Building Windows 8 Blog: Microsoft opens dialogue

The president of the Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live division has posted the first message on a blog which is designed to open the software giant’s communication around the conception of Windows 8.

Microsoft is preparing for their first big appointment with developers looking at Windows 8. The BUILD conference will be held between the 13th and 16th of September 2011 in Anaheim, California. “In 1995, Windows changed the PC. BUILD will now demonstrate that Windows 8 has changed everything”, promises Microsoft.

With this conference soon approaching, Microsoft decided to kick things off by posting a blog about Windows 8’s engineering. As was the case with the development of Windows 7, the Building Windows 8 blog has opened dialogue around the coming Windows operating system, inviting interested end users, developers and professionals to participate.

The first posting on the Building Windows 8 blog has been signed by Microsoft’s president of their Windows and Windows Live division. Steven Sinofsky speaks on the blog about “two direction communication” on the “complexities and required compromises” of a products development.

Very few details are provided in this welcome post, with Steven Sinofsky pushing the standard Microsoft line that “Windows 8 has reimagined Windows“, “from the chip to the interface“.

Microsoft has also announced that Windows 8 will handle the SoC architecture (System on a Chip), systems using the ARM architecture provided by NVidia, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and even the integration of tactile tablets. It is from these devices that the user interface has taken some inspiration from, using Windows Phone 7’s tiles.

“With our preview release in June, we have started to unveil the user experience (note: see video below), because this is the most visible change to Windows. Rest assured that we have thought through all of the changes across all of Windows possibilities“, writes Steven Sinofsky.

The man does have a reputation for blurred messages though, with people learning their lesson when he announced Windows Vista would come with functions that were unveiled too quickly, and which were finally not implemented. For the moment, he is happy enough to simply confirm that Windows 8 will be 100% compatible with hardware and programs that are already used by Windows 7.

No release date has been mentioned, and while there has been talk of a pre-release of Windows 8 (a beta?) in the “coming months”, it won’t be in the coming weeks that this will become available.