The Midweek Download: Oct. 12th Edition–Reducing Runtime Memory in Windows 8, Porting iPhone & Android Apps to Windows Phone and Craig Mundie on a New Era in Computing

In this edition of The Midweek Download, we’ve got stories on Windows 8, Windows Phone, Internet Explorer 10 and a video featuring Microsoft Chief Research & Strategy Officer Craig Mundie.

Reducing runtime memory in Windows 8. The runtime memory usage of Windows 8 is an important factor in determining the Windows 8 system requirements, as well as the broadened spectrum of devices that will host Windows 8. As you know, we’re delivering the complete Windows 8 experience on SoC-based devices characterized by low power consumption. This makes it even more important to leave lots of memory available for multiple concurrent apps and to sustain the overall responsiveness of devices. For more on this story, read this Oct. 7th post on the Building Windows 8 Blog.

More on porting iPhone and Android apps to Windows Phone. Windows Phone 7.5 is just out of the door, smoothly going to users’ phones. So, if you or your friends haven’t started to look at Windows Phone, this is great timing. Microsoft is excited to announce new guidance based on migration samples and a SQLite to SQL Server Compact database conversion tool. We hope that these new items, combined with our previous extensive guides (for Android, iPhone, and Symbian Qt), will accelerate your ramp-up time, and improve your experience in porting apps to Windows Phone from iPhone and Android. Read this Monday post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog for more detail.

Building rich text-centric pages in IE10. IE10 in the Windows Developer Preview introduces two new CSS features designed to make it easier for developers to create rich text-centric Web pages and apps. CSS3 Regions provides a lightweight mechanism to flow content through multiple non-contiguous areas. IE10’s support of CSS3 Hyphenation gives developers a simple mechanism to hyphenate text in a wide range of languages. These two new features complement other great CSS features we previously announced, including CSS3 Grid Layout, CSS3 Flexible Box Layout, CSS3 Multi-column Layout, and Positioned Floats. Taken together, this set of standards-based features provides developers powerful new tools for designing great Web apps and sites that scale across a variety of screen resolutions and form factors. Want the rest of the story? Read this Monday post on the IEBlog.

Craig Mundie - Converging Worlds: A New Era in Computing. Craig Mundie visited a number of universities in the USA and Canada last week, engaging with the next generation of computer scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, doctors and educators to discuss what the future of technology holds, and how it will play a critical role in these and other fields. If you follow Craig, you’ll know that he’s spoken on numerous occasions recently about the transformation in how we’re interacting with computers, and what we can expect from them in the future. Check out the rest of the story in this Monday post on the Next at Microsoft Blog, which features a short video of Craig.

New Microsoft Security Intelligence Report now available. On Tuesday, Microsoft released the 11th volume of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report, also known as SIRv11. The report provides threat trends and data analysis on topics like software vulnerabilities, exploits, malicious code and potentially unwanted software. We also cover third party products in the report. As part of SIRv11, we’ve included an in-depth analysis titled “Zeroing in on malware propagation.” The purpose of this study is to help customers better understand where malware was propagating and encourage the use of this information to prioritize where and how to focus risk management efforts. Read this Tuesday post on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center for more detail.

That’s it for this edition of The Midweek Download! Thanks for reading!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog