Microsoft Releases Windows CE 2.0
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Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.) has released version 2.0 of its Windows CE operating system. Introduced last year, Windows CE is an embedded platform designed for portable and personal computing devices such as handheld PCs (HPCs) and smart phones.
Windows CE 2.0 provides support for real-time deterministic task scheduling. Its demand paging allows execution of programs larger than available RAM. Windows CE also features full UNICODE, TrueType font, and 32-b color display support. The new version provides connectivity and interoperability support to interconnected computing devices. To support this connectivity and interoperability, Version 2.0 is equipped with Windows Sockets application peripheral interface (API) and service layer support networking communication protocols. The protocols facilitate the direct porting of applications source code written to the API. Version 2.0 also supports the WinINET API and services which enable direct access to HTTP and FTP protocols from within 32-b Windows-based applications. This support facilitates the direct porting of large amounts of Web and Internet application source code from the Windows 95 and Windows NT operating systems. Windows CE links to the graphical user interfaces (GUIs) of many embedded operating systems. For example, an embeddable Web browser gives users the same look as Microsoft Internet Explorer while providing frames, cookies, and embedded controls for increased compatibility with Web sites designed for desktop browsers. A library of controls also helps developers build GUIs similar to those used in other Windows operating systems. Support for a subset of ActiveX technologies is included for processing functions and building software components. In addition, support for visual basic and Java are provided. Windows CE 2.0 and future versions will work with ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, StrongARM, SuperH and x86 32-b embedded-processor architectures. Edited by Robert Keenan |