The Tablet Show

Carl and Richard talk to Greg Levenhagen about Windows 8 development. Greg digs into the concept of contracts in Windows 8 and how they different from an API call, providing better control over how Win 8 applications work with services and resources of the OS. There's the obligatory debate over what Windows 8 Apps formally known as 'Metro' are now called... Windows 8 Store Apps? Modern Apps? Sigh. Greg also talks about how developers can get a handle on the user interaction side of Windows 8 Apps, life without a designer and his experiences interacting with the Windows 8 Store folks.

Carl and Richard talk to John Sonmez about MonoGame. MonoGame is an open source implementation of the Microsoft XNA 4 framework for building cross-platform games. How cross-platform? XBox 360, Windows, Mac as well as iPad, Windows 8 and the phones - iPhone, Android, Windows Phone. That's pretty cross-platform! The conversation digs into the skills you need to build games, whether these tools could be used to build non-game apps and more.

Carl and Richard talk to Rocky Lhotka about his experiences building Windows 8 applications. But first the conversation takes a digression with a reader email about the challenges of dealing with the inplace upgrade of .NET 4.0 to 4.5 alongside the migration of Windows XP to Windows 8. Rocky then digs into the projects he's been working on in Windows 8. He compares the jump from .NET 4.0 on Windows 7 to .NET 4.5 on Windows 8 to the jump from Visual Basic 3 on Windows 3.11 to Visual Basic 4 on Windows 95. If you're following modern development practices, migrating to Windows 8 applications is pretty easy. If you're bringing a lot of old apps along, you're in for some challenges.

Carl and Richard talk to Lino Tadros about his work building tablet applications. Lino compares and contrasts the experiences of building iOS, Android and WinRT applications.

Carl and Richard talk to Dan Wahlin about his current projects, including a web application running on desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.

While at PWOP Studios in New London, Carl and Richard sat down and chatted with each other about the leak of the Windows Phone 8 SDK. No one is certain if the SDK is final, but it must be close. The boys dig into the key points of what was found in the SDK - some new features not found in WinRT for Windows 8 (but perhaps coming in later versions), how the programming models shake out, and the requirements for the development platform. The conversation also digs into how 100,000 Windows Phone 7 apps are going to be moved to Windows Phone 8. Crazy times!

Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Fritz about doing unit testing of WinJS in Windows 8. Jeff talks about QUnit, the JavaScript testing framework built by the JQuery folks for testing JQuery. There are some interesting challenges for JavaScript testing, especially around automation. To deal with the complexities of working with WinJS in Windows 8 Jeff has forked QUnit to create QUnit-Metro. The conversation also digs into the challenges of working in WinJS, where tablets appear to be going and the what its like hopping between two flavors of JavaScript.

Carl and Richard talk to Jason Follas about building geospatial apps in Windows 8. Jason focuses on building using HTML and taking advantage of the advance Javascript libraries available today to manage geospatial data. He provides some awesome insight into how external libraries can be used inside Windows 8. The show may be about geospatial, but you're really going to learn about how the HTML/Javascript side of Windows 8 works!

Carl and Richard talk to David Bates about the state of Flash. But first, the boys geek out on David's hacking exploits with Arduino and Kinect. Then the conversation gets a bit more serious, talking about the destiny of Flash - which David points out is Adobe Air. Adobe Air is able to compile ActionScript from Flash into native code on iOS and Android. Flash isn't quite dead!

Carl and Richard chat with Aral Balkan about mobile application design. The conversation starts with a discussion of Aral's keynote at NDC and the design thinking that went into it - avoid cognitive dissidence, clutter, etc. Aral then dives into the dangers of hybrid apps: how combining HTML 5 and native wrappers does not make cross-platform development free. And finally the show wraps up with a great discussion on design as a whole. Just the show you need if you're debating how to build your mobile applications!

Carl and Richard talk to Shawn Wildermuth about the changes in Windows Phone.

Carl and Richard talk to Billy Hollis about building touch-centric applications. Getting beyond making bigger buttons, Billy talks about multi-finger and motion-based based touch gestures and how they need to be discovered just like any other control paradigm. The conversation also digs into the challenges of touch-centric CRUD applications, the impact of different form factors on touch and the potential of rethinking applications as a whole.

Carl and Richard talk to Mary Jo Foley of All About Microsoft about the crazy week of June 11 announcements from Microsoft. On Monday Microsoft showed off the Microsoft Surface Tablet in Los Angeles. On Wednesday Microsoft announced details of Windows Phone 8 in San Francisco. What does it all mean? MJ and the boys share their thoughts and the potential opportunities coming up this fall. It's a great time to be in the Microsoft space!

While at NDC in Oslo, Norway, Carl and Richard talk to Laurent Bugnion about metro design principles. But first, a great email from a listener changes the conversation to redesigning work spaces, integrating concepts of Microsoft Surface, Kinect, phones and touch-centric interfaces. Laurent then digs into the concepts of Metro design, talking about how the metro templates in Visual Studio 2012 simplify metro design. This is a wide ranging conversation over all the new ideas in design, user interface and customer expectations of applications!

Carl and Richard talk to Uf Tukel about his iCruise line of mobile and tablet applications. Uf tells the story of how he started in the brick-and-mortar cruise business, and how the internet completely changed his business for the better. Uf says that the mobile revolution has done the same thing again - today 50% of his customers are coming through mobile applications on iPhone and Android. If you're not on mobile, you're not on the internet!

Carl and Richard talk to Miguel de Icaza about how Xamarin has ported Android to C#. As Miguel says, it was 'kind of a stunt' - but let's face it, porting operating systems, even mobile ones, is not for the faint of heart! Miguel talks about one of the key residuals of the project, which is called Sharpen. Available on GitHub, Sharpen helps automate the migration of Java to C#. The conversation then moves onto the idea of relationships with developers - how Apple, Google and Microsoft are all getting further from caring for developers as they defend their respective platforms. Miguel talks about how companies (like Xamarin) can really love developers. And apparently COM is a punch in the face! Finally, Miguel announces X#, a super-set of C# to give it some syntactic sugar - in other words, even easier to use.

Carl and Richard talk to Diederik Krols about his awesome blog (check out the links in the show notes) on building Metro apps in Windows 8. Diederik talks about his favorite resources for learning about building Metro apps (also in the links) and the frustrations moving from the developer preview to consumer preview. The conversation then moves to a more challenging area - enterprise applications on the tablet. Does it make sense? Are people really going to want to do data entry on a tablet? How will touch work on a desktop PC? Do we really want a Star Trek style desk?

Carl and Richard talk to Greg Shackles about cross-platform mobile development using C#. Greg talks about using MonoTouch and Mono for Android to build iOS and Android (respectively) applications using C# as well as Windows Phone 7. The conversation digs into the differences in development for each platform (such as UI) as well as what can be identical, like back end services. Greg's advice - don't give up the language you love!

Carl and Richard talk to Jeff Wilcox about his work on 4th and Mayor. 4th and Mayor is a third-party Foursquare app currently only available for Windows Phone 7. Jeff discusses how he got into building the app initially and how it has become one of his favorite 'hobbies'. The conversation explores some of the challenges of building the application, dealing with shifting APIs and publication delays in the marketplace and how node.js helps on the backend for providing notifications and updates.

Carl and Richard talk to Josh Clark about next generation interfaces. Josh has spent a lot of time focused on multi-touch and the conversation explores how applications have evolved to take advantage of the interface. Josh also digs into how the tablet is fundamentally different for computing in terms of interface and use. From there the conversation digs further into the future with products like Kinect and other motion-based approaches to UI. We're at the beginning of this!