Microsoft Windows President Steven Sinofsky is continuing to trickle out introductory posts on the new “Building Windows 8″ blog. In the August 17 installment, he shared — as he did three years ago with Windows 7 — a list of the feature teams building the next version of Windows.
Sinofsky blogged that Microsoft has 35 different feature teams, each with 25 to 40 developers, plus testers and program managers — in the Windows 8 organization. The word “feature” may mean an area or a component in Windows. Here’s the Windows 8 feature-team list:
App Compatibility and Device Compatibility
App Store
Applications and Media Experience
App Experience
Core Experience Evolved
Device Connectivity
Devices & Networking Experience
Ecosystem Fundamentals
Engineer Desktop
Engineering System
Enterprise Networking
Global Experience
Graphics Platform
Hardware Developer Experience
Human Interaction Platform
Hyper-V
In Control of Your PC
Kernel Platform
Licensing and Deployment
Media Platform
Networking Core
Performance
Presentation and Composition
Reliability, Security, and Privacy
Runtime Experience
Search, View, and Command
Security & Identity
Storage & Files Systems
Sustained Engineering
Telemetry
User-Centered Experience
Windows Online
Windows Update
Wireless and Networking services
XAML
So what’s new and different here?
First, because the Softies have shared so few details so far about Windows 8 (even though there’s been lots of hacking and speculation about what’s inside, thanks to leaked slides and builds), many things that Microsoft pundits consider to be known about Windows 8 still haven’t gotten the “official” nod.
As of today, we now know for sure that there will be an App Store in Windows 8 (something we’ve expected since June 2010). “Hyper-V” seems to confirm that Hyper-V will be built into the client and server versions of Windows 8. And the inclusion of XAML — developers of which were reorg’d into the Windows division earlier this summer — may give those with .Net and Silverlight expertise another glimmer of hope that the Windows 8 development story won’t be just about HTML5 and JavaScript.
For some guesses on my part: “In Control of Your PC” could mean a lot of things, possibly even that Windows 8 will include built-in support for the Kinect sensor. “Search, View and Command” also could be Kinect-related, given Microsoft’s recent demos and pronouncements about Tellme voice support being built into Windows 8. “Windows Online” has me most intrigued, especially given that it is listed separately from “Windows Update.”
For comparison’s sake, here’s a list of some of the feature teams that Sinofsky provided in August 2008 when he first began blogging about Windows 7:
Applets and Gadgets
Assistance and Support Technologies
Core User Experience
Customer Engineering and Telemetry
Deployment and Component Platform
Desktop Graphics
Devices and Media
Devices and Storage
Documents and Printing
Engineering System and Tools
File System
Find and Organize
Fundamentals
Internet Explorer (including IE 8 down-level)
International
Kernel & VM
Media Center
Networking - Core
Networking - Enterprise
Networking - Wireless
Security
User Interface Platform
Windows App Platform
Windows 8 sleuths: What else do you glean (if anything) from Sinofsky’s latest blog post? One of my Twitter chums, Martin Anderson, notes that it looks like Media Center has disappeared from the feature list with Windows 8, which may surprise some, but seem like a sad confirmation to others.
