Microsoft announced an open dialog between itself and the community for Windows 8, focusing on the engineering of the upcoming operating system.

Microsoft announced an open dialog between itself and the community for Windows 8, focusing on the engineering of the upcoming operating system.

Microsoft's "Building Windows 8" blog didn't reveal any new details of the operating system, but it did emphasize Microsoft's willingness to publicly work with its customer base and developers before the OS ships.

As Microsoft has stated before, the next major milestone in the discussion of Windows 8 will be Microsoft's BUILD conference, scheduled for Sept. 13 in Anaheim, Calif. Microsoft has remained incredibly vague about the topics to be discussed there, however; at press time, for example, the agenda page merely shows topics like "Registration," "Sessions," and "Keynote".

It's not even clear whether Windows 8 will be released during 2012; Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer , although a representative later claimed he misspoke, and said that Ballmer was merely referring to the fiscal year.

"We've heard people express frustration over how little we've communicated so far about Windows 8," Steven Sinofsky, the president of Microsoft's Windows divison at Microsoft, wrote in the inaugural blog post. "We've certainly learned lessons over the years about the perils of talking about features before we have a solid understanding of our ability to execute."

The Building Windows 8 blog, however, will apparently be a forum to resolve some of those technical details, and bridging the gap between Windows 7 and the changes in the ecosystem - including tablets, phones, cloud storage, and apps - that have emerged since then.

"For the Windows team, this blog is an important part of developing Windows 8, as was our blog for Windows 7," Sinofsky wrote. "Blogging allows us to have a two-way dialog with you about design choices, real-world data and usage, and new opportunities that are part of Windows 8. Together, we will start the unique adventure of bringing a major product to market. We're genuinely excited to talk about the development of Windows 8 and to engage thoughtfully with the community of passionate end-users, developers, and information professionals."

A regarding Windows 8 on the Internet in recent months, but Microsoft has spoken little about what particular features it will add to the OS, One exception has been natural interfaces; Microsoft wants your device to recognize you and your actions, like Kinect does for gaming (and your and ).

In June, however, , which showed off a radically altered Windows start screen that features user-configurable tiles and looks almost nothing like Windows 7. The new interface supports gestures, snap, pin, cloud apps, new concepts like a basket for files you'll want to share between apps and services, and a hidden task bar on the right side of the screen.

"The appearance of touch-screen mobile phones with the rich capabilities they bring, have together changed the way we all view computing," Sinofsky wrote in the Monday blog post. "Most of all, computing is much more focused on applications and on people than on the operating system itself or the data. These changes in the landscape motivate the most significant changes to Windows, from the chips to the experience."

Sinosfky wrote that the new blog will be an opportunity to address some of the new technical features underlying Windows 8, from storage to network to performance. Microsoft's intent, he added, was "to make sure that we have a reasonable degree of confidence in what we talk about, before we talk about it".

"There is so much packed into Windows 8 and there are so many unique and important lenses through which to view Windows 8, and so we want to be sure to take the time to cover as many of these topics as possible, to build up a shared understanding of why we've taken Windows where we have," Sinofsky wrote. "So in the next weeks we will just start talking specifics of features, since there is no obvious place to start given the varying perspectives. From fundamentals, to user interface, to hardware support, and more, if something is important to you, we promise we'll get to it in some form or another."