[OT] new programming blog

[Otto]

José, I forgot to mention that we could build exactly the same look and feel with Fivewin and not only for Windows 8 also for XP, Vista and Windows 7.
Best regards,
Otto

[TimStone]

For the past few months, I have spent a lot of time with Microsoft development tools, and recently attended a Visual Studio trainging conference. Here are a few thoughts which go along with this thread:

1) The Metro interface has a lot of potential, but for now there may not be many full featured applications for it. What is being done is very nice, and having more "screen real estate" is a very positive result. Otto has shown this with his work. It is much easier to read his new Metro style screens then the old forms views we have done for so many years.

2) Windows Forms styling is NOT moving forward into the future. Personally, I think this will have many positive benefits.

3) Metro is not just about touch screen. Again, Otto's work shows this.

4) Right now, true Metro apps are written for Windows 8. However, the option to use Metro styling in apps that run on Win 7, and XP, as Otto and Antonio are doing, is also embraced by Microsoft. I'm working with a newer RAD tool from Microsoft called LightSwitch. The potential is huge for this package, but it is not a "Windows 8" development application. Its products would run on the desktop side of Windows 8 ... at least for now. However, it can be used to build applications with Metro style that run on older OS's. If Microsoft is doing it that way, others will also.

5) When I look at my primary application, most of the "work" is in the "business logic". If I convert to Metro styling, this simply carries through unchanged. I also use an .rc with all my dialogs, so rewriting them seems to be pretty straightforward. I will probably start that after the first of the year.

Sorry for taking this off the topic of the blog, but I just wanted to add to the past few comments.

Tim

[José Luis Sánchez]

Otto,
Thanks for the suggestions. I take a look to the applications you suggest. Surely they would be better than mine, but this is a subjective opinion. There are several browsers, several code editors, and no one is better that the others. Some people likes Chrome, but meny others like Opera or Firefox. I've a lot of users that likes my Puchero, and this opinions and suggestions make my software better in every release. In the next months my goal is translate my programs into English and sale them around the world. It's a personal challenge and I have a lot of work to do, but I'm sure the experience will be very interesting. I believe that there is a huge market, and anyone has his chances for selling his product. Have you heard talking about the 'long tail theory' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail ?

Tim,
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I like technical post, but I like more when people shares his opinions as you've done. I think this kind of discuss make us grown as developers.

Kind regards,
José Luis

[Antonio Linares]

Tim,

I think that it would be quite easy and very interesting to implement a LightSwitch clone with Harbour and FWH

That would a very usefull tool, though many people don't enjoy using app generators...