Dynasty plans announced in Denver

Windows CE is coming to a mobile phone near you. But not yet.e phones. Terence Green reports. Speaking at the fourth Windows CE developers' conference in Denver on 7th June, Harel Kodesh, vice president for productivity appliances at Microsoft, said that Windows CE-powered mobile phones are still 'a year to eighteen months away.'

Screenphones top Microsoft's list of priorities for Windows CE, but the operating system won't be in a position to power mobile phones until the release of the next major version, codenamed Cedar, according to Kodesh.

The most pressing issue is that Windows CE can't provide the hard real-time support required by handset manufacturers. A Windows CE phone could be produced now, but it would need one CPU for phone services and another for the Windows CE functions.

The support needed to produce a single-CPU phone solution will be built into Cedar, said Kodesh, but that work is still in progress and the longer development cycles of mobile phones will delay the appearance of Windows CE-powered phones.

However, Microsoft has developed an operating system-independent micro browser that utilises the limited memory and displays of mobile phones.

Provided free to handset developers, the micro browser supports a subset of HTML 3 and will support XML in later releases.

Microsoft also plans to add support for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) (see pages 38-39) to Cedar, having joined the WAP Forum, a consortium developing common standards for wireless-enabled applications.

Microsoft was slow to acknowledge WAP due to concerns over support for XML which have now been addressed, and has since adopted XML as the best way to separate content and presentation, thus enabling developers to create web-based applications which target any device, from a WebTV to a PC.

As wireless connectivity is key to the future of Windows CE devices, Microsoft will join the Bluetooth wireless connectivity consortium, said Kodesh.

In a related development, Bob Muglia, senior VP for the Business Productivity group, said that Microsoft has started wireless-enabling the entire Microsoft campus as a proving ground.

- New and revised development tools were announced by Microsoft for the developers and designers of embedded systems and business appliances based on Windows CE. Bob Muglia previewed Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 for Windows CE and a new Global Data Access architecture for Windows CE. Global Data Access is an open specification based on ActiveX Data Objects and OLE DB, enabling third-party developers to create database tools for Windows CE.

The announcement of SQL Server for Windows CE means Microsoft now offers a common data engine on all its platforms, from Palm-sized to Windows NT-powered servers.

Kodesh announced that ActiveSync 3.0 technology is to replace the current synchronisation agent which relies,not always successfully, on Dial-Up Networking. ActiveSync 3.0 does away with most of the hassles of the current solution, automatically detecting and setting serial ports during installation, and even providing diagnostic feedback when synchronisation fails to work.

Kodesh showed CE-powered petrol pumps, bar-code readers and robot arms which extended use of the OS beyond established Palm-sized and handheld devices. He said that Microsoft was modularising the operating system and the development platform to speed up the introduction of new devices.

Windows CE Platform Builder 2.12 will allow developers to create customised software development kits for Windows CE appliances by simply dragging and dropping Windows CE support modules into the platform window. Platform Builder 2.12 now includes support for Internet Explorer 4.0, enabling embedded Windows CE devices to be accessed via a web browser.

- Kodesh also announced a 'breakthrough technology', the Common Executable Format (CEF), that enables developers to target all processors supported by Windows CE with a single executable. CEF can be translated into native code for a processor either at compile time or at run time on any CD device via a 200Kb translator. The performance hit for CEF is just 20 percent against native code.

Although Microsoft has switched its main Windows CE focus away from consumer devices towards business applications, the consumer interface continues to be refined. Multimedia support in Windows CE now has DirectX support and Windows Media Player.

The new audio and video playback capabilities which have been derived from Microsoft's work with Sega for the Dreamcast console were demonstrated on the new Casio E-100 and on a television set top box.

Like this story? Spread the news by clicking below:

 del.icio.us     Digg this     reddit!