Microsoft Support & Discussions

Hey all, So I'll be attending the Citrix Web Cast tomorrow and Thursday and I will be available on Skype if anyone wants to chat and have a little Q&A. You can find me by searching for OverseNet on Skype.

Building fast and functional sites is a challenge with which most Web developers are familiar. Loading a new page every time the user clicks a link is slow. Fetching all content dynamically effectively disables the back button. Working with hashes is better, but still not ideal. Internet Explorer 10 in the Windows Developer Preview eliminates the compromise by adding support for HTML5 History. The pushState, replaceState, and popstate APIs provide fine-grained control over the behavior of the back button and the URL presented to the user for dynamic content. Together these APIs help you improve the performance of your site without sacrificing usability. If you

Project “Vancouver,” Microsoft’s new cloud-based social-analytics service, is available to testers interested in the idea of integrating social Web data into business applications. Source: All About Microsoft

PC maker Asus has let the cat partially out of the bag regarding its Windows 8 tablet plans. It seems apparent, however, that there are at least two Win 8 tablets coming from Asus before the end of next year. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott Marking the one year anniversary of the Kinect, Microsoft today said that it would make its motion-sensing add-on for the Xbox 360 available to Windows users in early 2012, opening up the market for the device dramatically. Microsoft sold over 10 million Kinect devices in 60 days a year ago, setting a Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft is planning to launch a version of its Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) licensed for commercial use in early 2012. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott It’s an increasingly common refrain these days. Google’s dominant mobile platform, Android, is a rip-off of other mobile platforms, and since Google doesn’t even have a broad slate of mobile patents of its own, the company is effectively stealing from others. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Battlefield 3 is clearly influenced by the success of the Call of Duty franchise, but it goes too far in trying to copy what makes Call of Duty so compelling. In doing so, Battlefield 3 fails, with single player and multiplayer modes that are beautiful to look at but tedious to experience. I feel obligated to like Battlefield 3, but I don’t, and if you are a fan of Call of Duty, you should wait for Modern Warfare 3 before buying this title. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott According to a recent report, Apple’s secret plan for "cracking" the TV market is, get this, using Siri-based voice control. You know, just like the functionality Microsoft shipped a year ago in the Kinect for Xbox 360. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott The iPhone 4S is a great mobile companion, with an excellent camera, useful online services integration, the best apps selection anywhere, and a slate of functionality that is competitive with anything offered on Windows Phone, or Android for that matter. I get why people like the iPhone so much. And while I could quibble over technical issues, the simple fact remains that the iPhone 4S is an excellent smart phone. All you need to do is carry one around to find that out. Source: Win Super Site

Microsoft has begun moving new and existing Photosynths to Windows Azure and its Azure CDN. The company also is cutting the price of Azure storage. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott In the latest episode of the Windows Weekly podcast, Leo, Mary Jo and I discuss the news from Nokia World, how Microsoft can improve Windows Phone, Microsoft’s office productivity vision for 2021, 10 years of Windows XP, Microsoft’s Android licensing gold mine, the race to buy Yahoo, Battlefield 3, and System Center 2012 test builds. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott Despite Apple’s ambivalence towards Windows PCs, the iPhone 4S offers decent Windows integration features, including Wi-Fi and USB-based sync with iTunes, native camera photo acquisition, and, via a new iCloud control panel, compatibility with many new cloud computing services. It’s not a completely seamless experience, but then the iPhone 4S, like other iOS-based devices, is heading towards a PC free future anyway. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott The iPhone 4S has many advantages over competing smart phones, but its Retina display is a mixed bag. It offers a high resolution and a high pixel density, resulting in razor-sharp graphics and text. But the iPhone 4S display, at just 3.5 inches diagonally, is a bit too small compared to other modern handsets. That can be a problem in the hand, of course, but also for your eyes. Source: Win Super Site

Vendor prefixes enable Web developers to experiment with new standards before they reach the Candidate Recommendation stage. I previously wrote how these prefixes are also a mechanism browser vendors use for handling timing conflicts between implementations and specifications. In building demos of new features for our IE Test Drive site and in various presentations, many of us on the IE team deal extensively with vendor prefixes. This blog post describes a pattern we

Microsoft rolled out its latest Office 2007 service pack and System Center 2012 test builds invited press to a Windows Phone event on November 7 and trotted out its latest “technology in the future” video this week. Source: All About Microsoft

By Paul Thurrott An often irreverent look at this week’s other news, including HP’s startling decision to actually keep its dominant PC business, Microsoft (pretty much) completes the deployment of Windows Phone 7.5, Windows Phone "Apollo" will not be shipping by mid-2012, Samsung smartphones outsell the iPhone by a wide margin, some good news for Netflix amid a sea of discontent, RIM delays software update for a tablet no one uses, and Nintendo slashes forecast as demand dries up for yesterday’s video game machines. Source: Win Super Site

By Paul Thurrott I normally try to avoid this sort of fruitless fantasy exploration, but after using Windows 8 on the prototype Samsung tablet for the past month and a half, I’ve come to really appreciate some of the user experience improvements Microsoft has made to the Start screen. And I’d like to see some of them occur on Windows Phone going forward. Source: Win Super Site