What is Windows Phone 7

 

Microsoft introduced Windows Phone 7 to the public during the Mobile World Congress 2010 @ Barcelona. During the initial stages, MS developed this one as an upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5, but the developments made by Apple and Google in the mobile arena prompted them to rejig its mobile offering. Then @ MIX 10, they revealed more features and then released the beta toolkit for developers to build applications targeting the  Windows Pone platform. As of writing this post the toolkit has been put to gold and RTM version is now available for download from the Microsoft site. The home page for Windows phone is located here and it contains lots of documentation and code samples.

Snapshot of Windows Phone 

Internet Explorer 9 Beta - First Impressions

The much anticipated release of the IE 9 beta is out and didn't waste much time in installing it. The first thing caught my attention was the interface. Less congested design with less icons and more screen real estate.

Layout & Interface

 

IE 9 brings significant changes to its layout, the address bar, icons and the tabs now appear in a single row which there by increases the area for the content. Also Reload, Stop, Compatibility buttons appears next to the address bar and the Home, Favorite and Settings button now appear to the right of the screen. These icons are gray in color by default and changes the color when we hover mouse over them. The status bar is turned off by default and I found it bit annoying coz most of the users want to see the progress bar during the loading of a page. 

Another one catches the user attention will be the absence of the address box. This explains why they integrated Bing right into the address bar, so it works either as an address bar or a search bar and Microsoft termed it as "Private OneBox".