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Poll: Would it be easier to develop for one Microsoft OS?

October 14, 2011, 3:32 PM PDT

Takeaway: If Windows 8 is going to span multiple device types, would it be easier for you to work with one OS? Let us know by taking this poll.

With the Windows 8 Developer Preview, it has become clear that Microsoft wants one OS for tablets and desktops. Based on my experience using the Windows 8 Preview, traditional desktop apps really felt like they were given short shrift, and the touch metaphors for tablets did not translate well to the keyboard/mouse combination.

While it is a tough call to decide if you should develop Metro/WinRT apps or “legacy” applications moving forwards, Metro/WinRT does give us the opportunity to develop one application to span multiple devices. (Take the poll: Will you write Web, legacy, or Metro apps for Windows 8?) And if Microsoft decides to make Windows 8 its phone and game console OS, the market gets even wider.

Would it be easier to develop for one Microsoft OS?

J.Ja

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About Justin James

Justin James is the Lead Architect for Conigent.

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2 Votes

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I'm waiting on the comments on this one.

CharlieSpencer_Palmetto 14th Oct 2011

As a user, I'm leaning toward it being easier to use an OS that's tailored for a specific hardware platform. I eagerly await developer feedback.

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0 Votes

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Not for one version of windows, it doesn't....

Tony Hopkinson 19th Oct 2011

Seeing as we can't without a shedload of work support more than one version of windows, never mind multiple versions of windows backoffice and automation products, the idea that we could then wupport multiple platforms is and always has been a bad joke.

In fact it's bass ackwards, if we had cross platform development, cross version would be fairly trivial. The customer advantages of such a thing are 'obvious' the advantage to a vendor, somewhat more problematic.

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0 Votes

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It's going to depend on the application too

Realvdude 19th Oct 2011

and what functionality it is going to be expected to support on different devices.
I think the first obvious thing is screen real estate; from 20+", to 7-10", to 3-5" inches, is going to require many applications to have either limited functions, or different UI for each device. In all likelihood it will be a combination of both. As Justin points out with his comment about touch metaphors, there can also be an issue with user input.

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1 Vote

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not a big help if you already support different versions

xmetal Updated - 18th Oct 2011

Experience tells me that no matter what is done there will still be differences large enough to require specific fixes for each new version of Windows we choose to support. Developers of any large application that have had to rework it so it continues to install and run on the next version of Windows will be very aware of this testing and re-coding process. Given its complexity, Windows is amazingly backward compatible between releases (at least for the non-server versions of 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7) but that does not mean re-coding is not required (in some cases it is small, in others, as with XP --> Vista/7 it may be large, and in all cases the entire application should be regression tested). If you are writing a new app targeting just Windows 8 you might be happy (I'm not in that business). If you need to continue to support XP and up (ie: the Windows versions that are still supported by Microsoft) then Windows 8 is going to add to your testing and development pain, giving you more work to do, particularly if you have a dedicated testing team. Each version of Windows we add multiplies all testing by a factor, and we (in testing and dev) are very happy when we can drop a Windows version (which in our case is when Microsoft stops extended support).

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