RSSAvalon, Indigo Previews Go Public
By Nate Mook | Published March 25, 2005, 11:03 AM
Following a release to MSDN subscribers last week, Microsoft has made its March Community Technology Previews of Avalon and Indigo available for public download.
Avalon and Indigo are two "fundamentals" of Longhorn, the next release of Windows. Avalon is the presentation subsystem and Indigo is a platform for Web services.
Last month Microsoft told attendees of the VSLive conference that it would deliver the bits designed for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 before the end of March.
Both Avalon and Indigo were originally designed to be exclusive to Longhorn, but Microsoft backported the technologies to give developers a taste before the next Windows.
According to Microsoft, Avalon unifies how Windows creates, displays and manipulates documents, media, and user interfaces. Indigo extends the .NET Framework 2.0 with additional APIs for building secure, reliable, transacted Web services.
The March CTP "enables developers to experiment with early builds of these technologies, get acquainted with the development experience, and provide Microsoft with feedback," Microsoft says.
After numerous requests from developers, Microsoft opted to make the preview release public.
Nifty.
If nothing else, I think this is a smart move by Microsoft. This way, by the time Longhorn is out, there will be enough programs and services available to make full use of it's new capabilities that it won't be as painful to move to the new platform as it was for people to move to XP. Their making it available now will also spark interest in the new OS. It will be interesting to see what it can do.
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|xp bug very
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|yeah bugs
MS=bug bug=MS
Point!!!
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