News
PDC: First Look at Live Mesh and Live Framework
David Treadwell, Microsoft's corporate VP of the Live Services Platform, announced
the new Live Framework during a Tuesday keynote that addressed Windows 7 and
other tools and technologies that will comprise the front-end infrastructure
of the company's unfolding Software plus Services strategy.
The Live Framework is described as a "uniform" way for developers
to program against Live Services, which are integrated with Microsoft's Live
Mesh platform. The new framework, released as a community technology preview
(CTP) on Monday, is designed to support multiple programming languages, devices
and platforms.
Announced
in April, Live Mesh is downloadable PC software that extends Windows to the
Web to enable synchronization and sharing of data, apps, people and devices.
Microsoft is releasing the first open beta of Live Mesh this week. It will offer
limited availability to Mac and Windows Mobile 6 clients, according to the company.
"The Live Mesh application is built completely on top of Live Framework,"
said Ori Amiga, group program manager of the Live Developer Platform at Microsoft.
The Live Framework is composed of the Live operating environment -- similar
to the .NET CLR -- and a programming architecture that includes a resource model
and managed libraries, specifically, the Silverlight Kit, the .NET Kit and the
AtomPub .NET Library. The CTP is supported on Windows XP, Vista, Internet Explorer
7, IE 8 and Firefox.
Live Services, which are designed to handle user data and app resources (Live
ID, Live Messenger, etc.), are part of the newly announced Azure Services Platform
for Microsoft's Web tier. The Azure Services Platform sits on top of Windows
Azure, Microsoft's cloud operating system, which was unveiled
at PDC on Monday.
Developers can sign up for Live Mesh provisioning here,
and go here for the Live Framework
CTP, which requires Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5 and Silverlight 2.
About the Author
Kathleen Richards is the editor of RedDevNews.com and executive editor of Visual Studio Magazine.