Those interested in the next version of Windows can find a few clues to its contents in the descriptions of the Windows 7 sessions planned for next month’s PDC in Los Angeles. These include:
Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code
Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code. This session discusses the programming model, interoperability aspects with other implementations of WS-* protocols, and demonstrates various services and applications built using this API.
Windows 7: Extending Battery Life with Energy Efficient Applications
A single application can accidentally halve battery life for the average laptop. This session demonstrates best practices for designing energy efficient applications and shows utilities for diagnosing common application battery life problems. Learn about how Windows 7 makes it easier for developers to design energy-efficient applications which do not negatively impact mobile PC battery life.
Windows 7: Developing Multi-touch Applications
In Windows 7, innovative touch and gesture support will enable more direct and natural interaction in your applications. This session highlights the new multi-touch gesture APIs and explains how you can leverage them in your applications.
Windows 7: Writing Your Application to Shine on Modern Graphics Hardware
This session centers on the new enhancements to DirectX that enable Win32 applications harness the latest innovations in modern graphics hardware. Learn how to use the Windows 7 graphics infrastructure to enable your applications to display graphics content on different generations of graphics hardware, across multiple displays and on a remote desktop. Also learn how you can test your application for DPI awareness, what to look for, and how to make it provide the best experience on high-DPI displays.
Windows 7: Unlocking the GPU with Direct3D
Learn how to use the latest version of Direct3D to unlock the rendering and computing power of the GPU and to target the wide variety of hardware used by your customers. Learn techniques for integrating this high-performance 3D graphics pipeline within your Win32 applications.
Windows 7: Building Great Communications Applications
TBD
Windows 7: New Shell User Experience APIs
TBD
Windows 7: Benefiting from Documents and Printing Convergence
Discover how updating your printing infrastructure to XPS allows your application to seamlessly bridge across both electronic and physical paper and benefit from new document workflow and interoperability scenarios.
Windows 7: New APIs to Find, Visualize, and Organize
TBD
Developing for Microsoft Surface
This session introduces the newly available Microsoft Surface SDK. Hear about the unique attributes of Microsoft Surface computing, dive into vision-based object recognition and core controls like ScatterView, and learn how the Surface SDK aligns with the multi-touch developer roadmap for Windows 7 and WPF. Additionally, learn how you can become a part of the expanding partner ecosystem for Microsoft Surface and leverage your existing investments in WPF and Visual Studio to build engaging end user applications. Attendees will receive access to the Microsoft Surface SDK.
Windows 7: New Text and Graphics APIs
TBD
Windows 7: Designing Efficient Background Processes
Inefficient background activity has a dramatic impact on system performance, power consumption, responsiveness, and memory footprint. This session demonstrates best practices for background process design and dives deep on the capabilities of the Service Control Manager (SCM) and Task Scheduler. It also covers how to use new Windows 7 infrastructure to develop efficient background tasks.
Windows 7: Design Principles for Windows 7
Together, we can increase customer enthusiasm, satisfaction and loyalty by designing user experiences that are both desirable and harmonious. In this session we introduce the Windows User Experience Principles approach to shipping software. Along the way we share stories and lessons learned along the journey of designing the user model and experience for Windows 7, and leave you with a set of principles that you can apply as you build your applications for Windows.
Windows 7: Integrate with the Windows 7 Desktop Taskbar
This session dives into new APIs that enable integration with the latest Windows desktop features. Learn about new extensibility methods to surface your application's key tasks. Discover how enhancements to the taskbar, Start Menu, thumbnails and their desktop elements provide new ways for you to delight your users. This talk is a must for application developers who wan to provide the best user experience for their applications on Windows 7.
Windows 7: Welcome to the Windows 7 Desktop
The Windows desktop is evolving--is your application ready to evolve also? This session sets the stage for exciting enhancements to the taskbar, Start Menu, and other desktop elements.
Windows 7: New APIs for Building Context-Aware Applications
TBD
Windows 7: Deploying Your Application with Windows Installer (MSI) and ClickOnce
If you are a developer involved in the creation of application deployment packages using Windows Installer (MSI) or ClickOnce, this session is for you. Learn how you can take advantage of new features in Windows 7 to shorten application installation times, reduce UAC prompts, write less custom code, take less time to write installations for complex packages, and much more!
Windows 7: Deep Dive: What's New with user32 and comctl32 in Win32
Hear about the lowest level user interface components (user32, comctl32) that appear in almost every Windows application. Learn about "recent" changes and enhancements in these subsystems, plus be subjected to some philosophical musings on how foreground activation is like love. (No really, it will actually help you write better software.)
Windows 7: Programming Sync Providers That Work Great with Windows
Learn how you can enable your application to synchronize with other applications that use the Microsoft Sync Framework. This session covers how to implement sync for contacts and other PIM data, how to package sync providers for distribution and installation, and how to register sync provider for use on Windows.
Windows 7: Using Instrumentation and Diagnostics to Develop High Quality Software
Learn how to enhance the quality and supportability of your software during developing and deployment using the Windows 7 instrumentation and diagnostic platforms. This session focuses on key aspects of the event and performance counter infrastructures, and discusses best practices around adding instrumentation to your code. We introduce the new Windows PowerShell-based diagnostic platform, and how it enables you to easily monitor multiple data sources to empower the end user and IT pro to detect and resolve software problems.
Windows 7: Best Practices for Developing for Windows Standard User
The application development requirements in Windows 7 for UAC-compatibility are exactly the same as in Windows Vista: Vista-compatible applications will interact with UAC in Windows 7 without any modification. No new APIs are required or provided. The UAC improvements for Windows 7 will impact the user's experience but not the application interface. Logo requirements regarding UAC compatibility are the same as in Vista.
Windows 7: Writing World-Ready Applications
This session centers on globalization features for Windows 7, including sorting and string comparison, locale support, and coverage for new languages, with an eye to helping developers extend their applications to a global user base. This session introduces the Extended Linguistic Services API, the next step in the evolution of globalization support for Windows developers. This session also covers the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) technology inside Windows 7 and .NET, and walks you through an end-to-end look at how to make your application MUI-enabled so that you can easily take your application worldwide and extend your customer base into new language markets.
The number of TBDs in there is sort of interesting. My guess is that this is a secrecy thing, though the general language used in some other session descriptions suggests its possible to describe something without describing it at all, so why not just do the same for all of these?