Trickles of information on a new suite of products and services from Microsoft began surfacing this month under the name ‘Windows Blue’, and the tech giant’s corporate vice-president of corporate communications Frank X Shaw has openly addressed the rumours.
Not only has Shaw acknowledged the existence of Windows Blue, he has suggested that the new developments will be revealed this summer. “At Build, developers will see what’s next for Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio and more,” he promised, via The Official Microsoft Blog.
Shaw’s post coincided with one from fellow corporate vice-president Steve Guggenheimer announcing that this year’s Build conference will take place in San Francisco on 26-28 June. With this timing, the event will overlap with TechEd, which will take place in Spain on 25-28 June, but Shaw has confirmed that Microsoft will be discussing new products and services at this event also.
The Build website is suitably attired all in blue, though Shaw indicated that the term is really just the codename the project is working under and not necessarily what the resulting product will be called.
New touch gestures, colour options and tile sizes are all expected to feature on the new build, as well as the ability to view more than two apps on-screen at once with new ‘snap to’ capability, increased SkyDrive integration allowing for automatic device back-ups, and the release of Internet Explorer 11.
