Microsoft have released the first official video preview of Windows 8 with apparently many more on the way over the coming year in the build up to launch - which will be in 2012 if you believe Ballmer - though his own PR department have disowned him on that one.
The "tiles" concept that users of Windows Phone will already be familiar with make an appearance here - apparently replacing the standard Windows desktop. There's also much made of the ability to create Windows 8 apps using both HTML 5 and Javascript, enabling full sceen "beautiful" apps designed for touch.
Which raises an interesting question on where Silverlight fits into all of this. The future of Silverlight has already been questioned previously with the Flash/Silverlight vs HTML 5 discussion on mobile platforms - and with this preview there are there are already irate Silverlight developers discussing the potential demise of the platform they've bought into.
The whole platform appears like a Windows Media Center style layer on top of the familiar Windows 7 layout - in the video there's what feels like a slightly clunky transition between the new Windows 8 apps and the "old" Windows 7 when they launch a traditional Excel style application... but it will be interesting to see how this evolves.
Watch the video below.
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