14 DAY TRIAL // “Write once - touch anywhere” can be considered somewhat of a mantra for the next generation of Microsoft Surface software development kit which will support building projects not only for Samsung SUR40 hardware, but also for Windows 7 touch-capable computers.
Focused mainly on Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface, the Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK will be offered to developers next week.
According to Luis Cabrera-Cordón, Platform Program Manager – Microsoft Surface, the Redmond company plans to give green light to Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK downloads on July 12th, 2011.
Back at MIX11 earlier this year, the software giant promised to deliver the software development kit for Microsoft Surface 2.0 in the summer of 2011, and it looks like Microsoft will deliver on that.
“It’s getting warmer here in Redmond, so I am happy to share with you that the SDK will be available for public download for free from the Microsoft Download Center on July 12th,” Cabrera-Cordón added.
Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK embraces such technologies as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4.0, XNA 4.0, as well as Windows 7, both the 32 bit and 64 bit flavors of the operating system.
I’ve already said that Microsoft worked to provide “write once - touch anywhere” development experiences to devs.
“Now you can target both Microsoft Surface Hardware and Windows 7 Touch enabled PCs with a single SDK. In our team we informally called this feature “Write once - touch anywhere”. That means that the same binary can be used in both types of hardware,” Cabrera-Cordón said.
Microsoft so far said nothing about Windows 8 in relation to Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK, and it’s unclear whether the applications developed with the latest iteration of the Surface SDK will also work on the next version of Windows.
I sent the company an inquiry just now and I’ll let you know if Windows 8 will also be supported by Surface 2.0 SDK as soon as I hear back.
In addition to the new SDK for Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface, the software giant is also working to streamline migration of Surface 1.0 SDK applications to the new device which is expected to hit commercial availability later this year.
“If you are porting a Surface v1 application, check out the Microsoft Surface Migration PowerToy. We will be posting it to Code Gallery on July 12 as well. It is open source in case you want to tweak it for your needs,” Cabrera-Cordón promised.