration. I won't be playing with WinFX for a while yet, but it looks like it can do some cool things. Animated 3D widget effects, ahoy!