Ask Paul: May 22 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Flush with our post-Build glows, here’s an amazing set of reader questions to kick off the weekend.

Sushi

Shane asks:

Totally not tech… Its about sushi. I know that this is something that you really like and I would say have great experience in choice. Its something that I would like to enjoy but the thought stops me. You have any advice of how to start and what to start with. The pictures you take always look so damn good. Its just where to start, how to take that first step in trying to see if its something I would like. I am normally up for trying new things at least once.

I grew up in the Boston area, and we routinely ate things like raw clams and oysters, and I feel like this would be very uncomfortable for someone from the Midwest or some other place not near the ocean to try for the first time as an adult. But that should have made the transition to sushi an easy one for me.

But the truth is, the first time I tried it—and I remember this very well, it was at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 4.0 launch event in San Francisco—I hated it. Hated it. And I tried a lot of it, there were people walking around with trays of the stuff.

If you’ve ever seen the Tom Hanks movie Big, which is about a kid in a man’s body, you may remember the scene where he eats caviar and can’t get it out of his mouth fast enough. That was me with sushi.

Several years later I was in downtown Los Angeles for another Microsoft event (probably a PDC, I guess, possibly TechEd) and my Penton team was going to get together for dinner. But they picked a sushi restaurant, so I told them I’d just skip it. But I can credit my boss at the time, Karen Forster, for jumpstarting my love of sushi. She begged me to come and told me that she could help me find sushi that I liked.

Here’s the goofy thing. Aside from eel, which I still don’t like, I liked everything I tried that day: Sashimi, nigiri, rolls, whatever. But I never would have tried it if Karen hadn’t pushed me. I was so burned from that first experience.

To actually answer your question, start with the basics: Rolls, not sashimi (which is just raw fish) or nigiri (which is raw fish on a lump of vinegar-seasoned rice). And not crazy rolls, but simple rolls, like a California roll or similar. Kind of work your way up from there. As you develop a taste for it, you can experiment more. You will find things you don’t like, so don’t be put off by that. Many people don’t like uni (sea urchin) because of the texture, but this is one of my favorites (assuming it hasn’t gone bad; you can tell because it will have a metallic/copper type taste, so send back if so). I really like the fatty fish, like tuna belly (otoro, toro) and salmon belly.

Actually, salmon is kind of an interesting thing: It’s my favorite of the readily available sushi (sashimi/nigiri) that you’ll find anywhere. But I really don’t like cooked salmon at all, in any form. Even just lightly seared. I only like uncooked salmon.

One random fact: I’ve never gotten sick from eating sushi. I know this is a concern some people have. But I feel like I could eat sushi every day and ever get tired of it. It is literally my favorite food.

Site outage

madthinus asks:

What happened to the site last weekend?

We will be contacting readers about this formally soon. But the short version is that we had a database breach that brought down the website. We don’t believe any personal information was stolen, etc. and that this was literally just a ransom attack. But we want to be transparent about what we know happened. That will happen later today, I believe.

Not coincidentally, the site also went down briefly Tuesday morning less than one hour before we were set to publish Mehedi’s mountain of Build 2020 news. That was not a security issue. Instead, because of what happened last weekend, we started backing up more aggressively and we overwhelmed a server, which took down the site. It would be funny, but … well, you know.

Anyway, everything is fine now. 🙂

Power Platform

spacecamel asks:

Have you considered writing a version of your Notepad app using Microsoft’s no-coding “language” on Power Platform? I think they are quietly creating an amazing platform to democratize programming where anyone can build without programming knowledge. I would love to hear your thoughts on the “no-coding” idea and if it will take off. I hope Microsoft finds a way for people outside their corporate customers access to this platform to create new ideas.

I’m not sure what such a thing would look like, though my understanding is that the Power Platform is more “low code” than “no code.” But it’s still on my list, and I will get to the Power Platform eventually.

I will say, generally, that Microsoft has been working on this kind of thing for years. Visual Studio Lighthouse (I think was the name) is one older example, and even something like PowerShell is an attempt to bring developer capabilities to an audience (admins) that don’t think of themselves as programmers. Microsoft uses this term “citizen developers” to describe people who do not identify themselves as developers but are in fact developing things implicitly or on the side. And I guess Power Platform kind of falls into that area in that it democratizing development for non-developers.

But I don’t really know a lot about this yet, sorry. That will change soon.

Sway

christianwilson asks:

Is there any future for Sway? I found it to be a fun tool in small personal projects over the years but I never committed to it because I got the sense it wasn’t picking up much traction and, because of that, Microsoft’s efforts on it were minimal. The mobile apps were sunset some time ago but it’s still out there as a web app. I see it was recently involved in a phishing attack, too. I’m just curious if Sway has (or ever had) much adoption and if it is long for this world.

I don’t believe so. Sway was an attempt to take a common use case for PowerPoint, which is complex, and make it more accessible to regular users. And I like the idea, even while I questioned the point at the time (as I always do) of Microsoft making another thing that does a thing that another thing already does. Since then, it seems like they’ve re-circled the wagons back around PowerPoint and are adding more features to that application that makes it more approachable. And that for something like Sway, a basic WordPress blog (or whatever) serves the same purpose. Or just posting to Facebook or similar.

Fluid framework for consumers

Dan1986ist asks:

Is Office on the web using Fluid Framework going to be available for those using personal MSAs or only for those with business type Microsoft 365 credentials?

Given the nature of this technology, it makes sense to target businesses, where this kind of collaboration, plus the need to manage it, is more prevalent. But if they’re adding this functionality to the business versions of these apps, I don’t see any barrier in bringing them to consumers. I don’t know of the plans per se, but I feel like it can/should happen.

Surface and Teams on TV

waharris007 asks;

My family watches The Voice on NBC every week, and I’ve been paying close attention to their utter reliance on Surface and Teams over the past month. They were forced to do their live shows remotely, with all the coaches and contestants at home using a Surface Pro and Teams to stream from their homes to the world on live network TV. This week, they said they were managing 21 different live streams as part of their finale episode, switching between remote streams and the host live in the studio. There were some glitches, of course, but it went as well as could be expected. There were also some cringy product placements, such as a clearly forced interaction between coaches and contestants that highlighted the Surface Pen and Teams’ whiteboard. Did you pay attention to this at all? It seemed like a huge promo for Microsoft, so I was surprised I haven’t seen any of my tech sites talk about it.

I don’t watch TV per se. I mean, I sit in front of a TV for two hours most nights and watch TV shows on streaming services, but not live TV. And I don’t watch reality shows. But this kind of thing has been going on for a while—I know that Magnum PI has Microsoft product placements, for example, Apple once told me that an iMac I reviewed a long time ago ended up on a TV show when I was done with it—and with the pandemic, we’re all figuring out this new way to do things. So I’m not surprised that their experience has mirrored what’s happened elsewhere. A few glitches and weirdisms, but you kind of find your way and it starts to work and make sense.

Build 2020

rossfinnie asks:

Did you enjoy Build 2020 in it’s online digital form? And do you think it might be the way forward in the future? Personally I’ve found it difficult to not allow other distractions like work and personnel life from getting in the way of being able to focus on the content that I’m interested in. When something in real life pops up, I keep on saying to myself that I’ll come back to something and watch the on demand session …… even though I know that I probably won’t.

I really did. I watched a lot of it live, and I downloaded several sessions to view offline as well. There were goofy fake moments, like kids walking into the room on purpose but supposedly not, ha ha, come one guys seriously. But … you know. Overall, it was good. Pulling off this kind of thing is hard and I think they did a great job overall.

But I’ve been working at home for decades. And that may be part of the reason this worked for me. Getting past the distractions is key for working from home. But so is partitioning your time. I recommend going through the sessions you want, offline and over time. There’s no need to digest it all immediately.

One fun aside: On Thursday morning, I really wanted to watch the PWA session I mentioned the other day but I also wanted to walk, and it was 38 minutes long. So I downloaded it and listened to the video from my phone while I walked. Then, when, I got home, I wrote the article using the video as a guide, stepping through it to the parts I knew I needed. That was a first, for me.

Project Reunion and Windows 10X

Daishi asks:

What does Project Reunion mean for the app story in Windows 10X? Until now the picture has been reasonably clear, UWP apps run natively and Win32 programs run in containers, but if the brightline between Win32 and UWP is going away then what is the new division between what is a natively run 10X app and what is a containered one?

Project Reunion supports two types of new apps, WinUI/Desktop and WinUI/UWP. I assume the latter would run natively on Windows 10X and that that is part of the reason it even exists. WinUI/Desktop apps would run in the Win32 container, so they will work as well.

Using .Netpad as an example, I presume that you just implementing the UWP version’s UI wouldn’t be enough to make the WPF version run natively, but I also presume that at least part of the point of the project would be to ensure that you wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble of building the full UWP version from scratch in order to move it forward with the platform. So, assuming that both of those things are true, what would you have to do to get the WPF version to run as a native 10X app? What is the thing that makes that distinction going forward?

So this is the third scenario: You have an existing app and you want to port it to WinUI and Project Reunion. I discussed the steps needed to do this in Understanding Project Reunion (Premium), but that’s partially theoretical right now since porting apps doesn’t work in the first preview release.  But the resulting app would still be a desktop app, so it will run in the Win32 container in Windows 10X.

There’s no way to make a WPF (or other Win32) app “native” on Windows 10X. You have to start over with a new app.

What’s a PWA?

Simard57 asks:

I am not quite sure what a PWA is. What are the attributes?

A PWA is a web application (HTML + CSS + JavaScript) that meets only three requirements: It must use HTTPS for security. It must have a service worker, which is basically a JavaScript script that sits between the UI and the backend and intercepts network requests, and a manifest, which is a JSON file that describes the application’s metadata. But PWAs pretty much always provide more than just the basics. They are responsive, meaning that they adapt to different devices and screens. They can work offline. They integrate with native platform capabilities like push notifications. They are always up-to-date because everything lives on the web and can be updated by their creators once. They are discoverable on platforms like Android and Windows and can be installed like native apps.

Is outlook.com a PWA?

Yes. So is Office on the Web (the commercial version). Microsoft noted that OneDrive is (or will soon be) a PWA during Build.

Is Office365 a PWA?

No, Office 365 is a suite of solutions. There’s no Office 365 “app” or whatever.

Are Google Apps PWA?

Many of them are.

What is the difference between a web app and a PWA?

Those three requirements listed above. That’s it.

But PWAs are becoming more and more capable over time. None of the capabilities are required. But the PWAs most people want to use will use a lot of advanced capabilities.

Here’s how you can tell if a web app is a PWA: Browse to it with Microsoft Edge. If you see an Install prompt in the address bar, it’s a PWA.

If you don’t, it’s a (non-PWA) web app or a website.

One reader wrote that “not every PWA has a service worker, so not every PWA supports offline capabilities.” That’s not true. Every PWA has a service worker. But not every PWA supports offline.

Too late?

brothernod asks:

I heard a lot of good, promising, future looking, open and unifying news for Microsoft Developers at BUILD. But is MAUI too late? I get the general impression that Xamarin forms is a bit dated, and MAUI is a year and a half out? Is Microsoft going to lose this cross platform mobile battle to something like Flutter? Do you think Fluid will be game changing for Office, or will it fall flat (like Sets)?

So, for a lot of the things I was excited about at Build—Project Reunion, MAUI, and Fluid framework among them—one can ask themselves the same two questions:

• Is this too late?
• Does this even matter?

I guess we could also ask a third question, which boils down to, at what point would doing this have made any sense? In other words, if we could go back in time and these things were delivered at the best possible time, would the world be any different?

Honestly. I don’t think so.

For the first two—Project Reunion and MAUI, which I feel need to merge at some point—Microsoft needs a way to move C#/.NET developers forward while solving problems with their predecessors. And these do accomplish that.

For Fluid framework, the cynical part of me wants to remind everyone that we’ve done this before with compound documents in Office in 1995 and that live collaboration in apps like OneNote and Word on the web is terrible today. Fluid may solve problems we experienced in both examples, we’ll see. But I think the need for live collaboration is perhaps a bit overblown. Not unnecessary, of course. But we’re people, not machines. The best collaboration happens in-person.

Build expectations vs. Build reality

BigM72 asks:

Now that Build is over, I am interested in a “before/after” comparison of expectations vs what we heard.

My biggest take-away was that I had a private conversation with a Microsoft executive and was told explicitly that there would be no “future” talk at Build, and that it would focus exclusively on what developers could do right now. This was not the case at all. There was all kinds of future talk, from sessions with the word “future” literally in the title to technologies like MAUI and .NET 6 that are 18 months off. That was kind of weird for me.

This is what Panos Panay said for Build in advance: “At Build later this month, the team will share the next steps we are taking to empower the Windows developer community even further. We are going to share how we will reduce complexity for developers by making it easier than ever to build for all 1 billion Windows 10 devices, all at once. We will share how we will enable developers to build applications that seamlessly enable cloud-powered virtualization. Most importantly, even though we will not be in the same room this year, we are going to connect as a Windows community to look to the future together.”

I guess the first part is partially addressed in what we heard about WinUI 3.0 and Project Reunion. What announcements were there related to the second half i.e. on “cloud-powered virtualisation” and looking to the future as a Windows community?

It’s funny that you highlight the “cloud-powered virtualization” bit since I was thrown when some assumed that this referred to Windows 10X for some reason. This only refers to Windows Virtual Desktop, which is an enterprise Azure capability.

“Windows Virtual Desktop is built on Azure and provides the ability to provision and scale virtual desktops and apps faster than was previously possible. It enables organizations to serve your existing app to a growing set of devices that users can access with the Windows Virtual Desktop clients for Windows, MacOS/iOS, and Android.”

As for the future, Project Reunion is in the future, it’s not arriving until November with .NET 5. And then .NET MAUI for cross-platform development comes a year later, in November 2021, with .NET 6.

See, this is what happens when you go down the rabbit hole of reading meaning into what these guys say. I feel you. I do this all the time. All the time.

More Office apps as PWAs?

Have you heard anything more about additional Office Online applications becoming PWAs?

Just OneDrive.com.

Outlook.com and Office.com, both offer an install option, but behave very differently in how they interact with other Office 365 applications and files. Outlook will open some in its chrome-less window, whereas Office always opens things in a new browser window, including Outlook.

I think this is a limitation of how PWAs work today and might be part of the reason Microsoft is pushing for web standards around file system access and default apps.

I was wondering if they are planning to bring all of the applications to PWA and bring some consistency to how they behave. As you have noted, for many people, these applications are more than sufficient, and for situations such as Windows on ARM, Windows 10X, or resource constrained hardware where Win32 applications may not be performant, they provide a nice alternative.

Yeah, and I think that may be tied to the current PWA limitations. I bet this looks very different by the end of 2020.

On another note, do you see yourself doing anything with Blazor?

Yes. It’s definitely on the list. But I may do something with Xamarin.Forms first. I’ve been noodling with that for a while.