If you’re a Windows developer the past few months of Microsoft’s various announcements about Windows 8 and the future of their developer ecosystem haven’t been particularly kind to you. With Microsoft announcing that their new Windows Phone 7 inspired UI for Windows 8 will be based on HTML5 and JavaScript many were left wondering if the heavy investment they had made Silverlight and .NET technologies was going to be wasted. It didn’t help matters much when Microsoft told everyone to wait until BUILD in September for more details, which let speculation run rampant amongst the community.
However it has come to my attention that Microsoft has been hinting at a potential panacea for all these woes, for quite some time now.
Back in January there were many rumours circling around the new features we could look forward to in Windows 8. Like any speculation on upcoming products there’s usually a couple facts amongst the rumour mill, usually from those who are familiar with the project. Two such features which got some air time were Mosh and Jupiter, two interesting ideas that at the time were easily written off as either speculation or things that would never eventuate. However Mosh, rumoured at the time to be a “tiled based interface”, turned out to be the feature which caused the developer uproar just a couple months ago. Indeed the speculation was pretty much spot on since it’s basically the tablet interface for Windows 8, but it also has a lot of potential for nettops and netbooks since underneath the full Windows 8 experience is still available.
The Jupiter rumour then can be taken a little bit more seriously, but I can see why many people passed it over back at the start of this year. In essence Jupiter just looked like yet another technology platform from Microsoft, just like Windows Presentation Framework and Silverlight before it. Some did recognize it as having the potential to be the bridge for Windows 8 onto tablets which again shoe horned it into being just another platform. However some did speculate that Jupiter could be much more than that, going as far to say that it could be the first step towards a unified development platform across the PC, tablet and mobile phone space. If Microsoft could pull that kind of stunt off they’d not only have one of the most desirable platforms for developers they’d also be taking a huge step forward towards realizing their Three Screens philosophy.
I’ll be honest and say that up until yesterday I had no idea that Jupiter existed, so it doesn’t surprise me that many of the outraged developers wouldn’t have known about it either. However yesterday I caught wind of an article from TechCrunch that laid bare all the details of what Jupiter could be:
- It is a new user interface library for Windows. (source)
- It is an XAML-based framework. (source)
- It is not Silverlight or WPF, but will be compatible with that code. (source)
- Developers will write immersive applications in XAML/C#/VB/C++ (source, source, source,source)
- It will use IE 10′s rendering engine. (source)
- DirectUI (which draws the visual elements on the screen, arrived in Windows Vista) is being overhauled to support the XAML applications. (source, source)
- It will provide access to Windows 8 elements (sensors, networking, etc.) via a managed XAML library. (source)
- Jupiter apps will be packaged as AppX application types that could be common to both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. (source, source, source, source)
- The AppX format is universal, and can used to deploy native Win32 apps, framework-based apps (Silverlight, WPF), Web apps, and games (source)
- Jupiter is supposed to make all the developers happy, whether .NET (i.e., re-use XAML skills), VB, old-school C++ or Silverlight/WPF. (Source? See all the above!)
…Why does Jupiter matter so much? If it’s not clear from the technical details above, it’s because Jupiter may end up being the “one framework” to rule them all. That means it might be possible to port the thousands of Windows Phone apps already written with Silverlight to Windows 8 simply by reusing existing code and making small tweaks. Or maybe even no tweaks. (That part is still unclear). If so, this would be a technical advantage for developers building for Windows Phone 8 (code-named “Apollo” by the way, the son of “Jupiter”) or Windows 8.
In a nutshell it looks like Microsoft is looking to unify at all of the platforms that run Windows under the Jupiter banner, enabling developers to port applications between them without having to undergo massive rework of their code. Of course the UI would probably need to be redone for each target platform but since the same design tools will work regardless of the platform the redesigns will be far less painful then they currently are. The best part about Jupiter though is that it leverages current developer skill sets, enabling anyone with experience on the Windows platform to be able to code in the new format.
Jupiter then represents a fundamental shift in Windows developer ecosystem, one that’s for the better of everyone involved.
We’ll have to wait until BUILD in September to find out the official word from Microsoft on what Jupiter will actually end up being, but there’s a lot of evidence mounting that it will be the framework to use when building applications for Microsoft’s systems. Microsoft has a proven track record of creating some of the best developer tools around and that, coupled with the potential to have one code base to rule them all, could make all of Microsoft’s platforms extremely attractive for developers. Whether this will translate into success for Microsoft on the smartphone and tablet space remains to be seen, but they’ll definitely be giving Apple and Google a run for their developers.
