MIX, is a gathering of developers, designers, UX experts and business professionals creating the most innovative and profitable sites on the web. This year’s event offers two days of keynotes streamed live and approximately 130 sessions available for download.
Sessions range from content strategy, usability and design topics to technical, code-based topics. You can watch the most important announcements that were done during the keynotes of day 1 and day 2 but here are some of the
highlights:
– Perhaps the biggest announcement at MIX11 was the release of IE10 Platform Preview 1, just a month after shipping IE9 RTW. Microsoft showed-off several amazing experiences built on IE9, including World’s Biggest Pac-man and htttp://foursquareplayground.com. All demo’s are available at http://ietestdrive.com
– New Opportunities and Capabilities for Windows Phone are coming later this year: IE9 for Windows Phone 7, multi-tasking, ringtone API, new languages support (including Dutch), … If you want to get started now: All Windows Phone Developper tools are free.
– Windows Azure: Windows Azure helps developers build, host and scale web applications through Microsoft datacenters. New capabilities announced include services that accelerate application performance and enable secure and open access to Web applications through popular identity providers, including Microsoft, Facebook and Google. There was also a specific announcement on Umbraco and it’s Azure support. Umbraco is a very popular open source, .NET-based CMS application that is powering over 85K sites today.
– WebMatrix updates: WebMatrix is a free web development tool from Microsoft that includes everything you need for website
development. Start from open source web applications, built-in web templates or just start writing code yourself. It’s all-inclusive, simple and best of all free.
– Silverlight 5: Microsoft also announced the immediate availability of the beta for Microsoft Silverlight 5, which provides advances in rich media and application development. New capabilities include Hardware Video Decode, for
enhanced video quality and performance. More information and a download of the beta are available at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.
– The Kinect for Windows SDK: a programming toolkit that will enable researchers and enthusiasts to access Kinect device
capabilities for computers running Microsoft Windows 7 will become available. Check out the website for the SDK.
Recommendation: Watch the Day 2 keynote and browse through all available sessions and pick out the ones you find
interesting !
Written by Tom Crombez
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