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Mar

30

Windows 7 .NET Interop Sample Libraries

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

We’ve got .NET sample libraries and example for managed code developers to target Windows 7 new APIs!

Windows 7 offers new functionality that developers can exploit in their applications to provide enhanced experiences and productivity for their end users. Included among these new features is the ability to add custom Tasks to the Taskbar Jump Lists, support the new Libraries and make your application Library aware, allow enhanced user interaction with Multi-Touch, and extend the application to “react” to its surroundings by adopting the Sensor and Location platform. You can read about these and many more new Windows 7 features in the Windows Engineering blog, Channel 9 videos, in earlier posts, and on The Windows Blog.

The Windows 7 Beta SDK is a great source of documentation and examples for using these new sets of APIs. However, most of the examples are written in native code similar to Windows 7 APIs which are all native C, C++, and COM APIs, which makes the life of managed code developers a bit hard. For that reason, Microsoft created the Windows Vista Bridge project that makes it easier for managed code developers to use Windows OS-specific APIs such as those described above. The current version of the Window Vista Bridge, version 1.4 contains many useful “Windows Vista” features such as  Restart and Recovery, Search, Power Awareness and other Shell integrations. However the current version doesn’t include any Windows 7 features. It will support key Windows 7 APIs in the near future, but until then, we have developed an intermediate set of solutions for supporting managed code developers who wish to target Windows 7 Beta today and not wait for the time the Windows API Code Pack for the .NET Library (the new name of Windows Vista Bridge) will be available.

NOTE: It is important to be aware that these solutions are not the “official libraries”; they come with no support or any sort of warranty — in other words, use them at your own risk!

With that caveat in place, we can go ahead and introduce some new managed code wrappers that will allow managed code developers to use the Windows 7 Taskbar, manipulate Libraries, add Multi-Touch support for WinForms or WPF 3.5 SP1, and enable Sensors and Location in their applications.

Taskbar

The Taskbar Sample .NET Interop Library allows developers to:

The Windows 7 Taskbar Sample .NET Interop Library is available for download and include 4 demos showcasing all the Taskbar features.

Windows7Taskbar

Libraries

Libraries are new in Windows 7 and provide a logical representation of the user’s data on  his local computer and on remote computers. With Libraries, the user can define which physical folders are mapped to which library and achieve better search quality and easier “maintenance” of his content. In Windows 7, it is important for developers to

enable their applications to become Library-aware by supporting Libraries. This will integrate the user’s application and Windows experiences and maintain the integrity of your applications in various scenarios

The Windows 7 Library Sample .NET Interop Library allows developers to:

The last point is very important since the Library root (that is the Library itself) is not a real  directory (there is no “c:\Libraries” or anything similar); it is just a logical location. In order to get to the actual items within the Library, you need to enumerate the contents through the listed physical folders.

The Windows 7 Library Sample .NET Interop Library is available for download, and we will provide a series of posts and Channel 9 Screencasts showing how to use the Libraries and Taskbar in Managed Code applications.

Sensor and Location Platform

The Sensor and Location platform provides a new and unified set of APIs for sensory inputs, for example Accelerometer, Light Sensors, or Location GPS are just few examples of sensors. This unified set of APIs makes it easy to consume sensory inputs and simplifies the Windows developer’s life.

The Sensor and Location .NET Interop Sample Library provides an abstraction of the native Sensor and Location API and provides strongly typed objects for specific sensors and for its Sensor Data Report. For example, a Light Sensor has a strongly typed LightDataReport object.

sensor control panel

With the Sensor and Location .NET Interop Sample Library, developers are able to create strongly typed custom sensor objects as well as use three built-in sensors: Accelerometer3D Sensors, Light Sensors, and Touch Array Sensors. These sensors are part of the Windows 7 Sensor Development kit.

This library also provides a unified location API for asking the common question of, “Where am I?” The nice thing about the Location platform is that developers can use the same APIs regardless of the underlying technology that is actually providing the answers, such as GPS, Wi-Fi triangulation, or IP Resolver.

The Library also includes a few demos like a light-aware MSDN Reader that changes the way the content displays according to the amount of light picked up by the Light Sensor.

The Sensor and Sensor and Location .NET Interop Sample Library is available for download, and make sure to read the prerequisites.

 

Multi-Touch

One of the most popular features in Windows 7 is Multi-Touch support. As was presented during PDC 2008, Windows 7 Developing Multi-Touch Applications, the current API is native and in the near future Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 4 will include full support of Multi-Touch in Windows 7. However, for the time being, the Multi-Touch Sample .NET Interop Library provides developers with full Multi-Touch functionality for both WinForms and WPF 3.5 SP1. The library includes few demos for reference, including detailed samples showcasing Multi-Touch gestures support, Manipulation and Inertia for both WinForms and WPF.

You can download the Multi-Touch Sample .NET Interop Library from.

A small and friendly reminder: These are just sample code; they are not supported and are based on the Windows 7 Beta SDK, which means they WILL CHANGE by RTM time. Make sure you stay alert for updates on the Windows Bridge status for the official Managed code libraries supporting Windows 7.

Mar

30

Welcome to the Windows 7 for Developers Blog!

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

Hello everyone and welcome to the first post of the updated Windows 7 for Developers blog. My name is Yochay Kiriaty and I am a Technical Evangelist on the Developer and Platform Evangelism Team, mainly focusing on the developer story for Windows 7. As Technical Evangelist, I get to work a lot with the product group as well as with our partners - that is, you developers. This enables me to become very familiar with the product, its engineering and APIs, and at the same time gain an understanding of the needs of the Windows 7 application developer community.

This blog will focus mainly on the developer aspects of Windows 7 and provide valuable content for developers. We want to make this blog a “one stop shop” on the road to getting yourself familiar with what Windows 7 has to offer for developers and how you can “Light-Up” your application by using Windows 7 features.

With your help, this blog should evolve to become a sort of Windows 7 developer content index. Down the road, if you want to write some code using one of Windows 7 new features and APIs, we hope that you will be able to find some reference to that topic in this blog. If you don’t find it, please feel free to comment and we’ll pick up that subject as quickly as possible. In case you have content you want to share, ping us so we can write a post and reference your content.

You can also expect this blog to have lots of code samples, and cool demos showcasing some of the new Window 7 features. You can also expect this blog to include webcasts with the Windows development group. For examples here are some links to already existing Channel 9 webcasts on Programming Windows 7 Taskbar and Ribbon, and other Windows 7 webcasts on Channel 9

Finally, this blog is part of an effort to highlight the Windows 7 developer story, a story that for some reason got lost with Windows Vista. The Windows 7 Developer and Platform Evangelism Team hope that together with you and the rest of the developers in the development community, we will be able to create an open and direct conversation about developing for Windows 7. 

You can read more about Windows 7-related entries posted on our previous site.

Mar

26

Laptop Hunters: Real People Find Windows PCs A Better Fit For Their Lives

Category: Vista News | Leave a Comment

Windows_h_rgb 

Today we’re introducing the next chapter in the ongoing Windows Brand Campaign - an exciting new series of ads called Laptop Hunters. These new ads trace real people as they go on a hunt for a new laptop. For many people looking to buy a new computer today, it is likely that if they make purchase it will be a laptop. Laptop sales increased more than 20% last year.

The Laptop Hunters are not told they are taking part in an ad campaign by Microsoft. Instead, they think they are participating in market research. Each participant set their own budget for a laptop to meet their own unique needs. We then provide the participant with cash and sent them out to find and purchase a laptop – all in a single day. We followed them with a camera crew throughout the course of their hunt and recorded their experiences. Everything is completely unscripted. Once the participant finds and purchases their perfect laptop – we inform them out in the parking lot that it’s actually Microsoft and this was part of our Windows brand campaign. The participant can of course decline to be part of the ad series if they so wish.

In the ad making its debut today, we’re introduced to Lauren who is on the hunt for a new laptop under $1,000, a budget she set herself. She is out to find a laptop that has “speed”, a comfortable keyboard and a 17” screen. Here is Lauren’s hunt:


Laptop Hunters #1 - Lauren

Lauren’s hunt is a good example of real people finding Windows PCs a better fit for their whole lives with the right value.

We define the right value as simply benefits + cost. Windows PCs offer more “bang for the buck”. Competitors offer laptops that often cost quite a bit more, even though they have less powerful hardware, and can’t offer technologies such as Blu-ray, HDMI, eSATA, and 3G wireless broadband connectivity. When buying a laptop, after all, purchasing a laptop is an investment right?

The current state of the economy is forcing people to cut costs and save as much as they can, which means that people are looking for laptops with the most value at the lowest cost possible. According to NPD data as of February 2009, 74% of people looking at buying a new computer rated price as their most important purchasing factor.

Windows PCs have the benefits people want at the price point they like. They also offer choice and flexibility. If a person is a gamer, they can get a gaming PC for example.

In the coming weeks, you can expect to see more from Laptop Hunters as we follow real people on the hunt for a laptop.

Be sure to check out the Laptop Hunters website on Windows.com too!

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