Windows 8 adoption slows; boost sought with update

Windows 8's user share growth slowed significantly in July, hinting at further trouble for the struggling operating system, new statistics from an analytics company show.

The operating system's user share grew by the smallest month-over-month amount since its launch in October 2012, said Web measurement vendor Net Applications. At the end of July, Windows 8 accounted for 5.9 percent of all systems running Windows, an increase of three-tenths of a percentage point compared to June.

From November 2012 through July 2013, Windows 8's user share grew by an average of six-tenths of a point each month, with lows in February and April of five-tenths and a high in June of nine-tenths of a percentage point.

July's increase was about a third of June's.

The slowdown is most likely tied to the continuing problems of the personal computer industry, which has seen five consecutive quarters of contracting shipments. The consumer side of PC sales has been especially hard hit, as customers opt instead for tablets in lieu of new PCs, either letting their current machines age even more or forgoing purchases entirely.

By IDC's estimates, PC shipments fell 11 percent in the second quarter compared to the same period the year before. Consumer sales have tanked even more, as businesses accounted for the majority of purchases.

Windows 8 has been hit particularly hard by the downturn in consumer computer sales, since enterprises have been hesitant to migrate, leaving only individuals and very small businesses willing to take the plunge and run the radically-changed OS.

Microsoft hopes to turn around Windows 8's fortunes with the free Windows 8.1 upgrade, planned for launch this year. Windows 8.1 is to hit "release to manufacturing," or RTM, a Microsoft label for a finished product, later this month.

Meanwhile, Windows XP—the operating system slated for retirement in April 2014—continued to resist elimination: XP's July user share was 40.6 percent, the same as in June.

Net Applications measures operating system share by tracking unique visitors to some 40,000 websites operated by its customers.

Twitter tosses power users a bone in Windows 8 app update

Windows 8 socialites rejoice! Twitter recently beefed up its Windows 8 app, extending functionality for power users and adding the ability to follow specific people or lists from the Start Screen.

Available now in the Windows Store, the biggest addition to Twitter for Windows 8 is the ability to add multiple accounts. Most Twitter fans won’t have any use for the feature, but power users will welcome the upgrade, as will anyone who needs to maintain separate personal and professional accounts.

To sign-in with multiple accounts, you just swipe down from the top or bottom of your tablet, or right-click on a PC. In the drop-down bar that appears, tap the user icon in the top right corner. This will switch the icon to a plus sign and a second tap brings up an account credentials entry window, allowing you to add another account. You can also sign-up for a new account from this page, but in my tests, adding a new account hung every time I tried to choose a Twitter username.

Switching between accounts is as simple as swiping down or right-clicking again, and then tapping on the account you want to use.

The latest Twitter update also brings Twitter lists to the Windows 8 app, and the ability to pin user profiles or Twitter lists to the Start Screen. Pinning is a great addition if you don’t want to miss any updates from a specific users or set of users. Twitter lists aren’t confined to your own lists either; you can pin any Twitter list you can find to your start screen.

Pinned lists and profiles are relegated to small tile status on the Start screen.
Say, for example, you wanted to pin blogger Robert Scoble’s Tech Pundits list. You’d navigate to Scoble’s list inside the Twitter app, swipe down or right-click, and then select the option to “Pin to Start” in the lower left corner. Pinned profiles and lists appear as small tiles with live updates. The only downside is you don’t have the option to upgrade your pinned tiles to a more reading-conducive larger-sized tile.

Twitter’s new update for Windows 8 also addresses some bugs and overall performance issues, such as faster response times. Many users posting comments on the Windows Blog say the new update has fixed their stability issues that were causing numerous crashes with the previous version of Twitter. Users have also noticed several unannounced features such as user tagging when composing tweets, improve responsiveness to touch, and more frequent feed updates.

It’s good to see Twitter continuing to update its Windows 8 app as it is one of the few truly useful social networking apps available right now in the Windows Store.

FCC looks to update school connectivity fund

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has voted to take the first step toward revamping its program that subsidizes Internet connections to schools and libraries, with the focus in the future on big bandwidth instead of simple connectivity.

The FCC on Friday voted to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, focused on updating the 16-year-old E-Rate program. E-Rate, with a US$2.25 billion annual budget, has helped bring Internet service to nearly all U.S. schools, but the program is outdated, commissioners said.

About 80 percent of U.S. schools and libraries say they don't have enough bandwidth, Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education, told commissioners at Friday's FCC meeting. Schools need higher bandwidth to deliver modern technology-focused education, she said.

Commissioners agreed. "We are quickly moving from a world where what matters is connectivity to what matters is capacity," Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said.

Rosenworcel listed many other countries that have programs focused on bringing new technology into classrooms. "We are at a moment when the world is trying to out-educate us," she said.

The NPRM asks several questions on how to update the E-Rate program, but commissioners said the changes are likely to focus on increasing broadband capacity, increasing purchasing power for schools, and streamlining the application process.

A focus on increased capacity and new technologies is important, said Commissioner Ajit Pai. In recent years, about a quarter of E-Rate's budget has supported telephone service to schools and libraries, he said.
A streamlined application process is also needed, he added. In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars of E-Rate money has gone unspent partly because of the complicated application process. A simplified process will mean more dollars going to help students, instead of paying advisors to help fill out forms, added Pai, who laid out his vision for a new E-Rate program in a speech this week.

The FCC's action earned praise from several U.S. lawmakers and technology trade groups.

"We must provide our schools and libraries with next-generation Internet connectivity so that they benefit from the rapid advances in digital education technology," Senator John "Jay" Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said in a statement. "The global economy demands an increasingly educated workforce with higher skills and strong backgrounds in science, math and technology."

Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, held a hearing this week in which he called for an update to the E-Rate program.

F.C.C. Backs Plan to Update a Fund That Helps Connect Schools to the Internet

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission voted on Friday to overhaul and possibly expand its E-Rate program, a $2.3 billion effort to provide schools and libraries with up-to-date telecommunications service and equipment, including high-speed Internet connections.


A proposal approved by the commission, which will be made available for public comment before a final version is completed, calls for funds to be moved away from outdated uses like paying for paging service and long-distance phone calls and into areas that will accelerate digital literacy, like Wi-Fi connections within a school or library.


The proposal also calls for measures that would drive down the cost of services, like adoption of purchasing consortiums, and the streamlining of administrative requirements — among them, shifting much of the required paperwork for applicants to electronic filings. “One of the biggest obstacles to seizing the opportunities of digital learning in America is inadequate bandwidth at our schools and libraries,” Mignon L. Clyburn, the F.C.C. chairwoman, said before voting. “Simply put, they need faster high-capacity connections and they need them now.”


Just last month in a visit to a North Carolina middle school, President Obama set a goal of connecting 99 percent of school students to the Internet through high-speed broadband and high-speed wireless within five years.


“To get there, we have to build connected classrooms that support modern teaching — investments we know our international competitors are already making,” Mr. Obama said on Friday.


The E-Rate fund has financed Internet connections to more than 95 percent of American public school classrooms, while only 14 percent were connected when E-Rate was established in 1997.


In 2010, however, an F.C.C. study found that more than half of the schools and libraries reported that their Internet connections were too slow to meet their needs. For the coming school year, libraries and schools requested more than $4.9 billion to pay for connections and equipment, more than twice the size of the fund.

“We fail our students if we expect digital-age learning to take place at near dial-up speeds,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, an F.C.C. commissioner. “Contrast this with efforts under way in some of our world neighbors. They are pouring resources into these subjects, into schools and connectivity.”

The E-Rate program has been faulted for inadequately allocating money in the fund, which is provided through a tax on consumers’ phone bills, a monthly charge between 50 cents and $1.


Commissioner Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the five-member commission (where two seats are vacant), criticized allocations of the fund, saying an average of only $1.8 billion had been spent in each of the last 10 years, leaving more than $5 billion unused in the E-Rate account.


Mr. Pai also complained that the program placed greater emphasis on the wrong services.


“E-Rate today prioritizes long-distance telephone calls and getting phone service to a school’s bus garage over wiring up a classroom,” Mr. Pai said in a speech this week at the American Enterprise Institute. “How can it be that E-Rate in the last few years committed about $600 million, more than one-quarter of its annual budget, to support voice telephone services while at the same time denying eight out of 10 applicants’ funding for connecting classrooms?”


At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing this week, both Republicans and Democrats spoke favorably of the fund, although some quoted Mr. Pai’s observations in a warning of reckless spending. 

FCC looks to update school connectivity fund

The Federal Communications Commission has voted to take the first step toward revamping its program that subsidizes Internet connections to schools and libraries, with the focus in the future on big bandwidth instead of simple connectivity.

The FCC on Friday voted to launch a notice of proposed rulemaking, or NPRM, focused on updating the 16-year-old E-Rate program. E-Rate, with a $2.25 billion annual budget, has helped bring Internet service to nearly all U.S. schools, but the program is outdated, commissioners said.

About 80 percent of U.S. schools and libraries say they don’t have enough bandwidth, Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education, told commissioners at Friday’s FCC meeting. Schools need higher bandwidth to deliver modern technology-focused education, she said.

Commissioners agreed. “We are quickly moving from a world where what matters is connectivity to what matters is capacity,” Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said.

Rosenworcel listed many other countries that have programs focused on bringing new technology into classrooms. “We are at a moment when the world is trying to out-educate us,” she said.

The NPRM asks several questions on how to update the E-Rate program, but commissioners said the changes are likely to focus on increasing broadband capacity, increasing purchasing power for schools, and streamlining the application process.

A focus on increased capacity and new technologies is important, said Commissioner Ajit Pai. In recent years, about a quarter of E-Rate’s budget has supported telephone service to schools and libraries, he said.
A streamlined application process is also needed, he added. In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars of E-Rate money has gone unspent partly because of the complicated application process. A simplified process will mean more dollars going to help students, instead of paying advisors to help fill out forms, added Pai, who laid out his vision for a new E-Rate program in a speech this week.

The FCC’s action earned praise from several U.S. lawmakers and technology trade groups.

Grant GrossSen. Jay Rockefeller
“We must provide our schools and libraries with next-generation Internet connectivity so that they benefit from the rapid advances in digital education technology,” Senator John “Jay” Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said in a statement. “The global economy demands an increasingly educated workforce with higher skills and strong backgrounds in science, math and technology.”

Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, held a hearing this week in which he called for an update to the E-Rate program. 

Remote access a priority for latest Oracle patch update

The vulnerabilities that allow for remote unauthenticated access should be a priority for administrators applying the latest Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU) say security experts.
This means businesses will need to focus on applying more than 40% of the 89 updates that cover most of Oracle’s product groups.

Java is on a different update cycle of every four months, but it will be migrated to the same schedule from October 2013. 

Oracle’s flagship product, the Oracle database, gets six updates this month, with four being remotely exploitable.
The XML parser vulnerability, which is remotely accessible but requires authentication, has the highest Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of the Critical Patch Update, scoring nine on a scale of 10, indicating high criticality.

“One mitigating factor is that Oracle databases are typically not exposed the internet,” said Wolfgang Kandek, chief technology officer at security firm Qualys.

Oracle’s MySQL database has 18 vulnerabilities addressed, including two that are remotely accessible and have a CVSS score of 6.8.

“MySQL is often found exposed to the internet, even though this is not considered best practice. If you use MySQL in your organisation, it makes sense to run a perimeter scan to collect information on all databases externally exposed,” said Kandek.

The Oracle Sun product line has 16 updates, with eight being remotely accessible. The highest CVSS score is 7.8.

“If you have Sun Solaris servers in your organisation, review these patches and start with the machines on your perimeter and DMZ,” said Kandek.

Oracle’s Fusion Middleware has a total of 21 vulnerabilities and includes many components that are typically found on the internet, such as the Oracle HTTP server.
Of the 21 vulnerabilities, 16 are accessible remotely, with a maximum CVSS score of 7.5. “Again, a perimeter scan is helpful, or even a quick query to Shodan, which shows more than 500,000 machines with Oracle’s HTTP out on the internet,” said Kandek.

The highest CVSS score is 7.5, which should not be ignored, said Ross Barrett, senior manager of security engineering at Rapid7.

Fusion contains the Outside-In product that is used in Microsoft Exchange for document viewing. Outside-In has, in the past year, caused two updates in Microsoft’s email product to address the vulnerabilities in MS12-058 and MS12-080.

According to Kandek, recent research by Will Domann shows that Outside-In has the potential for more vulnerabilities. He recommends turning off the WebReady feature, which means that users have to download the documents to the local disk for viewing.

Other product areas with security updates include Peoplesoft, E-Business, Virtualisation and Solaris, which has been hit with two remote denial of service (DoS) attacks, plus a couple of local elevation of privilege issues, said Barrett.

This free Computer Weekly special report on Oracle gives an independent view of the challenges facing Oracle, its financial performance, the services it offers, its place in the IT market and its future strategy.
“With such a diverse range of products in this quarter’s patch, it's hard to tackle these from top to bottom. I recommend patching any vulnerable Oracle Database Server instances as soon as possible, and don’t neglect the stability or integrity of the Solaris deployment,” he said.

Kandek said dealing with the large sizes of the Oracle CPUs would be easier if a good map of the currently installed software exists.

“In any case, we recommend addressing vulnerabilities on systems that are internet accessible first, such as Fusion Middleware, the Solaris operating system and MySQL,” he said.

According to Craig Young, a security researcher at Tripwire, Oracle has acknowledged and fixed 343 security issues so far this year.

“In case there was any doubt, this should be a big red flag to users that Oracle’s security practices are simply not working,” he said. “The constant drumbeat of critical Oracle patches is more than a little alarming, particularly because the vulnerabilities are frequently reported by third parties.”

This month’s CPU credits 18 different researchers coming from more than a dozen different companies, he added.

OneNote MX update makes app more business friendly

Microsoft pushed out an update for OneNote MX—the OneNote app for Windows 8—which makes the app more useful for business users. The new OneNote MX can connect to OneNote notebooks on Office 365.
OneNote MX is a great tool, but it has had limited functionality for business users. The issue is that OneNote MX connects by default to the SkyDrive associated with the Microsoft account used to log in to Windows 8. That’s fine for personal use, but businesses prefer that data be created and stored where it can be centrally managed and shared, rather than being spread across multiple personal SkyDrive accounts.
The update for OneNote MX enables users to connect to OneNote notebooks stored in an Office 365 SkyDrive account.
OneNote has become a crown jewel of the Microsoft Office suite, and it has led the way in blazing cross-platform trails for Office. Long before Microsoft finally made Office Mobile for iPhone, OneNote was available as a standalone app for both iOS and Android.

The radial menu is an innovative tool that makes OneNote uniquely suited for a touchscreen.
When Microsoft launched Windows 8, with its split-personality interface, OneNote was the first of the Microsoft Office tools developed by Microsoft as a Windows 8 app. Microsoft Office, and the traditional OneNote application run in the desktop mode in Windows 8 Pro, and Microsoft created Office RT apps that run in desktop mode on Windows RT devices. OneNote MX, however, runs natively in the Windows 8 Metro interface.
OneNote MX is uniquely suited for touchscreen interaction. The radial menu developed by Microsoft makes it simple to navigate options, work with information, and change formatting for OneNote notebook entries. Microsoft has made all of the Microsoft Office tools more “touch-friendly” than previous versions, but they pale in comparison to OneNote MX.
Aside from enabling OneNote MX to connect with Office 365 accounts, the update also makes it easier to get the virtual keyboard out of the way. When you’re not actually using the virtual keyboard, you don’t want it taking up half of the display. You can simply tap any empty space to make the virtual keyboard disappear, and tap again to bring it back.

The radial menu still works just as smoothly with a mouse or touchpad, but the traditional OneNote is not as simple to navigate or use with a touchscreen display. As Microsoft continues down the Windows 8 path, I expect we’ll see the rest of the Microsoft Office applications converted to Windows 8 Metro-esque versions like OneNote MX. It just makes sense. 

Dropbox update eases worries over offline access to business data

As every hapless teenager stranded in a dank cabin in the psychopath-ridden woods can tell you, your cell phone is useless if you don't have a signal. For business users, the stakes are just as high: Travel to a farflung corner of the world to meet with clients and "zero bars" is a distinct possibility. And God help you if you have to take a plane ride anywhere and aren't lucky enough to get on the handful of jets with onboard Wi-Fi.

While being unable to make calls, send emails, or check the news is certainly an inconvenience, the problem is compounded if you rely on cloud services to actually get work done. Storing data online and running apps that rely on a live Internet connection mean you can abruptly turn into an unproductive layabout when wireless service isn't available.

Hybrid cloud services have started to address the issue, and Dropbox has been leading the charge. Files stored via Dropbox are automatically stored both in the cloud and on your local machine. Changes made to one file are copied in the background when a connection is available, and synced up with all devices running the Dropbox software. Google Drive, SugarSync, and many other cloud storage services work about the same way.

That's a start, but it only addresses the very beginning of the problem. A growing number of services are designed to work exclusively over the Web, and if you're not connected, they simply don't run at all. (Think Facebook.) Well then, why not enable these apps and services to work in offline, hybrid mode, the way Dropbox works? Evernote does it. So does Gmail; it doesn't include all its features from top to bottom, but what it offers is good enough for most users.

Offline support is uncommon because coding this kind of software isn't easy. There are myriad issues to consider: What happens if you change a file in two places before re-syncing? How do you manage the unavoidable data file differences between, say, an iPhone and a Windows 8 PC? And good luck when you bring multiple users into the mix. Imagine five offline users working on a single document simultaneously, then trying to sync en masse. Nightmare. Who wants to try to code all of this stuff themselves?

Well, with the new API releases the company put out this week as part of its DBX developers conference, Dropbox has told the developers of the world that they don't have to. Without getting too far into the weeds, the new APIs mean that third-party developers can now use Dropbox to store program data instead of having to stash it on the user's hard drive or build their own cloud service to store it. That means you'll be able to work on a spreadsheet, draw a picture, or play a game on one device… then pick right back up where you left off on another, whether you're online or off.

With 100,000 apps already supporting Dropbox in some fashion, this isn't a pipe dream. Universal access to data from any device and robust offline support have the potential not just to revolutionize the way we work but to become expected, almost required components of any piece of software we use. As Dropbox CEO Drew Houston told TechCrunch, "Every app is going to be designed this way in the future and we wanted to get started on that now.” I can't wait.

Internet Explorer will get critical update next week

Microsoft's monthly patch release for July will cover seven security issues, six of which could be remotely exploited by an attacker.

The company publishes an advisory in advance of its patch date, which is the second Tuesday of the month, so administrators knows what products will be affected. It does not describe the vulnerabilities, however, until the security fixes are released.

The critical vulnerabilities are in the Windows OS, .NET Framework, Silverlight, Office, Visual Studio, Lync, and Internet Explorer (IE). A seventh bulletin, ranked as "important," affects Microsoft's Windows Defender security software.

The most important bulletin addresses IE, wrote Wolfgang Kandek, CTO for Qualys. It affects IE versions six through 10 on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Server 2003, Server 2008, and RT.

Microsoft will also fix a zero-day vulnerability revealed by security researcher Tavis Ormandy, Kandek wrote. The problem concerns a memory management problem that is essentially a zero-day vulnerability after an exploit was added to the Metasploit penetration testing tool, he wrote.

The company described the vulnerability, CVE-2013-3660, as a "a publicly known issue in the kernel-mode drivers component of Windows."

Kandek wrote that the patch day will be a bit of work for desktop and server administrators. "All in all, a normally sized Patch Tuesday, but with a large number of critical issues," he wrote.

The bulletins will be released at 10 a.m. PDT on July 9.

Follow me on Twitter @sajilpl

Microsoft CRM update to focus on marketing, mobility and usability

Microsoft is preparing to launch a new version of its Dynamics CRM (customer relationship management) software that will include improved mobile applications and integrations with Yammer, Skype and the company's MarketingPilot marketing automation software.

The Dynamics CRM 2013 release, which encompasses both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, is set for the fourth quarter, according to a Microsoft representative.

MarketingPilot is used to develop and manage advertising campaigns on multiple channels, as well as keep track of spending. Microsoft purchased the company in response to industry trends, said Fred Studer, general manager of Dynamics product marketing. "We think marketing and sales have both evolved and become more blurred with regard to how they work together," he said.

Salesforce.com, Oracle and other CRM vendors have also made acquisitions in the marketing automation arena.

Meanwhile, the core CRM application is also set to get some improvements, including a more flexible user framework that allows business processes to be tweaked on the fly depending on what a customer needs.

For example, a transportation company representative may receive a call from an individual who they initially believed wanted spot pricing, said Jujhar Singh, general manager for CRM program management. But the representative may realize that the customer actually wants a "much more involved" arrangement, and can take steps within the CRM application to accommodate them, Singh said.

Microsoft also plans to deliver new CRM mobile applications for the iPad and Windows 8 tablets. Windows 8, iPhone and Android phone applications will also be released this calendar year.

In addition, Microsoft is promising "seamless" integration of its Lync and Skype communications software with Dynamics CRM.

While Microsoft is not planning to announce the full details until next week, the company has "completely rethought" licensing and pricing for Dynamics, with changes to include "soft bundles with things like Yammer and Office 365," Studer said.

Meanwhile, along with the Dynamics CRM launch later this year, Microsoft will also start a limited beta program for its Netbreeze social monitoring software, which is also the result of a recent acquisition.

Microsoft is hoping to set itself apart from the likes of Salesforce.com's Radian6 social monitoring software, which customers much purchase separately. "We will democratize social," Studer said. Any customer with a Dynamics CRM license will get access to Netbreeze at no additional charge, according to Studer.

Overall, Microsoft is hoping the new features will keep existing Dynamics CRM customers happy and attract new ones in an increasingly competitive market.

Gartner recently reported that Salesforce.com overtook SAP as the industry's largest CRM vendor, with Microsoft coming in fourth after Oracle.

As of Microsoft's third fiscal quarter ended March 31, it had 39,000 Dynamics CRM customers, spanning 3 million users, Studer said.

Microsoft's Visual Studio update addresses the connected app

Microsoft kicked off its Build conference in San Francisco this week by releasing a preview of the next version of its Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment), as well as updates to other development tools.

 

“If you are interested in building a modern, connected application, and are interested in using modern development lifestyles such as ‘agile,’ we have a fantastic set of tools that allows you to take advantage of the latest platforms,” said S. “Soma” Somasegar, corporate vice president in Microsoft’s developer division, in an interview with IDG News Service.

 

Somasegar noted, for instance, how the new Visual Studio provides more tools to help developers build applications for Windows 8.1, a beta of which is also being released this week.

 

Microsoft is releasing a preview of Visual Studio 2013, the final version of which is due to be released by the end of the year. The company is also releasing Visual Studio 2012 update 3, and a preview of the .NET 4.5.1 runtime framework.

 

Many of the new features in Visual Studio 2013 address the kinds of mobile, connected applications that developers need to build these days, Somasegar said. For instance, it provides new tools to profile energy and memory usage, both of which must be considered when building applications for mobile devices. It also includes a new tool for providing metrics on how responsive an app is for users.

 

Visual Studio 2013 is also tackling the challenge of writing an application that relies on cloud services in some fashion. Microsoft is providing interface from Visual Studio to its Azure Mobile Services, which synchronizes data and settings for a program used across multiple Windows devices.

 

Visual Studio 2013 itself will also be easier to use across multiple devices. It will allow developers to define environmental preferences, or the settings and customizations for their own versions of Visual Studio, that then can be applied to other copies of the IDE. Microsoft can store these environmental settings in the cloud, so they can be downloaded to any computer connected to the Internet.

 

“People go through a lot of trouble to set up their environment. Once they go to a different machine, they must go through the same hoopla again to get to recreate the environment they are comfortable with,” Somasegar said. “Once you set up your environment, we store those settings in the cloud, and as you go to another machine, you won’t have to recreate your environment.”

 

Another new feature, called Code Lens, provides “a class of information that, as a programmer, has been historically hard to get.” It can show, for example, which part of a program is calling a particular method and what other methods that method calls. Visual Studio 2013 also expands its support for C++ 2011, the latest version of the C++ language. Visual Studio’s feature for debugging the user’s own code (as opposed to running a debugger against the entire set of code) now works with C++ 2011.

 

Beyond Visual Studio, Microsoft is building more developer hooks into the next release of its browser, Internet Explorer 11, which is expected to be released with Windows 8.1.

 

Microsoft has completed “a major revamp” of the tools the browser provides to developers. The browser will come with a source-code editing tool, as well as a number of built-in diagnostic tools, Somasegar said. The idea is that the developer won’t have to toggle back and forth between the browser and the IDE. A Web application or page can be run, and mistakes can then be fixed, directly from within the browser.

 

With .Net, Microsoft worked on improving performance of the runtime environment. It can also provide more diagnostic information on how much memory a .Net program is using, and provide more information in a dump report should a program crash. Also, once a developer chooses a particular platform for a .Net project, such as an ASP.Net project, .Net will only display the components that can be used on that platform.

 

Microsoft is also releasing a white paper that offers a road map of where .Net is headed. The paper will be “one cohesive document that talks about .Net as it relates to Windows, Windows Phone, Windows Azure,” Somasegar said. “It is a comprehensive document that shows people how to think about the future as it relates to their current .Net investments.”

 

When Windows 8 and Windows RT were introduced, many Windows developers voiced concerns about the future of .Net, due in no small part to how little the platform was mentioned in Microsoft’s initial instructions on building Windows 8 modern applications.

 

Somasegar said Microsoft has always encouraged, and will continue to encourage, the use of .Net as a way for developers to write “managed code” for Windows 8 and Windows RT modern applications, as well as for Windows desktop applications.

 

In addition to issuing previews of Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013 this week, Microsoft is also releasing a preview of the latest edition of the company’s application lifecycle management software, Team Foundation Server 2013.

 

 

Firefox 22 browser update supplies web-calling capability

Mozilla Tuesday shipped Firefox 22, which enables the in-browser audio-video calling standard WebRTC, and switches on a new JavaScript module that promises to speed up web apps.

 

The update also includes patches for 17 security vulnerabilities, seven of them marked “critical.”

 

Mozilla highlighted several of the changes in Firefox 22, notably the default support for WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications), an open-source API (application programming interface) that web applications can call for in-browser audio and video communications without requiring specialized plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash.

 

WebRTC traces its roots to Google, which acquired the VP8 video codec in 2010 from a company called On2, open-sourced the technology, and pushed for its adoption as a standard by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C). Mozilla engineers have been also working on the project to implement WebRTC in Firefox.

 

Google’s Chrome supports WebRTC, and Opera Software developers are also involved in the initiative. In February, Google and Mozilla announced that their browsers were interoperable, letting users of Chrome and Firefox communicate with each other.

 

Mozilla has also made WebRTC a foundation of its mobile phone strategy, which relies on Firefox OS, a lightweight browser-based operating system that will power low-cost phones from several carrier and handset partners. The latter includes FoxConn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer best known as an assembler of Apple’s iPhones and iPads.

 

Firefox 22 also comes with a new JavaScript subset, dubbed “asm.js,” that promises to significantly boost the execution of JavaScript code and web apps written in the popular scripting language.

 

Mozilla calls its asm.js module “OdinMonkey,” a tip to the name “SpiderMonkey” used for its current JavaScript engine. According to Mozilla, developers who use cross-compilers that produce asm.jm code—Emscripten for example—can generate optimized JavaScript with near-native code performance.

 

“Native code” refers to programs designed for a specific processor’s or processor family’s instruction set. Windows 8, for example, is native code for the Intel x86 and x64 instruction sets.

 

Mozilla’s OdinMonkey is an answer of sorts to Google’s Native Client, a technology that lets developers turn applications written in C and C++—software originally intended to run in, say, Windows—into ones that execute entirely within desktop Chrome and Chrome OS.

 

Like Mozilla, Google claims that Native Client code runs almost as fast inside the browser as the original did outside.

 

Both Mozilla and Google have highlighted JavaScript-written games as a key target for their native code projects.

 

“Developers [now] have a low-cost solution to bring high-performance games and applications to the Web with technologies like JavaScript, Emscripten and WebGL,” Mozilla wrote on its top-tier company blog announcing Firefox 22. WebGL is another open-source extension to JavaScript; it allows developers to render interactive 3-D graphics content.

 

Firefox for Android was also updated Tuesday to improve WebGL rendering—a similar enhancement landed in Firefox 22 on the desktop—and to guarantee that smaller-sized tablets displayed the browser’s full interface.

 

Along with the usual slate of new features and improvements, Firefox 22 also patched 17 vulnerabilities, seven rated critical, Mozilla’s highest threat ranking. Six others were labeled “high,” three were marked “moderate” and one was tagged as “low.”

 

One of the critical bugs was reported by Nils, the second consecutive Firefox update contribution by the German researcher. Nils, a noted vulnerability researcher, was on a two-man team that won $100,000 in March for hacking Chrome at the Pwn2Own contest.

 

Also patched was yet another vulnerability in the Mozilla Maintenance Service on Windows, which powers the browser’s silent updates. Mozilla patched different bugs in the same service in both April (Firefox 20) and May (Firefox 21).

 

Security researcher Abhishek Arya, a Google engineer better known as “Inferno,” was credited with reporting three memory corruption flaws. Inferno and others on Google’s security team have reported scores of vulnerabilities to Mozilla based on their “fuzzer” stress testing.

 

Windows, Mac, and Linux editions of Firefox 22 can be downloaded manually from Mozilla’s site, while already installed copies will upgrade automatically. Users of Firefox for Android can retrieve the update from the Google Play store.

 

The next version of Firefox is set to ship August 6.