To cap off TechEd North America this year we are going to host a half day Windows PowerShell scenario walkthrough.

The event will take place at the Rosen Center on Friday June 15 from 8am – noon. During this time we will collectively solve a problem from the ground up using many of the new features in Windows PowerShell 3.0 and Windows Server 2012.

Starting from base Windows Server 2012 images, we will walk you through:

• Writing a PowerShell script workflow to perform Server deployments
• Creating a constrained endpoint that hosts only the deployment workflow
• Delegate a set of credentials for the workflow to use
• Exposing the workflow and it’s results through a RESTful webservice
• Using Windows PowerShell Web Access to manage the workflow

You will need to bring your own laptop to follow along.

Our room has space to accommodate 40 people.  If you are interested please send a note to us at powershellteam@hotmail.com

Thanks

Travis Jones [MSFT]
Program Manager – Windows PowerShell
Microsoft Corporation

To cap off TechEd North America this year we are going to host a half day Windows PowerShell scenario walkthrough.

The event will take place at the Rosen Center on Friday June 15 from 8am – noon. During this time we will collectively solve a problem from the ground up using many of the new features in Windows PowerShell 3.0 and Windows Server 2012.

Starting from base Windows Server 2012 images, we will walk you through:

• Writing a PowerShell script workflow to perform Server deployments
• Creating a constrained endpoint that hosts only the deployment workflow
• Delegate a set of credentials for the workflow to use
• Exposing the workflow and it’s results through a RESTful webservice
• Using Windows PowerShell Web Access to manage the workflow

You will need to bring your own laptop to follow along.

Our room has space to accommodate 40 people.  If you are interested please send a note to us at powershellteam@hotmail.com

Thanks

Travis Jones [MSFT]
Program Manager – Windows PowerShell
Microsoft Corporation

Along with the new user experience in Windows 8, we have introduced a number of new Windows-Key shortcut combinations.  For example – Windows Key + C will bring up the charms bar, while Windows Key + Z brings up the application bar.  You can read about all of the various options on the Getting around in Windows 8 post on the Windows team blog.

But how does this work for Windows 8 inside a Hyper-V virtual machine?

With Hyper-V on Windows 8 – we have updated things so that, by default, all Windows key combinations go through to the virtual machine (except for Windows Key + L for locking the desktop).  This means that you can just use the keyboard shortcuts out-of-the-box.

If, however, you are running Windows 8 on Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 – Windows key combinations will not go into the virtual machine by default.  But this can be easily remedied. All you need to do is to open the Hyper-V settings and go to the Keyboard setting:

There you can select Use on the virtual machine.  Then you will be able to use the new key combinations in virtual machines too.

Cheers,
Ben

Recently a number of the Hyper-V drivers for Linux made it into the main kernel branch.  This means that native support for Hyper-V is starting to turn up in a number of Linux distributions.  Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is an example of a new Linux release with Hyper-V support “out of the box”.  To try this out for myself – I grabbed the 32-bit desktop install media from Ubuntu.com and fired up a virtual machine:

After the initial splash screen, I was pleasantly surprised by the first indication of the improved Hyper-V support.  Before even install Ubuntu, on the first page of setup, I already had integrated mouse support.

I chose to Install Ubuntu and was then presented with a page that confirmed that I had enough space, and I had a valid internet connection. This was also interesting to note, as I had not added a legacy network adapter to the virtual machine.  This meant that Ubuntu had already recognized and loaded drivers for the Hyper-V high-performance network adapter.

After this – the installation was fairly pedestrian…

The only quirk I encountered was that at the end of the initial installation phase – the virtual machine failed to reboot automatically.  It sat at this page for about a minute until I manually reset it:

But after that it booted perfectly:

And I confirmed that applications and network connectivity was working correctly:

My favorite part of this was seeing this message:

“No proprietary drivers are in use on this system”.  Correct! The Hyper-V drivers are now part of Linux, under GPL.

Cheers,
Ben

You probably do not know who Eric Bahna is, but let me tell you why you want to.  Eric is a Senior Program Manager on my team who has been driving the development of Hyper-V’s PowerShell support for Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012.  If you want to know the “behind the scenes” story – Eric is the man to talk to.  In fact, half the time when I do a blog post about Hyper-V PowerShell cmdlets, at one stage in the writing of the blog post I had to walk into Eric’s office and ask “how the heck do I make this work?”

With all that in mind – here is an interview with Eric where he talks about what is happening with Hyper-V PowerShell Support in Windows 8 / Windows Server 2012:

Cheers,
Ben

A little while ago I wrote about how storage migration actually works.  One thing I would like to call out is that the storage migration process is “copy and delete” and not “move”.  Which is to say that just before storage migration is completed you will have two copies of your virtual hard disks on your computer, and the final stage of the storage migration will be to delete the original versions of the virtual hard disks.

Why I am I highlighting this?

Well, storage migration is designed to allow you to move your virtual machines from one storage location to a completely different location (i.e. a new disk, SAN or SMB share). But every now and then I find myself using storage migration just to reorganize my virtual machines and their folder structure.  This can result in problems if I want to move a large virtual machine from one folder to another folder on the same disk.  If I want to do this I need to make sure that I have enough space for two copies of the virtual hard disk.

Cheers,
Ben

– John Hrvatin, Program Manager Lead, Internet Explorer

We’ve written before about how new input devices and touch screens make the Web more fun, interactive, and immersive. We’ve also talked about the importance of ensuring a no compromise browsing experience in IE10 so the real Web works great with touch.

Of the four guidelines below, the first two make sure touch users can access all of your site’s functionality. The last two provide tips to make your site easier to use with touch.

DO NOT Hide Content Behind Hover

A mouse can hover content (point at it) without activating it (clicking it). However, with touch a tap is both hover and activation in one action. So functionality that requires hover without activating will not work for touch users. Instead, consider making all behaviors click (tap) based.

DO Configure the Browser for the Default Touch Behaviors That Work Well For Your Site

Users expect to be able to pan and zoom sites using touch. Therefore, the browser consumes touch moves, pinches, and double-taps by default and does not send events for these interactions. If your site needs to provide special functionality for these interactions instead, you must configure IE10 to provide only the default behavior you want, if any.

When a user touches an element, the -ms-touch-action CSS property determines the default behavior that IE10 provides.

The table below describes the five possible values.

For example, a canvas painting application might use:

With this configuration, the user can double-tap to zoom in to the canvas element, but sliding a finger on the canvas element will send events to it rather than pan the page.

DO Identify Input Types Using HTML5 Forms

IE10 introduces support for HTML5 input controls, all of which are touch optimized. For text inputs, you can further improve your users’ touch experiences by identifying the specific input type, when applicable. Internet Explorer will show a tailored touch keyboard layout for that input type on Windows 8:

The touch keyboard shows @ and “.com” buttons for email addresses.

The touch keyboard shows a number pad for telephone numbers.

The touch keyboard shows forward slash and “.com” for URLs.

DO Provide Ample Room for Users’ Fingers

To build Windows 8’s touch-first experience, we’ve done a ton of research to formulate some helpful guidelines for developers. The average width of a finger is 11mm. As targets for tapping get larger, the percentage of accidental missed taps drops off quickly.

Ideally, a target is at least 11mm (about 40px) square with at least 2mm (about 10px) of padding around it.

If you want to adjust the spacing only for users with touch hardware, use feature detection.

To detect that user has touch hardware:

Going Beyond These Basics

You can do much more to create a great touch-first experience. For example, you may choose to optimize for touch by supporting custom multi-touch interactions or gestures. Here are a few links to get you started:

• IE 10 Developer Guide
• Touch Zooming & Panning
• Pointer & Gesture Events
• Touch Input for IE10 and Metro style Apps
• Handling Multi-touch and Mouse Input in All Browsers

We plan to write more about these methods in future blog posts. Applying these guidelines today will ensure your sites work well with touch in IE10.

— Jacob Rossi, Program Manager, Internet Explorer

– John Hrvatin, Program Manager Lead, Internet Explorer

We’ve written before about how new input devices and touch screens make the Web more fun, interactive, and immersive. We’ve also talked about the importance of ensuring a no compromise browsing experience in IE10 so the real Web works great with touch.

Of the four guidelines below, the first two make sure touch users can access all of your site’s functionality. The last two provide tips to make your site easier to use with touch.

DO NOT Hide Content Behind Hover

A mouse can hover content (point at it) without activating it (clicking it). However, with touch a tap is both hover and activation in one action. So functionality that requires hover without activating will not work for touch users. Instead, consider making all behaviors click (tap) based.

DO Configure the Browser for the Default Touch Behaviors That Work Well For Your Site

Users expect to be able to pan and zoom sites using touch. Therefore, the browser consumes touch moves, pinches, and double-taps by default and does not send events for these interactions. If your site needs to provide special functionality for these interactions instead, you must configure IE10 to provide only the default behavior you want, if any.

When a user touches an element, the -ms-touch-action CSS property determines the default behavior that IE10 provides.

The table below describes the five possible values.

For example, a canvas painting application might use:

With this configuration, the user can double-tap to zoom in to the canvas element, but sliding a finger on the canvas element will send events to it rather than pan the page.

DO Identify Input Types Using HTML5 Forms

IE10 introduces support for HTML5 input controls, all of which are touch optimized. For text inputs, you can further improve your users’ touch experiences by identifying the specific input type, when applicable. Internet Explorer will show a tailored touch keyboard layout for that input type on Windows 8:

The touch keyboard shows @ and “.com” buttons for email addresses.

The touch keyboard shows a number pad for telephone numbers.

The touch keyboard shows forward slash and “.com” for URLs.

DO Provide Ample Room for Users’ Fingers

To build Windows 8’s touch-first experience, we’ve done a ton of research to formulate some helpful guidelines for developers. The average width of a finger is 11mm. As targets for tapping get larger, the percentage of accidental missed taps drops off quickly.

Ideally, a target is at least 11mm (about 40px) square with at least 2mm (about 10px) of padding around it.

If you want to adjust the spacing only for users with touch hardware, use feature detection.

To detect that user has touch hardware:

Going Beyond These Basics

You can do much more to create a great touch-first experience. For example, you may choose to optimize for touch by supporting custom multi-touch interactions or gestures. Here are a few links to get you started:

• IE 10 Developer Guide
• Touch Zooming & Panning
• Pointer & Gesture Events
• Touch Input for IE10 and Metro style Apps
• Handling Multi-touch and Mouse Input in All Browsers

We plan to write more about these methods in future blog posts. Applying these guidelines today will ensure your sites work well with touch in IE10.

— Jacob Rossi, Program Manager, Internet Explorer