Written by Craig Kelly-Soens
Glossary of Terms
This section gives a "super basic" description firstly
and then a much more technical one below.
Windows Vista - This is, put very simply, Windows 2006.
XAML - A text based way of describing what shapes, colours and animation you want
to have on a users screen.
.Net 3.0 - A framework for computer programmers to manipulate Windows Vista,
the next step from Win32, it covers the following and more technologies :-
WinFx - the pre-release code name for the above.
WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation
The engine behind the look of Windows Vista software, allowing fantastic looking
interactive user Xperiences, no more grey and boring looking systems.
Avalon - the pre-release code name of WPF above.
WCF - Windows Communication Foundation
The connectivity side of Windows Vista, mainly webservices, used for connecting systems
together, securely and reliably, from a customers hand held device to private internal
systems communications.
Indigo - the pre-release code name of WCF above.
WWF - (no, not World Wrestling Foundation) it is Windows Workflow Foundation
The idea being that software systems can be built based upon a pre-defined process that
has been proven to work already rather than starting analysis from scratch and getting it wrong.
CardSpace - A single, secure storage point for your personal information,
it saves you filling in the same name and address forms over and over again,
a much needed tool for every internet user the world over.
Read More Here....
CardSpace demo movie's Here.....
InfoCard - pre-release name of the above.
The Expression Suite - 3 brand new XAML .Net 3 based tools
Graphic Designer - All graphics in this website are created with this tool, it allows Vector and Bitmap
Acrylic - the pre-release code name of the above.
Interactive Designer - Allows creation of interactive, colourful and animated user interfaces for software, the future of software development and the user Xperience lies here.
Sparkle - the pre-release code name of the above.
Web Designer - a cutting edge Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) standard based webpage
creation tool.
Quartz - the pre-release code name of the above.
--------------------------
Cider - Allows you to "visually paint" a user interface by dropping the individual controls
onto form which automatically creates the XAML text in the background.
It is Microsofts XAML .Net creation tool (this is a pre-release code name)
Orcas - providing inbuilt support for creating XAML Visual Studio
(XAML help files and Intellisense) and includes Cider above (this is a pre-release code name)
CTP - Community Technology Preview, a "Beta" or general pre-release version.
RTM - Release to market, the final version of a product.
========A little more technical detail please========
.Net 3 - This covers many things but is basically Microsoft's XML-based API layer that supersedes programming in Win32. WCF is an API programming layer designed to simplify development of, and connection to, web services for developers using Windows. WWF is a set of APIs, runtime and editor for developers to build workflows that are not embedded in the software.
XAML - Xtensible Application Markup Language
Remember HTML when it first came out, you could create buttons and scrolling text with one line
of text, wow ! Then animated .gif came along and you could animate graphics, great. XAML
goes further, you can create a graphical image using only text, animate it by describing your
storyboard in a text based way, and inject it straight into the browser a small downloadable file.
This is all possible bue to the graphical engine in Vista, WPF - the Windows Presentation Foundation, for example, this websites graphics are all created in Microsofts Graphic Designer,
but are converted to a static image, if you were running this on Vista the same XAML could
instead be animated, in many ways, and all presented in-the-browser or as a Windows Vista Application.
This is similar to web pages now in HTML but far more advanced allowing 3D animation created from just text. In future most web pages and all Windows systems will be written in XAML using the power of the WPF.
WCF - Windows Communication Foundation uses advanced Web services to integrate
software from many platforms, in other words you do not have to re-write your old
systems to talk to your new .Net systems.
WCF is, as with all .Net based frameworks, allowing you to do more with less
customised code, it handles the complexity of creating secure, reliable, transaction
based WebServices without hours of development time, allowing you to concentrate on
the business logic of the problem.
Further, it allows a single, unified method of creating connected systems, instead of learning
.Net Remoting, WebService or other choices of connection you use the WCF model for all situations. It is entirely based on the new Service-Oriented Design, a new philosophy in
creating modular systems to allow you to maintain software over time without breaking
or re-writing a great deal of it.
The final version may allow you to create WebService connections in a visual way with a
diagram similar to Orchestrator in BizTalk.
WWF - Windows Workflow Foundation. It is an attempt to standardise the process involved when creating systems that perform common tasks, for example, if you are designing a customer booking system there maybe a WorkFlow that you can re-use, which means, there are no sudden suprises half way through development, when something you have not thought of yet becomes known.
In summary, someone with previous full life cycle experience of creating the same system
has written a Foundation for you to follow.
It supports three basic styles of workflow: Sequential, State Machine and Data-Driven
for your further researching.
For the official Windows Vista site please visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/demos.mspx
For more .Net 3 technical and official information see :- http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/jan06/01-18.Net 3.mspx