Microsoft’s //build/ conference this week was quite a show.  Attendees were truly the lucky ones since they all received a tablet with the Windows 8 Developer Preview loaded on it.  Clearly, this is the best way to experience the new Metro styled apps so I’m looking forward to my colleagues returning to Infragistics with theirs on Monday (until then, I’m still running Windows 8 on my Mac in Boot Camp).

That being said, the conference was still great for those of us not lucky enough to be in Anaheim this week.  Microsoft’s streaming of the keynotes both of the first 2 days was nearly flawless in crisp HD quality.  The Windows 8 Developer Preview was made available to everyone, not just attendees, Tuesday night.  All of the sessions are available in HD for streaming or download over at Channel9.  The Windows Dev Center is chock full of guides and samples already during the conference.  All of this adds up to a non-attendee conference experience that has been very enjoyable.

Thank you Microsoft for putting on a great show!

The keynote for Day 1 of BUILD was broken up into four sections.  The first was titled “Windows 8 Experience”.  Julie Larson-Green (Corporate Vice President of Windows Experience) joined Steven Sinofsky up on stage to show off some of the new features in the Windows 8 experience. Although the demo was riddled with awkward moments (“let’s dock that over here on the left…(*it doesn’t dock*)…or not”) and various glitchy moments, there were a few features revealed that are pretty interesting.

Picture Password

Possibly one of the coolest (albeit, minor) features that was shown during the demo was something called Picture Password.  Picture Password allows a user to log into Windows 8 using a series of taps and swipes on a picture of their choosing.  In the demo, Julie Larson-Green’s login screen was a picture of her daughter.  To log in, she first tapped on her nose, then the lemonade and finally made a swipe gesture from the railing up to the glass.  This offers a quick and personalizable way to login securely.  Like much of Windows 8 it is very visually driven and touch friendly.

Lock Screen Information

In Windows 7 a locked screen doesn’t offer too much in the way of useful information.  Users of smartphones and tablets have become accustomed to the lock screen being a quick place to check the time, battery level, and even notifications or next appointment reminders.  The Windows 8 lock screen has all of these things as well as network indicators and a customizable background image.

Touch UI

Steven Sinofsky put it best when he said we’re going to want touch on all of our devices after using Windows 8 for a little while.  This is very true.  The team has put a lot of effort into designing for touch.  Touch targets are very large throughout the Metro experience and the very effective use of whitespace allows for easy comprehension of what can be interacted with.  While Windows 8 can be operated with a keyboard and mouse, it really shines when a touchscreen is in use.

These are just a few of the many new features in the Windows 8 experience.  Many more features were shown and even more will be discussed throughout the week in the various BUILD sessions.  I’ll have plenty more to say as I get further into using and developing for Windows 8.

In my next post, I’ll shed some light on the developer tools used to create Windows 8 including some surprises about my favorite tool, Expression Blend.

Microsoft put on a great show at the BUILD Day 1 Keynote.  If I had to sum up my reaction in one word it would probably be impressed.  Looking past some awkwardness in the first segment and “demo fail” moments here and there throughout, the keynote was really well thought out and well presented.  I think all in all, the keynote lived up to the hype.

The star of the show was Windows 8.  Steven Sinofsky broke down the keynote into four areas of focus:

• Windows 8 Experience (Metro start screen, picture password, personalization)
• Metro Style Platform and Tools (pick your language – JS, C, C++, C#, VB, XAML, Expression Blend support for JS/HTML, WinRT, Win App Store)
• Hardware Platform (connected standby, wide array of screen sizes)
• Cloud