DevBlog

The PDC kicked off yesterday morning with a keynote from Bill Gates. He showed one of his famous videos, this time it was a dream sequence where his roommate is Napolean Dynamite. It was very funny, with Bill wearing a "Vote for SteveO" t-shirt, rollerblading with Napolean pulled him on a bike, wearing an old, brown suit that matched Napolean's, and dancing on stage with Napolean. Very funny stuff. I doubt it will ever be public as these videos rarely are.

Bill's theme was "The Next Step". He got some help from Chris Caposella, a Microsoft VP, who showed off several features in Windows Vista:

- Alt-tab is now called the "flip feature". There is a new flip 3D to switch through running apps
- Virutal folders are cool. You can have a Word file show up under My Documents, but it can really be anywhre on the disk. Virtual folders are defined in XML.
- The sidebar is available...think of it as a toolbar that sits on the right-hand side of the screen. You can add "gadgets" to do different things. A clock, a video player, calendar, etc are some gadgets you can have on the sidebar.
- Parental controls are big. For example, you can set the game ratings that your kids are allowed to play.
- IE 7 will include tabs. You can save the tabs and recall them all at once. A feature called Quick Tabs.
- A big feature for me is fit to print for any page displayed in IE.


Office 12 was shown publically for the first time. Be prepared...it is WAY different, but much easier to use and some really great features.

Bill's next steps:
- Build on the foundation
- Focus on user experience
- Build connected systems
- Ride the 2006 PC wave
- Software is the key