Windows Mobile 6 to Synchronize App Development

Windows Mobile 6 will be built using the same basic kernel of WM5, so in terms of fundamental architecture, the leap between versions is not analogous to the chasm crossing between Windows XP and Vista. However, WM6's display capability has been upgraded somewhat, with support for new standard handset screen sizes and resolutions such as WVGA: 800 x 480, which is close to what "high resolution" used to be for Windows 95.

On the other side of the equation, WM6 will support new and smaller screens, enabling Windows to enter into more entry-level smartphones. There is also, Microsoft's John Starkweather told us, support for variable resolutions, which will come in handy when small devices transform.

"You could have a traditional candy bar smart phone that is in portrait mode," said Starkweather, "and it might have a slide-out keyboard that then switches it to landscape mode. All of the material in order for developers to build an application once that works across any of those screen resolutions, is all available on our Web site, and you build it all within Visual Studio. There aren't any additional add-ons or things they need to worry about."

The last Pocket PC versions, whose upgraded form will now be called Windows Mobile Professional, already contain support for variable resolution. But once that support was added in, he said, only some developers updated their applications to take advantage of it, while others didn't. The new SDK will treat variably-sized windows more like...windows, whose variable size has been handled by Microsoft quite well ever since Windows/386.

What gets seen in those windows will be more like a PC document than, to use Microsoft's description, something you'd receive on your BlackBerry. As a series of side-by-side comparisons provided by Microsoft showed us, word processor text in Word Mobile comes complete with visible character formatting, so when compared to the output of a BlackBerry 8700, you're viewing the document, not just the text. A Nokia E61 fared admirably in representing documents, but would also lose accompanying graphics. And spreadsheet charts are dropped when imported into the BlackBerry and E61, while they do appear - albeit abbreviated - in the new Excel Mobile.

"It's very easy to recognize what we're trying to do," said Starkweather, "give you many of the same features that you have on a PC and bring them to a small screen in a way that you don't lose critical information."

With Windows Live joining the ranks of major Web services adopting more dynamic content and Asynchronous JavaScript, how will the Web browser in WM6 adapt to this dynamic content? As Starkweather admitted to us, WM6's Web browser is not IE7. Though it doesn't have to be considered one of those browsers that's best suited for ".mobi" content, either.

"The browser in Windows Mobile 6 is not IE7," he said, "and there never has been a desktop-to-mobile equivalent, but many of the same additions are there. We have done a lot of work on the AJAX side and on the JavaScript side, and some of the issues that we had before have been resolved."

WM6 browser developers have been looking through the content of the world's top 1000 trafficked Web sites, he told us, though perhaps they haven't worked their way completely down the list just yet. Their goal is to make Web content reasonably functional in WM6, though the responsibility for making Web content flow smoothly for PCs and handsets simultaneously, Starkweather believes, doesn't fall only at the feet of software developers.

"A couple of years ago, all the mobile vendors were telling people who built sites, 'Okay, you need to make mobile versions.' Then everyone in the industry said, 'Let's come up with this .mobi, separate mobile Internet for things.' The reality is, you can't point the blame in any one direction; everybody shares that. There's a variety of things everybody needs to do to make mobile browsing better than what it is today: Everybody in the industry needs to do work on their browsers. Sites can be more aware of mobile devices."

With WM6, the operating system has finally been upgraded to incorporate two very key new features into the kernel: the .NET Compact Framework and Mobile SQL Server. In WM5, developers had to ship these components as attached libraries, which added a lot of weight to their applications in memory. "Now we've rolled that right into the platform," remarked Starkweather, "and you can just immediately take advantage of that, so you can ship a pretty robust app that's actually lightweight in its total footprint."

As more smartphones integrate stereo headset capability, a new feature handset developers should take into account for WM6 is sound schemes. Starkweather said Microsoft actually developed its sound scheme system in a sort of psychological laboratory. "We actually have a lab where we've had sound professionals who, at one point, brought in people and hooked up these sensors all over their bodies. It kind of resembled someone going in for a massive surgical procedure. But it would actually see how people responded to certain sounds. So instead of having an alarm sound that jars you out of bed, why not something that...wakes you up pleasantly? Or a set of ringtones that are entertaining and fun, but also your senses respond to them differently?"

If Microsoft can't conquer the iPod plan for world domination with Zune, then perhaps it can put a dent in Apple's plans among more tech-savvy users who don't mind leveraging their pocket computer as a media device. As Starkweather told us, the WM6 handset is now the new standard-bearer for the PlaysForSure media format that media analysts thought the company had abandoned.

"You can fill as much storage as you can put on a Windows Mobile device, you can port all your Yahoo music over, your Rhapsody music over, your Napster music over, very, very easily," he told us.

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