After the ads very oriented infrastructure and Cloud of yesterday, Microsoft has delivered a new show for the second day of its Professional Developer Conference 2009, filled with ads this time more consumer oriented.

Office 2010: The beta is available to all

The first of these announcements is the availability of the "beta" version of Office 2010. It is open to all, as was Windows 7 in early and Office 2007 in his time. This beta is complete and in French. Office 2010 now extends the famous "Office Ribbon" to all the suite applications including Outlook, OneNote and Publisher. Among the many cosmetic and ergonomic improvements, we particularly note the appearance of a contextual correction (which includes the sense of sentences) that significantly improves the capabilities of Word AutoCorrect, new features of massive information processing and business Intelligence in Excel, and a new display engine for DirectX PowerPoint which operates and provides transition effects in 3D properly hallucinating.

Obviously, with Office 2010 also landed the beta versions "online", the Office Web Apps, but also, more surprisingly, the beta versions of Office 2010 for Windows Mobile! By the way Google Docs, the Office Web Apps resume the essential functions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, and offer a guarantee to preserve the appearance of original records whatever the device used, PC, mobile phone or browser web. All users of Office 2010 beta version can now access the Office Web Apps via Windows Live.

Outlook opens social networks

Microsoft also announced a new extension "social networks" for Outlook.This adds a component that automatically connects your contacts with various social networks which you subscribe (Windows Live Messenger, Linked In, Facebook, etc..). This connector allows one click to follow the flow of messages from a contact group all emails, but also all documents sent as attachments, access to online profiles, etc.. This extension is open so that any future developer can add connectors to extend social networks recognized by Outlook.

A new IE for 2010!

Those who relied on Microsoft to abandon the party in the browser war ignore the obstinacy of the mark. Despite the share market fall, despite the comparative systematically placed dead last, despite the allergy many developers face delays IE in adopting the latest web standards, Microsoft has come back strong in the race , and promises a new IE 9 from 2010.

Internet Explorer 9 is still very far from being available even in this beta.But Microsoft has shown an overview for developers. It promises full compatibility with the Acid3 test (and therefore the CSS3), support for HTML5, and a new JavaScript engine (which finally compile on the fly) whose performance is already in line Safari, Chrome and Firefox. But the real difference will be on display engine. IE9 operate direct hardware acceleration because the engine will rely on Direct2D and DirectWrite, two new components of DirectX11. The resulting screen displays no common comparison in terms of performance with IE8. It also follows a IE9 availability probably limited to 7 and Windows Vista, DirectX11 is not available in XP. Microsoft should reveal more about IE9 at its Web conference, the MIX, which will be held in Las Vegas in March 2010.

SILVERLIGHT 4: The big announcement

But the biggest announcement of the PDC remains today the availability of the beta of Silverlight 4. In two years, Microsoft has shipped and 4 versions of its RIA platform. Silverlight 3 was announced at MIX in March 2009 and made available in final release this summer. Silverlight 4 not only looks almost twice as fast, but now provides full access to the platform that hosts it. Accordingly, it is now available to achieve authentic Windows or MacOS / X in Silverlight without having to fumble browser! SL4 applications now have access to multi-touch, the right button of mouse to drag and drop with the desktop, the webcam, the devices connected to the system file and even print!

Silverlight 4, is also native support for Google Chrome (in addition to IE, Firefox and Safari), the simplification of enterprise applications (with features of direct two-way databinding with SQL Server, Sharepoint and SQL Azure) and the possibility of incorporating the heart of a form Silverlight a Flash movie or web page.

The platform underlying video (which is the overwhelming power of Silverlight to support streaming 1080p, video, interactive and recording PVR) improved further with the media including videos on the iPhone!

The improvements and innovations are so numerous that it is impossible to list them here. They now allow Silverlight to be more complete, faster and more compact than its big competitor to Adobe AIR. Without really officially announced, Microsoft has also made an appointment for developers to discover Silverlight 4 mobile in the next MIX!

Finally, the PDC 2009 will not only confirmed the commitment to greater openness from Microsoft, but also found strong, evidence that competition is good and that Microsoft knows how to react.