Microsoft product pipeline continues to be strong

There were a number of announcements at TechEd US last week with many status updates on forthcoming products. Bruce Kyle has written up the list on the US ISV DE blog. It’s interesting to see the ramp-up for Windows Mobile 6.5 beginning with the launch of registration for the Windows Marketplace for Mobile and an announcement of support for the latest draft of the W3C Widgets spec. In fact, there is a Windows Mobile Ramp-Up track on MSDN to facilitate learning about mobile development.

One aspect I’m particularly interested in exploring is the Windows 7 native support for the ribbon UI. This is something I’ve been investigating for a while for a side project and so I’m considering limiting myself to Windows 7 for now so I can take advantage of this control. As I understand it, the plan is to provide support for Windows Vista around the time of Windows 7 RTM.