My company is currently hosting a legacy application that contains a great deal of vbscript (client side browser and task automation ), classic asp and some vb 6. (I know pretty old) While we are in the works of rewriting a lot of it piecemeal. We will eventually need to support windows-8. Is there a list of issues or compatibility tips to look at in supporting windows 8?
Update
VB6 Running on Windows 8? partially answers mine as far as VB 6. But still concerned about vbscript.
vbscript support in windows 8 covers a good deal more
Everything that runs on Windows 7 should run on Windows 8 in desktop mode. None of the technologies you list will work in the new Metro style applications.
AS long as you have the VB6 runtime DLL it should be backwards compatible.
IIS7 and 7.5 both support Classic ASP pages, so you shouldn't have any problems. In the near future, you want to get those migrated to .NET.
Related
I have a site in ASP that I want to convert to a language that I can host on my Mac (I haven't found a practical way to host Classic ASP). The site connects to a MySQL database to pull data which is represented using Google Charts in a Dashboard.
I don't have experience with many other scripting languages, but am willing to learn. It seems that Web.py would be the easiest. Any suggestions?
I know it's a late answer but this caught my eye. Last year I moved a very complex aplication from ASP.NET to run on unix using the Mono framework.
I found Mono and the MonoDevelop editor to be solid tools, and had no problems running my code natively on linux and osx.
Now you're talking about classic ASP. Mono does have the opensource "xsp" and "xsp2" web servers built in... I believe xsp can handle classic ASP.
Using Mono bought us the 12 weeks I needed to go heads down and convert the entire application to Python using web.py. I agree it's a great framework, especially if you want a lot of control and not be bound by a templating based system like Django.
Regarding Stare's comment... if you do virtualization I'd strongly recommend VirtualBox. Parallels has burned all their bridges with me.
I would advice you to use a virtualization software on your mac to run an IIS (like VMware Fusion or Parallels). The you could easily develop ASP on your MAC.
Thats what I'm doing (Even .NET with Visual Studio) and it has been the best investment ever!
Some articles point to Windows 8 development being HTML-based instead of primarily using native code like C or C++ (as it has been until now) or .NET (as now, or even more so as it would have been in Longhorn, but never was.)
Is this true? Will the core APIs be accessible from Javascript then? What is the primary API / framework for Windows 8?
This is worth asking. When Windows 8 was demonstrated in June, a couple of comments by the presenter scared quite a few developers - or at least turned the Internet into panic mode. I'm surprised this question hasn't been asked here before.
The best article on the topic I have found is Windows 8 for Software Developers on Ars Technica.
The short answer is: it will remain the same.
The long answer is: it will remain the same, but several things will be added. You may want to pursue using those if you're willing to bet on new Microsoft technologies. One particularly interesting one is WinRT, which is a new object-oriented native code API exposed through COM, which is supposed to be a new version of the old flat Win32 API. Details are in the linked article.
It is very, very, very, very unlikely that anything that already exists, especially based on Win32 or .Net, would be removed. That means your existing programs written in .Net or native C++ or Delphi will continue to work fine. It is also unlikely that the primary development platform will be HTML. More likely is that HTML applications will be encourage for specific scenarios - perhaps touchscreen, kiosks and tablets.
I'd encourage you to read the article I linked to above - it covers this in far more detail than any answer here can.
There are three ways to develop for Windows 8, and they all access the same underlying API, the Windows Runtime.
Use C++ and call WinRT functions much like calling Win32 APIs back in the day (you know, yesterday)
Use C# or VB and call what appear to be .NET methods (but aren't)
Use Javascript and call WinRT functions
The UI is built with XAML using a pretty reasonable designer. More details are still coming out: check http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011 for videos with detailed coding demos. http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/BPS-1005 is not a bad starting point.
There are 3 language/framework combinations that are all equally supported:
C++ and XAML
C#/VB and XAML
JavaScript and CSS/HTML
All are first class ways to write Windows 8 Metro style applications. Windows Runtime provides direct access to each of these languages and so choice of development environment can be based on familiarity or feature set of the language and not on restricted availability.
Update: I forgot one: C++/Direct3D (for games).
The original quote, in the context of writing a tablet desktop weather gadget application, is that the application uses "our new developer platform, which is, uhh, it's based on HTML5 and JavaScript."
The demonstrator never said a gadget is the preferred type for applications (How many Vista sidebar gadget or Windows 7 desktop gadget have you written in your life? Even when you can write them in simple HTML!), or the platform is the preferred platform for desktop weather gadget applications (How many animation control have you add to your application with video playing requirement? It is THE control used by Windows Explorer to display video!).
Today, after spending a few minutes playing with Windows 8 developer preview, I found that you can use Expression Blend 5 to easily auto-generate metro-styled applications in HTML and Javascript. Also in Visual Studio you can create exactly looking applications in Silverlight. :)
I am very excited!!! Go Windows 8! :)
What are any cross-platform compatibility gotchas when running Silverlight 4 apps both on Mac and Windows?
I'd like to believe that any program whatsoever written for Silverlight will magically run the same on Mac and Windows, but I find it very hard to believe that this is the case.
I have run across a couple:
The WebBrowser and WebBrowserBrush work differently. On Macs, the underlying rendering engine is WebKit/Safari, while on Windows it's IE.
For out-of-browser apps, be careful about hard-coding any assumptions about the location of the My Documents folder. The documents folder to which OOB apps have access on macs is /Users/<username>/Documents.
Any COM+ automation/interop obviously won't work on the Mac at all.
Other than that, the runtime is pretty well-supported on the Mac and things do generally run the same between those platforms.
It is worth pointing out however that Microsoft seems to be changing their strategy with respect to pushing Silverlight as a cross-platform runtime. Silverlight 5 has a few features that almost certainly will be windows-only (P/Invoke comes to mind), and early reports are that Silverlight will find a home as the managed-code runtime for Windows 8.
We have a legacy vb6 application that uses an ancient windows media player component, msdxm.ocx, to embed ultrasound (pregnancy) video's in the medical record.
This doesn't work any more on Windows 7: it has a newer version of msdxm.ocx which cannot be referenced from vb6.
The newer version of the embeddable player is wmp.dll, so we are planning to upgrade the application to the newer version for Windows 7.
Before we have to find it all out the hard way by ourselves: does someone have experience with this upgrade from msdxm.ocx to wpm.dll? Is there a list of things to consider when upgrading? Or a table to convert constants and events from the first to the second?
I haven't seen anything listing their object models side-by-side or offering any "conversion."
The msdxm.ocx was really a scriptable IE object and should not have been used in VB6 programs. Lots of people did though. Windows 7 still has this OCX but starting with Vista (or perhaps IE7?) its interfaces changed in a way that seems to prevent use in VB6 programs.
You might want to try running a tool like ActiveX Documenter aginst working versions of both libraries to assist your efforts though. The RTF output documents might be a starting point for writing your own conversion guide.
msdxm.ocx should still work if you put the OCX file in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 and register it.
I've tried on my Win7 and it works on my music player legacy app.
Don't know about Windows 8 though, but it might still be the same, MS might changed folder again then.
Microsoft recently released tools and documentation for its new Phone 7 platform, which to the dismay of those who have a big C++ codebase (like me) doesn't support native development anymore. Although I've found speculation about this decision being reversed, I doubt it. So I was thinking how viable would be to make this codebase available to Phone 7 by adapting it to compile under C++/CLI. Of course the user interface parts couldn't be ported, but I'm not sure about the rest. Anyone had a similar experience? I'm not talking about code that does heavy low-level stuff - but there's a quite frequent use of templates and smart pointers.
c++/cli can theoretically be used with WPF/Silverlight using the trick of replacing the C# generated from the XAML with a macro definition that can be used inside the main class in a code behind file. I worked out this technique but haven't had the motivation to take it beyond theory - I'm quite happy mixing languages.
As far as using c++/cli in a pure safe mode for your logic code, this may still not be possible but I'd love to hear how someone goes trying it now. Whilst researching it for Silverlight back in 2008 I found this daunting silverlight forum comment:
I just gave Silverlight&C++ it a try by compiling the MSIL from my C++ project into a Silverlight-compatible DLL. The good news: it works, and you can call this code from a Silverlight project. The bad news: The C++ compiler apparently uses MSIL instructions that Silverlight disallows.
So, if you try this, even with the simplest of programs, you'll almost immediately get the exception "Operation could destabilize the runtime." To me, this makes it seem less likely that we'll see Silverlight for C++ soon, as the compiler will need to behave quite a bit differently.
You can generate verifiable managed code in C++/CLI using the /clr:safe option. The problem is that most of your normal c++ code will not compile with that option.
C# is currently the only supported language for WinPhone7.
I fully expect that MS will add support for VB and C++/CLI in the future too, but don't expect to open up the native-code kimono anytime soon.
Native code just has too many issues to overcome, specifically around security, reliability, etc. Managed code is FAR easier to statically verify and FAR easier to control while running.
If you're upset about porting C++ code to C#, just be glad MS didn't force you to have to move to Objective-C ;)
From our own experience, the proces of porting well-written C++ to C# actually takes a lot less effort than one might at first expect. Sure, there's a learning curve, but you have that with any port. We actually got so much benefit from porting our core app and data engines to C# that we re-tooled our entire team to code in C# and port our C# back to C++ where necessary rather than the other way around! So far, we've only ported two modules back to C++ and call our C# code from our native code via interop instead.
Again, remember, WinPhone is a brand new platform using best of breed, highly-productive, next-generation development tools and platforms. It is not your father's WinMo.
If support for C++ is something you find to be crucially important, then make sure MS know - (respectfully and professionally) state your position in the MSDN forums and at developer events near you.
Update1: 2012-12-17:
While native C++ still isn't officially supported for Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8 now supports native C++ code so you can more easily port your existing C++ codebase(s) to Windows Phone 8 (as well as Windows 8 and Windows desktop apps).
While there isn't 100% compatibility between the Windows8/Phone8 platforms and API's right now, I expect the two platforms to become increasingly integrated over the next couple of releases.
This is especially true now that one of the key barriers to closer cooperation between Windows and other groups at Microsoft recently left the company ;)
Update2: 4/15/2014:
As per the recent announcements at //BUILD/ 2014, you can now start building "universal" apps in C++ & XAML, C#/VB & XAML or JavaScript & HTML that will run on Windows 8.1, Windows Phone 8.1 and Xbox One! For more details on building Windows Phone 8.1 Universal Apps, read this article.
The whole development idea is built on Silverlight. I think you can add your managed dll written in C++ without any problem to this Silverlight project, but it could not use native code.
I am planning to install the tools on my machine tonight and will try this out.
It is fine if MS decides to leave the path and create something new, that is MS' decision. So let's face the facts. Silverlight is no success yet. MS lost significant share due to Apple, Android and RIM. Application developers simply have to evaluate the business case for their own applications and decide if they trust in a share gain of Windows 7 phone or not. For the company that I run, we decided not to support any more MS Windows phone 7, not because of this or the other technical reason, but just because that we don't believe in the return of our investment for the port.
We start supporting Apple, Symbian, Andoid and MeeGo in the future if we see a market success of this new platform. All support C/C++ and enable us to reuse our proven application cores. So why worry at all. Personal technology preferences should not be gating. If personal preferences worry, then I would kick MS out for their to me ugly looking UI.
Thomas
It is on the horizon finally!
So a survey sent to windows phone developers about their future
development preferences and XNA isn't mentioned once in the Survey (A
survey sent to windows phone developers - did I mention that)
They do however ask:
How would you prefer to use C++ in your mobile apps/games?
Develop apps/games that are C++ from top to bottom (UI, business logic, and platform
APIs)
Use C++ for business logic and then write platform abstraction layer
Use C++ for business logic use 3rd party runtime engines
I don’t want to use C++