• Joey's roundup from two weeks ago, with pictures and links to dev tools, plus details on the two day cross-Canada Bootcamp DevTeach is running to get you great fast.
• Windows Phone 7 paper prototype - to supplement your emulator experience.
• Charles Petzold has an e-preview of his book available online.
• Colin Melia, who is part of the above-mentioned bootcamp, came to DotNetRocks TV as well.

The latest refresh of the Windows Phone 7 Tools is now available! Combined with Visual Studio 2010 (any edition, you don't need Express any more, though if that's what you have it will work) you can create apps in no time flat and run them on the emulator. I couldn't resist:

If you've ever done a WPF or Silverlight app, you can do Hello World in a matter of minutes. I put the picture in there just so I could say I had edited the XAML beyond putting my own name in an attribute. If you'd like to do some serious work, there are all kinds of training resource links on Yochay's blog. Don Burnett has some interesting thoughts on why Blend gives you power and productivity for Windows Phone 7 development and how there's just nothing like it for iPhone development.

I have some fun ideas I want to try that will take a little more than 5 minutes, so I'll report back on that front soon. I'm going to put my phone posts in my Client Development category, since after all, client development includes devices like phones just as much as it includes pure Windows apps.

Kate

I mentioned I've been recording videos. That's because I'm doing another Pluralsight course. This one is on Customizing and Extending Visual Studio. About half of it is live already:

• Overview of Visual Studio 2010 Extensibility
• Why write extensions for Visual Studio?
• Visual Studio Macros
• Visual Studio Snippets
• Getting and installing extensions for Visual Studio
• The Visual Studio 2010 SDK
• Visual Studio Start Page
• The VSIX Format

There's more to come, of course - I'm about half done. I'm really enjoying this material. You can get your work done a lot faster if you tweak Visual Studio to meet your needs. It doesn't have to cost you money and it doesn't have to cost you much time. Take a look!

Kate

I've had a chance to watch a number of the videos from the Windows Summit - an online event to help you with Windows development of all kinds. You can learn more about it and register at the main summit site, or check the lists of sessions for developers. The only trick is that once you've registered, you need to go to a different site to actually watch the sessions. Once you know that (and there is a link on the main site) you're all set.

I've been getting "Windows 7 for Developers" training since before the first public beta, so I had seen a lot of this before. But several sessions were noticeable improvements from the way that material had been covered in the past, and none of them were poorly done, so I recommend this as a way to learn the concepts that are important to anyone writing for Windows 7, and to learn the advantages that Windows 7 can offer to you as a developer and to your users.

I saw three different approaches to code in the sessions I watched:

• Full on demos with Visual Studio involved
• Code on the PowerPoint slides, and links to resources that include code demos
• Mention the name of the API but don't show how to use it

Even if you know all about the taskbar, maybe you could learn about power management, or background services, using sensors, or writing location aware applications? It's really worth taking a look around.

Kate

Here is something I've been asked more than once, and seen asked on various forums as well. I'll paraphrase rather than quote one specific asker:

We have an application written 15 years ago that's been working flawlessly. But when we run it on Windows 7, the users can't find the files it writes. Worse, there are no error messages, so they think they've saved the files, but when they go to C:\Program Files\MyGreatSoftware\UserExports - the files aren't there! 

Often, the question trails off into a rant about how sneaky and mean Windows 7 is to somehow prevent access to Program Files but not give error messages. The rant might also include a paean to how amazing the lost files were and how many workyears of productivity have been lost now that these files cannot be found, and why this means you can't trust Windows to do something as simple as write a file to the hard drive. Sometimes, the asker has established that this is related to UAC and they are recommending everyone turn it off to avoid this disaster. I thought I would make some less drastic suggestions.

First, your files are not lost. A few people know this, but they then claim the files are almost impossible to find and no end user will ever find them. Let's tackle this one first because if you know this trick you may be able to get by without changing anything else about your application. Tell the user to go to the place they expect to find the files, say C:\Program Files\MyGreatSoftware\UserExports. Then have them look in the toolbar for a button that says Compatibility Files. Click it. Ta-da!

Ok, now the next thing is, why the heck are your files being written there? Because you are trying to write to a protected area and you don't have a manifest. You have several things you can do about this, and they boil down to two main things:

One, don't write to a protected area. You can get this by installing somewhere other than Program Files (not a good idea) or by changing the application to write to a better place. Two, get permission to write to the protected area. This means running as administrator. Train the users to right-click Run As Administrator when they run the app, or train them to set the Compatibility Settings for the app (neither very likely) or ship the application with a manifest that includes requireAdministrator. Now matter how you arrange this second thing, your users are not going to like agreeing to the UAC prompt every darn time. So really, that brings you back to number one, don't write to a protected area. Use AppData instead - there's a simple function call to get that path on any machine (including older XP machines) and you'll be in fine shape. If you think your users can't find that, and the files are for the users and not just some internal settings, then use a folder under Documents - again, there's a simple function call that will get you the path.

If virtualization makes you nuts - that your code thinks it's writing to C:\Program Files\whatever but really it's writing somewhere else, and the OS is cheerfully lying to it and saying all the writes succeeded - then put a manifest on your app. Doesn't matter whether it's requireAdministrator or asInvoker. Doesn't matter whether it's embedded (VS will embed them for you from 2008 on easily, and there are tools that do just manifest adding) or just a file of XML in the same folder as the exe. Once the app has a manifest, virtualization stops. Of course this may mean the users get all kinds of Access Denied errors that they don't like. Now you see why virtualization was invented.

Should you rely on it? No. For one thing, it may go away in some future version of Windows. And it goes away when you add a manifest, which for many people happened when they migrated to a new version of Visual Studio. What you should do is understand it, including how to find the virtual store, so it doesn't make you quite so crazy.

Now go turn UAC back on,

Kate

There are two services I use not just every day, but many many times a day. One is email and the other is Twitter. Facebook and StackOverflow also get their share of attention, but one thing that sets Twitter apart from Facebook and StackOverflow is the proliferation of clients you can use to access it. You can go to the web page, and do it all in a browser, or you can get any of the many clients available to give you a richer experience. The same is true for email - I can use Outlook or I can use OWA and do it all in a browser.

Recently I found myself facing a full week away from home and the office and with no way to get a VPN although I had great internet access. I could listen to CBC radio and watch Canadian TV but I could not bring my email in Outlook. The first day was ok, but not great. I found myself wanting to email people, and I had to open Outlook to poke around and get their email addresses, then paste them into the OWA new message. It was so different from the usual fast-as-thought process of typing the first letter or two of their names and pressing tab. I also had to delete my own spam, because I don't like server-based spam filters and have been really happy with my client-side spam settings in Outlook. The little preview windows weren't as informative as I wanted, my old appointments weren't showing up, there was no to-do bar, and deleting messages or waiting for the new window when I replied to messages just took too darn long. By day 3 I was about insane. Finally my favourite sysadmin (who I was smart enough to marry almost 30 years ago) got Outlook-over-http working for me and I could go back to normal.

I was utterly astonished at the effect on my mood that not having my client application had on me, and the effect of getting it back. It was very distinct and unmissable. The browser solution just wasn't good enough for me - and OWA is an amazing feat of engineering, with a way richer UI (delete key works, F keys work, etc) than most browser-based solutions. It got me thinking, once my cheerful mood had let me catch up on some outstanding work, about client apps in general. Why do I only use Twitter in a browser? I've tried a whole number of clients but I always end up back in the browser. I think it's because clients have to be well-designed to work well. If they hog resources, jump in your face too much with focus stealing or balloon tips, or insist on being sized a certain way then they don't get a chance to show you their good side. Twitter is pretty young and I don't think we've really had time to winnow the good client features the way we have with email. With that in mind, and believing a good client really will be a better experience, I've decided to try MetroTwit. I've heard really good things about it and I honestly believe that client apps make more sense for these sorts of information feeds. So far, I like it. I get toast for new tweets, a new tweet counter as a taskbar overlay icon, and such a delicate consumption of my CPU and disk activity that I can't tell if it's running or not.

You might also be interested to hear why the developers chose WPF, and what that led to for the team:

over just a couple of months, what we’ve achieved with MetroTwit was simply not possible without WPF considering the few precious midnight hours we put into it on most days. According to the rest of the team (the real developers), apparently I owe much to data-binding which I’ve been told is nothing short of a miracle.

If you have a choice of using a browser or using a client app, which do you choose? Is it always the same or does it vary with the business purpose you use it for? While we don't represent our users exactly, we can still learn from our own personal choices and our emotional reactions to software.

Kate

I'm not sure when this started, but DevX has a whole area for Visual Studio 2010 articles. They've got handy links to download a trial and a training kit, walkthroughs of creating extensions (a simple blogging one, and adding your own language to the IDE), and lots more. It's a combination of articles, webcasts, and downloads that cover not just Visual Studio but some of the things you can create with it and what's new in related tools. Of course I've seen some of the material before, but that just shows that it's comprehensive. Take a look around!

Kate

I'm recording some videos again (I'll announce when the project is live) and I'm doing it, as I really like to these days, in a bootable VHD. I've got the environment set up just the way I like it, without messing with my day-to-day setup, and as an extra bonus I avoid the distractions that Outlook, Instant Messenger, Skype, and the Favorites menu in my browser have to offer. When I went to record the first video I realized I had forgotten to install Camtasia in the VHD so I quickly downloaded a trial from www.techsmith.com. I got to work recording my video, editing it, and so on. Then I rendered the video. This can take a few minutes, but I don't complain because I know it's doing a lot of work. But I got a great surprise ... this latest version uses the taskbar progress bar overlay, so that I can put the rendering into the background and work on something else full screen while it renders. I can still see at a glance how it's doing, but I don't have to keep the little progress window on top. It's a really nice touch.

Then as serendipity would have it I spotted this video on Channel 9 that calls out this and other Windows 7 features in TechSmith products. It's only 9 minutes long, so go and watch it. And if you haven't added Windows 7 features to your client apps yet, why not? It really makes a difference.

Kate

I was visiting a mentoring client today and we wanted to look at the config file for an application that is deployed with ClickOnce. So I needed to know where it was installed. I know that you can get to installation locations pretty quickly from the start menu:

So I took a look at the ClickOnce app in the start menu:

That's a problem - no Open File Location. I tried a little web searching but wasn't happy with what I found. Then I remembered.

Start the app - simple enough, since it's on your start menu. Then bring up task manager. If you right click the app on the Applications tab, there's no joy:

But ... if you choose Go To Process (or just switch to the process tab and look for the right EXE name) then we're in business:

The very first choice, Open File Location.

And when we get there, sure enough, there's a config file (among other things):

Completely obscure path, but who cares, I can confirm the config settings for the running app and that's all I needed.

Kate

Are you interested in developing for Windows 7? I bet you are. I know I am. So perhaps you would like (OK, I'm quite sure you would like) the Windows Summit. It's a virtual event hosted at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-summit/ and it claims of itself:

Windows Summit 2010 is designed for people who engineer and test Windows 7 PCs, devices, and software. Three technical tracks are offered to show how to best use Windows 7 and Internet Explorer, helping you build great solutions and gain a competitive edge.

It's free (you just have to register) and features about a dozen talks in each of three tracks. The Software track will release June 16th, so you can mark your calendars for then and amuse yourself in the meantime with the Device and System tracks. The Software talks will cover multi touch, ribbon, IE9, Windows Error Reporting, sensors and location, power awareness, background activities (that's services and scheduled tasks) and performance. All good stuff.

I'll report back in mid June when I can actually play the sessions and look at the downloads, but it seems to me it's going to be a very good resource.

Kate

The C++ team gave me a heads up about a neat new initiative called Hilo. Here's a quick description:

“Hilo” is a series of articles and sample applications that show how you can leverage the power of Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010, and Visual C++ to build high performance, responsive rich client applications. Hilo provides both source code and the written guidance that will help you design and develop compelling, touch-enabled Windows applications of your own.

The articles are on MSDN - the first is there now - and the code is on Code Gallery.

I like this section from the article:

The rich user experience of Windows 7 is best accessed through a powerful, flexible language, and that means C++: by using C++ you can access the raw power of the APIs for Windows 7. To build the Hilo sample applications, all you need is Visual C++ Express and the Windows SDK for Windows 7, both of which are available as free downloads.

Hilo applications show how to design and develop an application for Windows 7. But while the code showcases the APIs for Windows 7, it is not wedded to any particular application framework. Instead, Hilo implement a lightweight common application layer that directly uses and highlights the APIs rather than obscuring them. This common application layer is used to support all of the Hilo applications. It illustrates the best practices for developing Windows applications, and while it is not complete—it was designed simply to provide the features needed by the Hilo applications—it does show the best practices used in designing re-usable frameworks and can be extended to provide additional features.

Kate

A colleague of mine who is not near Toronto has a client in Toronto who needs .NET developers. They would like to start out with a contract position and it could become permanent if it's a good fit for everyone. Here's the job description:

Position: Senior Programmer / Analyst

Pay: $7,500 per month contract (negotiable)

Applicant must be an expert or proficient in:

• MFC
• ATL
• COM
• .NET Framework  /  C#
• .NET Services
• Microsoft SQL Programming

Experience in the following areas would be helpful but not required:

• WCF
• WPF/SilverLight
• ASP.NET
• Visual SourceSafe
• Mechanical engineering experience

Responsibilities:

The primary responsibility is to modernize a legacy C++ distributed application. This may include a redesign and possible rearchitect of the application. The final application should be an n-tiered application. The tiers would ideally be:

• WPF/Silverlight  as the presentation layer
• A business layer with business components (C#) exposed via WCF
• A data layer

Where necessary, COM components can be preserved.

Other responsibilities include:

• Move image files from file database to SQL database
• Document the application
• Handle ongoing change requests.

Someone who moved from C++ to C# but didn't forget their C++ would be perfect. They are looking for more than one person so it sounds like a fairly meaty project. This is strictly onsite work, no remote work, which is why I mentioned where they are (east of the DVP; west of Pickering.)

Anything you email to me about this I will forward to my colleague who will in turn forward it to the Toronto folks. Good luck!

Kate

Jani Jarvinen (a Finnish C# MVP) wrote a nice article about using sensors with Windows 7. He mixes and matches .NET 4.0 and Code Pack capabilities, and has links to plenty more information. I like the screenshots and the step by step approach. Windows 7 really does make this so much easier than it used to be. He gets you started with both an ambient light detector and some simple location code.

A little more exotic approach comes from "gleat" who has a Code Project article using a Wiimote as the accelerometer. He starts out simple - here's how to download and install the driver - and then goes into writing a client in C#, leveraging Code Pack of course. But then he says hey, were you wondering how to write a driver? and wham! you're hip deep in C++. It's all well explained, though, so if you want to learn more about this, what a terrific way to start.

If all of this is making you wish you had Windows 7 somewhere to play with, but you don't want to buy it, don't have an MSDN subscription, don't qualify for BizSpark etc, then what you need is a free 90 day evaluation of Windows 7, right? I found that link on this handy Doug Turnure blog post from earlier this year that includes some video links I hadn't seen before. Have fun!

Kate

I was just looking up the session codes for my Tech Ed talks next month (my flight to New Orleans leaves a month today, at about this time actually) and spotted something unexpected:

DEV316 | Modern Programming with C++0x in Microsoft Visual C++ 2010
Session Type: Breakout Session

Track: Developer Tools, Languages & Frameworks
Speaker(s): Kate Gregory
Level: 300 - Advanced
Why wait for the C++ committee to finish the specification when you can enjoy much of the power of C++0x today! C++0x, the next C++ standard, is almost upon us and it contains the most important updates to the language since the mid-90s. It even accepts the existence of multiple threads for the first time in the history of the language. Needless to say, these new features bring more expressiveness and power to the native C++ developer. Visual Studio 2010 has added support for some of these key features in order to enable these modern programming techniques. This session clarifies what features are in Visual C++ 2010 and what is yet to come. It illustrates how new constructs such as lambda expressions enable better use of existing libraries and how your code can be simpler, safer, and faster all at the same time. If you are itching to show off how C++ is one of the coolest languages on the planet, this talk is for you!

WCL316 | The Windows API Code Pack: Add Windows 7 Features to Your Application
Session Type: Breakout Session
Track: Windows Client
Speaker(s): Kate Gregory
Level: 300 - Advanced
Accessing new Windows 7 features is a challenge from managed (.NET) code. The level of interoperability required is out of reach for many developers. The Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework is a sample library you can use in your own projects today that provides access to new user interface features (taskbar jumplists, libraries, sensor platform, and more) as well as "behind the scenes" features that make your applications more aware and responsive (restart and recovery, power management, and more.) Discover a shortcut to Windows 7 development for Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# programmers and get started today.

The first digit carries meaning, but the last two don't. So I don't really know how they both got to be 316. Since I often have trouble remembering my session codes, this should halve the effort for me :-).

Kate

PS: I checked whether the Brian rule still applies. You can too, by just dropping down the "Speaker" box on the session catalog page. I'm happy to report there are 9 Brians and I reached 9 obviously female names (ignoring Alex, Chris etc) while I was still in the C's. Good news, in my opinion!

The Windows API Code Pack is one of my favourite libraries. For Windows 7 features that are not yet in the .NET Framework, it simplifies access from managed code, saving you from learning how to do interop. And it comes with a nice suite of samples that help you to understand how the feature works and how to use it. I've been incorporating Code Pack into a lot of the modules in my Pluralsight Windows 7 tutorial, and using the samples for demos when they're appropriate. In just a little over 5 months, almost 70,000 copies have been downloaded directly:

The thing is, Code Pack is not a product. You can't call for support on it (though there are discussion and issues section on the Code Gallery page, and people really do read them.) There's no guarantee that there will be more versions in the future. But there are plans for at least one more version, and Yochay is looking for your thoughts on it.

If you ever wanted to add a feature to the Code Pack, were looking for some specific Win32 API to be wrapped, or just wanted to pass us some feedback, this is your opportunity. Please send us your feedback or file a bug using the Discussions or Issue Tracker for the Windows API Code Pack.

He also mentions that about the same number of folks have downloaded other vehicles (eg the Windows 7 Training Kit) that deliver a copy of Code Pack. Those are some nice numbers! Anyway, if you haven't tried it yet, please do, and if you have and there's something you want, please chime in!

Kate

Would you like to learn more about developing for Windows 7 in C# or VB? My Pluralsight On-Demand! tutorial has just gone live. 9 of the 11 modules are there now and the last two will be shortly.

As the abstract says:

This tutorial is aimed at Windows developers (Windows Forms or WPF) who want to add Windows 7 capabilities to their application. The emphasis is on providing a helpful and efficient user experience by hooking into what Windows 7 has to offer. You do not need to know how to interop to native code or how the Windows 7 features work internally.

The table of contents looks like this:

• Light Up on Windows 7
• Windows 7 Jumplists
• Taskbar Overlays on Windows 7
• Taskbar Thumbnails on Windows 7
• Network Awareness on Windows 7
• Power Awareness on Windows 7
• Windows 7 Libraries
• Windows 7 UAC and Manifests
• Partitioning Administrative Tasks for Windows 7
• Known Folders for Windows 7 (under development)
• Scheduled Tasks on Windows 7 (under development)

The course has been a lot of fun to put together. I used the Code Pack to keep the amount of code you write to a minimum. Some of the demos use samples that come with the Code Pack; others use my own code, and you can spot those by the Demos download link.

The content is all subscribers-only, but you can get a Guest Pass to check it out. Also, RDs and MVPs get a free subscription, so if you qualify, this would be a great time to use that. Let me know if there are more topics you'd like to see me cover (after I get this one finished, of course!)

Kate

MFC had some Windows 7 support starting with the release in between Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Studio 2010. There was a ribbon, for example, though there was no designer. In Visual Studio 2010 there is a ribbon designer, very nice, and tons of UI fun as well. In this post I'd like to focus on some MFC support for taskbar interactions. Any idea what these two lines of code do?

HICON i = LoadIcon(NULL,IDI_WARNING);

   SetTaskbarOverlayIcon(i,L"Warning");

Here's the visual evidence:

Yep, you load an icon and then you set it as an overlay icon on your taskbar. Nice and simple.

How about this:

m_jumplist.InitializeList();

   m_jumplist.AddTask(L"http://images.bing.com",L"",L"Bing",L"",0);

   m_jumplist.CommitList();

You need to know that m_jumplist is a member variable of type CJumpList - a new type in MFC. Here's what that code causes:

This is remarkably little code to be all up to date and modern, isn't it?

If you want more info on C++ and Visual Studio 2010, here's a nice article by Sumit Kumar and a Channel 9 talk with Pat Brenner. Enjoy!

Kate

When I show off Windows 7 features and talk about how you can add them to your apps, I usually show a "sad trombone" moment featuring Visual Studio 2008, like this:

(I really like jumplists in the start menu, so I thought I would show that in my screenshot instead of the classic right-click-on-the-taskbar jumplist. They're the same.) But this jumplist isn't useful. It isn't all the .sln files I've opened before, or the projects, or anything really except some random bits of XML, icons, schemas, and code files that I dragged in to Visual Studio over the past few months while I had some real solution open.

Now this isn't poor Visual Studio's fault. It was released before Windows 7, before anyone knew that the MRU list kept by the OS itself would be important. As I've explained in presentations before, there's a reason this happens. You see, when you double-click a .docx file, Windows looks up who handles those, launches Word to open the file, and accumulates that file name on the MRU list for Word. Cool. Ditto for .txt and Notepad, etc. But Visual Studio is different, and it's different so that you can have Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 side by side on your machine, and use .sln for the solution file names in both products. You double-click a .sln file and what actually runs is a little launcher that looks inside the .sln file to see if it's a 2005 or 2008 solution and then runs the right Visual Studio and passes the solution to it. Cool. But as a result Windows isn't accumulating what you opened with Visual Studio 2008, it's accumulating what you opened with the little launcher. The jumplist for Visual Studio 2008 therefore contains only things you opened directly with it, and that's not a very useful list.

OK, so I know why. And it's nice to know, btw, that Visual Studio 2010 gets it right. And in my presentations, I usually leave it at that, encouraging you to add the one whole line of code to your app (if you're using Code Pack) so you "don't be that guy".

But wait! What if you want a good jumplist for Visual Studio 2008? Especially if you don't have Visual Studio 2005 installed any more, so you don't care about the whole pick-what-version-to-launch feature? Well, you could try this suggestion from Josh Einstein. I like that he doesn't explain it much and says "If you need more instructions then the hack probably isn’t for you." His instructions, terse as they are, are for 64 bit Windows 7. A commenter supplies the 32 bit version.

I actually haven't tried this yet. Don't want to set my computer on fire or anything :-). But if you feel like living on the edge, give it a whirl!

Kate

Is it a good omen when mornings start out beautiful? I think it might be:

Normally, when I go to a conference, the first day is a little slow. I might go to the keynote, or I might not. If I do, I wander in to the back row 5 minutes before it starts (hey, I'm leaving plenty of seats for the paying attendees) with my coffee in my hand. So reaching the keynote room at 7am, full of pep and vigour, was fun!

I really liked the story the keynote demos told. If you haven't seen it yet, it's available online. The demos start with simple productivity boosts like multi-monitor support, Intellisense for Javascript, and so on, then move to some amazing C++ updates including Windows 7 support (yes, the demo went boom, but if you watch closely you'll see it was just that the app was still running, preventing a successful rebuild.) Then you see "SharePoint F5", a huge pain-saver for anyone, like me, who does SharePoint development. Over a dozen manual steps done for you when you press F5, and you can run SharePoint right on your laptop. But they're not done yet -- here comes an Azure demo with the Windows Phone 7 emulator and a real phone, and then Team Foundation Server and a ton of exciting new Application Lifecycle Management features in Visual Studio including (no kidding) time travel. Wow! I hope you all enjoyed it as much from the seats as I did from backstage.

No sooner was the keynote over than I was headed for the Channel 9 stage to record half an hour of Q&A with Twitter people.

That's available online too. And if you want more, some of the sessions are appearing on Channel 9, too. Not filmed on site, but the content matches. Get your Visual Studio 2010 from MSDN downloads, or if you're not a subscriber you can take the Professional Edition for a test drive.

Kate

Pete Brown has a terrific two part series on sensor programming in Windows 7. Part 1 has a link for where to get the board, and fills you in on the new architecture. Lots of helpful links and screenshots here, including one to Pietro Bambrati that includes some changes to the racing game sample to make the accelerometer work and one to his video showing you how to install and test it.

Part 2 starts with this nice summary of your options as a developer:

There are three different ways you can use the accelerometer API. You can, of course, go directly against the COM API and generate your own wrappers and pinvokes. You can use the managed wrappers provided in the SDK, or you can use the Windows API Code Pack which includes support for the sensor API and a number of other Windows 7-specific enhancements. In this case, I decided to use the code pack in concert with WPF 4.

Hard to argue with that! Pete has written an AccelerometerJoystick you can use in any "controller" situation - and be sure to think beyond just games!

Definitely read and watch, and let Pete and Pietro save you some time!

Kate

I saw this on Scott Hanselman's blog:

It's three little meters - memory, CPU, and Disk IO. Each has a jump list with the obvious tasks - starting Task Manager, for example. It's really simple to do (read the code yourself) thanks to Code Pack.

What will you do over a weekend with it?

Kate

It's time for another release of the Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework. Yay! This is a pretty small release (which is why the version just went from 1.0 to 1.0.1) with some bug fixes, performance improvements, and more documentation and samples. It's getting a little attention :-)

• Yochay gives the excellent advice to "consider this library as if you wrote it yourself, as if it is your own code" and reminds you that while it's "the closest thing to an “official” managed API for Windows", it is not a supported product you can call somebody for help with.
• Mahmoud, who's actually running a Code Pack blog (though I think both Yochay and I have more Code Pack posts).
• Sasha, like me a friend of the Code Pack, also has a summary of Yochay's PDC talk - you should download and watch it.
• Kevin Griffin wrote a nice Code Pack article a day before the new version was announced, but all his praise is still valid :-)

If you're already a Code Pack fan, just go get the latest version. If you're not, you should be - it means just a line or two of code to make your application look and behave like a real Windows 7 app.

And are you wondering what's next for Code Pack?

See why I said to download and watch Yochay's talk?

Kate

Nice blog post from Scott Guthrie while I was getting ready for Tech Ed Europe. It has a whole laundry list of good stuff in WPF 4, but what jumped out for me was the Windows 7 light up content.

What can you expect? Jumplists (items and tasks), icon overlays and progress bar, thumbnail buttons, thumbnail clipping, all of it. Nice.

Kate

Have you ever heard someone make a definitive statement about a particular feature of Visual Studio or the .NET Framework that you knew just wasn't true? Did you ever wish for a Snopes equivalent you could send them to? Well, your wish has been granted.

Kate

I mentioned a long time ago that I have tweaked Windows 7 to my own preferences - the taskbar is 2 or 3 rows high, but I don't combine and I never hide labels. And until recently, I always used small icons. But while preparing both my Tech Ed Europe talk and my launch party demo, it annoyed me that I didn't get the icon overlays. These are incredibly helpful - better than icons in the system tray, balloon tips, focus stealing popups, toast, or other notification techniques. I mentioned to someone that I got them maybe once when I first installed, but never again since. Then just as I said that, I had a thought. A quick search confirmed it - you don't get overlays if you have small icons. And overlays are so useful, I've switched to large icons so I can have them. Not just while demoing, but for my regular life.

In the top row I don't have any new mail and I'm available on Messenger. In the middle row, new mail has come in so the Outlook 2010 icon has an overlay. In the bottom row, I'm away on Messenger. It's a very compact way to present notifications. So from now on, large icons for me!

Kate

It's not a very well known fact that the Zune plays games. Because of the large screen, it's actually quite a pleasant experience. The selection is not exactly vast, though.

The story is going to get more interesting now that the HD is released. Business Week has an article suggesting the Zune could be "a gaming titan", believe it or not. And then I read a report about an iPhone app being ported to the Zune in just 12 hours. Wow! Of course, just because they've ported it to the Zune doesn't mean you can have it - the marketplace story is Microsoft only at the moment. But I think we're in interesting times...

Kate

Jeff Barnes has published a wonderful array of material to his Sky Drive:

You can read his description and get the link on his blog. If you have the Windows 7 training kit, you may recognize a lot of this, but if you're just starting to think about developing for Windows 7, this is one way to get started. For others, try my Client Development category.

Kate

• “Everything is best for something and worst for something else. The trick is knowing for what, when, for whom, and why.” —Bill Buxton
• “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” —Hans Hofmann
• “Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.”—Alan Kay
• “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”—Albert Einstein
• “I have only made this letter longer because I have not the time to make it shorter.”—Blaise Pascal

• To achieve coolness, start not by thinking about what the technology can do, but by focusing on what your target users really need. Before adding that “cool” feature, make sure there are clear user scenarios that support it.
• When asking a question, use labels that match the question. For example, provide Yes and No responses to a yes or no question.
• Don’t give error messages when users aren’t likely to perform an action or change their behavior as the result of the message. If there is no action users can take, or if the problem isn’t significant, suppress the error message.

1. Nail the basics
2. Design experiences, not features
3. Be great at something
4. Don’t be all things to all people
5. Make the hard decisions
6. Make the experience like a friendly conversation
7. Do the right thing by default
8. Make it just work
9. Ask questions carefully
10. Make it a pleasure to use
11. Make it a pleasure to see
12. Make it responsive
13. Keep it simple
14. Avoid bad experiences
15. Design for common problems
16. Don’t be annoying
17. Reduce effort, knowledge, and thought
18. Follow the guidelines
19. Test your UI

There's still time to plan a trip to Boston for the BizSpark incubation week, October 5th to 9th.

As Sanjay blogs, you don't need to be in BizSpark to come - it's an event to help startups learn about Windows 7, how it can make your product better, and how to be a successful entrepreneur. You need to be at least interested in building an app that will include touch, sensor and location, the new taskbar or the new ribbon. That covers a lot of ground!

It's a free five day event, though you have to get yourself to Boston and find a place to stay. Up to three people from your firm can attend. Nomination details are on Sanjay's blog, but if you have a BizSpark sponsor you should ask your sponsor to send your nomination to Sanjay.

My firm is a BizSpark network partner. Generally speaking, we sponsor our clients - folks we're mentoring - and not people who are contacting us only to get into BizSpark. If you think completely legal free developer software (Visual Studio Team System, SQL, Windows etc) is just the ticket to get your startup started up, you should definitely look into BizSpark. It's a tremendous opportunity.

Kate

Keyvan Nayyeri knows Visual Studio Extensibility all right. He even wrote a book:

Now he's written a multi-part blog series about extending Visual Studio.

• Part 1 clarifies the difference between an add-in and a package, and acknowledges that there are also other ways of extending Visual Studio (it's actually incredibly extensible in a lot of different ways). It's a nice history review to show us how we got to where we are.
  
• Part 2 is about the IDTExtensibility2 and IDTCommandTarget interfaces. All add-ins implement the first, and those that are on the Tools menu implement the second.
  
• Part 3 turns to packages, which inherit from the abstract class Package (and therefore have plenty of work to do implementing various interfaces.) Keyvan recommends C++ for package development, interestingly enough.
• Part 4 can now talk about the differences between them in some detail. Add-ins are easier, can be written in more languages, but just can't get the same level of integration that a package can. It depends on the functionality you plan to offer your users.
  

Looks like there are more parts to  come ... stay tuned!

Kate

• The Code⁷ contest - How to get a trip to PDC and $17,777. Not bad eh? Also covered by Yochay.
• XP2Win7 (aka PhotoView) - I've covered it before and I won't repeat the links from that post. Scott includes a gratuitous underwear shot you're going to love.
• Code Pack - you know it almost deserves its own category here on my blog. Like Scott says, a gold mine of samples in both C# and VB.
• 16 bonus links and the "lightweight" parameter for MSDN.

I am pleased to learn that at least one of the sessions I submitted for Tech Ed Europe in Berlin has been accepted:

The Windows API Code Pack: How Managed Code Developers Can Easily Access Exciting New Vista and Windows 7 Features

Accessing new Windows 7 or Vista features is a challenge from managed (.NET) code. The level of interoperability required is out of reach for many developers. The Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET Framework is a sample library you can use in your own projects today that provides access to new user interface features (taskbar jumplists, libraries, sensor platform and more) as well as "behind the scenes" features that make your applications more aware and responsive (restart and recovery, power management, and more.) Discover a shortcut to Windows 7 and Vista development for Microsoft Visual Basic and Visual C# programmers and how you can get involved.

Now comes the logistics fluffle of getting everything booked, telling "my" teams I'm going, and possibly picking up some other talks or panels or whatnot while I'm there. I'm looking forward to it already! I love Tech Ed Europe - it's such a well run show and the other speakers are a delight to spend time with and learn from. The energy is always good and on top of that the destination is fabulous. I adored Barcelona, so now it is time for Berlin to show me what she's got. What a week we've picked to be there!

You can still register at a discount. See you there!

Kate

Code Pack, or Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework to use the official name, has hit 1.0 with the RTM of Windows 7 and is now available for your downloading and coding delight. Yes, two registered trademarks in the name, but still technically not a product. It's the most useful not-a-product I know. The mission statement, if you will, of Code Pack is:

The Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework provides a source code library that can be used to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of Windows operating system) from managed code. These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework.

The parenthetical in that description is referring to Vista features like Restart and Recovery and Network Awareness, among others. If you've been playing along throughout the beta period of Windows 7 you probably have three questions:

What's in 1.0 that wasn't in 0.9?

• Shell Search API support.
• Drag and Drop functionality for Shell objects.
• Support for Direct3D and Direct2D interoperability.
• Support for Typography and Font enumeration DirectWrite APIs.

• You should get 1.0 because it has some bugfixes in it.

• Probably, but no guarantees.

• The Code Pack also contains sample applications built using this library. Each sample has a C# version and a VB.NET version and has its own solution file.

• Found short (ten lines including initialization and cleanup) code to read one blob in VB6 and save it to disk.
• Found the TIFF format details, looked in the resulting file with notepad and confirmed it didn't start either II or MM and so wasn't a TIFF.
• Looked at a few other file formats but wasn't really gaining any knowledge, just ruling things out that you could rule out by renaming and double clicking, then having the file rejected by the app that tried to open it.
  
• Discovered Marco Pontello's absolutely cool File Identifier, TrID, and downloaded it
• Removed the extension from what had been test.tif, pointed TrID at it, and was told 100% it was a zip file. Duh, the file started PK, I might have guessed that one.
  
• Renamed it to test.zip, unzipped it by hand -- ooh, it IS a zip! -- and was rewarded with file.txt for my trouble
• Looked at file.txt in notepad and noticed that it was full of binary-looking gibberish, but it DID start with II
• Hand renamed file.txt to file.tif and double-clicked it
• Presto! A scan of a document!

Want to go to PDC but not sure you can afford it? How would this work for you: a trip to PDC including flights, hotel, and conference admission?

That's the grand prize in the INETA Component Code Challenge. Write an app (web, client, whatever) that uses at least two different components (a grid and a chart? a PDF creator and a calendar? a report and a spreadsheet? You decide.) from the sponsors.

Try it! And maybe see you in LA!

Kate

Here's another tip from Habib on debugging. If you have a particular screen you want to bring up, and it takes a lot of clicking and selecting to bring it up, why not just set a breakpoint and then bring it up by constructing and calling it with the immediate window?

Habib's video features a WPF application, and the constructor takes no parameters, but you could use this for Windows Forms and you could pass through whatever parameters you needed to. A very handy tip - any language, any kind of client application.

The application itself is a photo viewer and that makes it a natural fit for hooking into libraries, search and organize, and the preview system. It has an intuitive jump list on the taskbar:

It also uses the new Sensor support, Aero glass effects, trigger-started services for backing up images when a USB key is inserted, MMC and Powershell integration, the new Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) and so much more. This will be your roadmap to Windows 7 development. Of course all the code is available, as well as a simple MSI if you'd just like to play with the application a bit and understand what Windows 7 has to offer.

Get your copy and start learning and exploring!

Kate

I sure do love using the Windows 7 taskbar. (I might have blogged a few times about it already.) I have completely internalized the habit of right-clicking on a running app (or a pinned icon for a non-running one) to open a recent document - whether that app is Word, Notepad, PowerPoint, or whatever. I right-click any Messenger conversation to change my status, and I close instances right from the taskbar preview window. I wish Outlook would give me 5 or 6 jumplist items, like New Message and New Appointment, and I really wish Visual Studio would give me some options too. I am looking forward to new releases that will harness this intuitive way of getting users closer to the files they want to open or the things they want to do.

If you want to put taskbar support into your application, and you're not really a video kind of person, perhaps an MSDN Magazine article will do the trick? Yochay and Sasha should be familiar to my readers - you know these guys know their stuff. The article covers both native and managed development, and concludes with this summary:

In this article, we have explored some features of the Windows 7 taskbar, such as application IDs, thumbnail toolbars, overlay icons, progress bars and jump lists. The Windows 7 taskbar provides a clean, sleek launch surface that strongly benefits users. Integrating into this surface will be a primary goal for any application developer for Windows 7.

Using the native Win32 APIs or the managed Windows API Code Pack provides you with a differentiating opportunity to light up your applications on Windows 7. Bear in mind that the taskbar is the first thing users see after logging on to Windows, and you'll want your application to be pinned to their taskbar.

I completely agree. Give it a read.

Kate

The Build a Better App site is all about applications. They've gathered tutorials, videos, and useful libraries for folks who are building client applications. You'll see some old friends of mine on the main page - Code Pack, Tim Huckaby's recent guidance paper, and so on - along with plenty of things I haven't linked to from this blog. But there's more, like profiles of some of the people whose work is on the site (love the fish, Tim) or videos showing the Windows Forms to WPF converter in action, Code Pack demos, and so on. Speaking of videos, Build a Better App has their own channel on YouTube, as well. Jono Wells is twittering on behalf of the site, and blogging too.

If you were at Tech Ed USA, you probably saw the Build a Better App team - they had a colourful presence and fun stickers and clings. There's a slideshow of some of the "better app requests" from attendees and while I doubt anyone will be coding a cloak of invisibility any time soon, there were some pretty cool requests in there.

Take a look around, and if you want to submit some content for the site, let me know and I'll connect you to the right people.

Kate

WPF uses XAML. Silverlight uses XAML. WPF is mostly for writing client (Windows) apps, but XBAPs run in a browser. Silverlight is for the web, but an offline story is planned. It's easy to get confused. Worse, people often feel there is a "vs" aspect to it - Silverlight vs WPF. Mike Taulty puts it like this:

Of course, it's not a fist fight. Mike goes on to elaborate on the continuum of technologies and the way you can share skills between them. He also points to a post by Karl Shifflet that demonstrates how code can be reused between WPF and Silverlight applications.

A vital reference for anyone who is moving around on this continuum is a whitepaper (with companion code) that highlights the similarities and differences between WPF and Silverlight. It's available on Codeplex now. It's full of detailed summaries like this:

Check it out!

Kate