For anyone who develops software for Windows PCs--and that includes nearly everyone who manages business applications--next week will be an important one. Microsoft will take the wraps off the first publicly available code for its next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn. It"s due in 2006, if all goes according to plan. Billed as the biggest release of Microsoft"s flagship product since Windows 95 nearly a decade ago, Longhorn will include technology for building a new generation of "smart client" software that combines the look and feel of PC apps like Word or Excel with immediate access to information off the Web.
"Instead of this disconnected state between your applications, you"re counting on connectivity," says Don Cosseboom, director of R&D at Molecular Inc., a developer of business software. Though Longhorn apps won"t debut for at least another three years, Microsoft at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles next week will disclose the first technical information developers need to know about writing to a new set of technologies that could radically change how Windows PCs find, organize, present, and share information across networks.