Microsoft Launches Everything at Build Developer Conference 2015: Day 1

First day of Microsoft’s Build Developer Conference comes to an end, here’s a roundup of the most exciting news the company announced on Wednesday [29 March, 2015].

Microsoft will allow Developers to bring their Android and iOS apps to Windows 10

After months of rumors, Microsoft announced on Wednesday, that will allow developers to bring their existing code to Windows 10. Android and iOS developers will be able to port their apps and games directly to Windows universal apps, and the company detailed this with two new software development kits on stage at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco. Android developers can “reuse” Java and C++ code for Windows, and for iOS developers they’ll be able to take advantage of their existing Objective C code.

This means Microsoft users will eventually be able to run Android apps on Windows 10 phones, tablets and windows 10 desktops as well. It will cast a wide net to non-Windows developers as a part of an effort to bring more apps over to the platform. The app company King used the Microsoft’s tools to bring Candy Crush Sage to the Windows Phone without many modifications. Microsoft also announced that web developers will now be able to bring their web apps and traditional Windows desktop apps to the Windows Store.

Terry Myerson, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President of Operating Systems, said at Build developer conference that “Windows phones will include an Android subsystem.”

Turning Windows 10 phones into Desktops

During its Build 2015 keynote, Microsoft also announced that new Windows 10 feature it’s calling Continuum for Phones. It gives the ability to use your smartphones running Microsoft’s latest OS to transform into desktop PCs — it’s not the full desktop experience — but it’s close to it — when connected to larger screens. In contrast to Apple’s “Continuity,” which aims to make moving between phone, tablet and desktop seamless, and this is an even better example of what’s possible when developers go along with Microsoft’s universal apps plan.

Microsoft is giving developers the tools to create software that runs across PCs, smartphones, tablets, convertibles and Xbox. Apps can automatically adapt to the screen size they’re running on, and Continuum for Phones is a showcase of that unity. Joe Belfiore, Microsoft Corporate Vice President at Operating Systems Group, demonstrated apps like Excel and Photos running in a traditional desktop view with the Windows 10 smartphone hooked up to a monitor. Joe also showed that content can be copied from phone-centric apps like Messaging and pasted into desktop apps.

“What we’re trying to show here today, is our unique vision for phones and enabling them to scale up to a full PC-like experience,” said Joe Belfiore. The announcement is apparent that Microsoft sees the future as converging to a single device in your pocket. You can perform all of your computing from your phone, and you might not need as many devices as well.

Spartan: Windows 10’s new web browser is called Microsoft Edge

We knew that Internet Explorer was dead. Project Spartan, Microsoft’s Windows 10 new browser is called Microsoft Edge.

It is Internet Explorer’s replacement. The minimalistic “chrome-free” web browser is designed to put websites up front and reveal of everything else, including menus and icons that could potentially slow page loads.

Features:

• Microsoft Edge has built-in Cortana support. When you type certain keywords into the address bar or select topics on a website, it will be serving up relevant information like weather, maps and other chunks in a window pane.
• It has built-in note-taking and sharing features.
• It will support extensions that are designed for Firefox and Chrome with just a few modifications.
• The Edge design focuses on simplicity and minimalism.
• Microsoft Edge comes with rendering engine is called EdgeHTML.

Over the years, Internet Explorer has evolved into a slow, outdated and bug-ridden web browser. IE 11 is pretty decent, but it was too late. Already most users jumped ship to Firefox and Google Chrome.

Now Windows 10 with Microsoft Edge, Microsoft finally has a clear strategy for winning back users who turned their backs on Windows 8 and IE.

Microsoft launches Visual Studio Code for Windows, Mac and Linux

At its Build developer conference, Microsoft unveiled its first version of Visual Studio for Mac and Linux. Visual Studio Code is a lightweight cross-platform code editor for writing modern web and cloud applications that will run on Windows, OS X and Linux. Visual Studio Code is available for free, you can download from VisualStudio.com.

This marks the first time that Microsoft offers developers a true cross-platform code editor. Since the full Visual Studio for Windows-only, but this announcement shows the company’s commitment to supporting other platforms.
The company said that Visual Studio Code will help complete the Visual Studio product family and is “incredibly lightweight.”

Microsoft demos Windows 10 apps on HoloLens

At its Build conference, Microsoft provided some new details on its HoloLens virtual reality device it announced back in January. Microsoft’s Alex Kipman said on stage, the hardware has improved by a couple of orders of magnitude due to advances in sensor, mobile processing, computer power and affordability.

The company showed a video about its HoloLens hardware, giving us a closer look at its initial headset for the mixed-reality technology.

Microsoft showed a Windows video app that you can simply control with your voice. He using the command “follow me,” the selected panel followed him as he walked to another part of the apartment.

The below demo video showed how to designers can collaborate remotely while walking through the same holographic building plans.

The company showing how medical students can study the human anatomy holographically, from organs to bones to fully formed person.

The Microsoft also showed off how the hologram can be animated to offer more detail on functions of the human body.

.NET distribution for Mac and Linux

Last November, Microsoft said that it would bring some of the core features of its .NET platform — which has traditionally been Windows-only — to Mac and Linux. Now at its Build developer conference, Microsoft announced its first full preview of the .NET Core runtime for Linux and Mac OS X, allowing developers to build cloud applications on multiple platforms.

Microsoft is making the release candidate of the full .NET framework for Windows available to developers on Wednesday. Microsoft also previously said that .NET core will be open sourced for developers on Github, which is unprecedented. As the company previously noted a short technical description of what you can do with .NET core and how it fits into the platform.