Daniel Kornev took a look at Code Pack and went back to the future, recreating some Longhorn WinFS demos from five years ago using Windows 7 technology. What old demos and prototypes can you find and make a modern-day reality?

Kate

I haven't put the RC on my laptop yet - too close to Tech Ed for me to mess with important stuff - but I liked this summary from Tim Sneath of what an RC means, and what you should be looking at as a developer. Make sure your application runs properly on Windows 7 to start with (and if it runs on Vista, it will almost certainly run on Windows 7), then look at adding goodies to it that take advantage of what the OS has to offer. He even includes a link to Code Pack. Check it out.

Kate

Some people have asked me about the purpose of Vista Bridge now that Code Pack (ok, Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework) exists. If you want to use a Vista feature (such as the power management API) you won't find them in Code Pack yet. Vista Bridge is not under active development right now, but you can download and use the wrappers to save time and effort whether you are targeting Windows 7 or Vista. If you run into issues using it on Windows 7, please let the team know using the Discussion tab.

The second question I am getting is about versions. Code Pack 0.8 (no longer available for download) was for build 7000. Code Pack 0.85 (the current version) is for the RC of Windows 7. If you have moved to the RC and something isn't working for you, go and get the latest version because there were a few breaking changes.

Will there be a new version for RTM? Let me just quote from the home page:

Please note that this library is currently a work-in-progress and this release is version 0.85 of this library. The final version of this library will be available around the time of the Windows 7 RTM release. Various features in the library could change between now and final release.

That's pretty transparent, I would say.

Update: 0.8 can still be downloaded. Go to the downloads page and there's a link over to the right.

I've made another appearance on DotNetRocks with Carl and Richard. Some links from the show:

• C++ Team blog, good source of info on lambdas and other things that are new in C++ these days.
• Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework (v0.85)(Code Pack to it's friends) the wrappers for new Windows 7 functionality
• Laptop Lojack, the sample that will demonstrate the Windows 7 Location API.
• Windows Forms to WPF Converter, the sample that helps you learn WPF by converting the code you already have working. It doesn't do everything, but it's a great way to get you started.
• The service pack I was waiting for to make Outlook a little better behaved.

And of course, the show itself. I dare you to listen at 1.4 or double speed.

Kate

Sometimes little things make a big difference. Say you're reading through some code in Visual Studio and you come across a class or function you don't immediately recognize. It's interfering with your reading of the code, right? So you copy the name into your clipboard buffer, flip out to a browser, probably with Alt-Tab, then click for a new tab, type a URL like www.live.com or www.codeproject.com, wait while the page loads, paste your buffer into the search box, click search ... wow there are a lot of opportunities to be distracted in that process.

The CodeProject has a simple add-in for Visual Studio that lets you do your searches without going anywhere. It does one thing, and does it well.

Give it a try!

Kate

If you're starting to get interested in WPF, why not check out some of the videos over at WindowsClient.net? You can learn how to make a splash screen, use a datagrid, add validation to your application, deploy using ClickOnce, and much much more. Each video is only 10 or 15 minutes, but there are about a hundred of them. You're sure to learn something!

Kate

Inspired by the side by side approach of the "eye candy" article I linked to, here are two apps to compare:

Yes, they're the same app. The difference is a theme - one of the ones I posted about a while ago. I had to make four changes to this application to get this theme applied. I started by copying the appropriate XAML and DLL files (in this case, ShinyBlue.xaml and System.Windows.Controls.Theming.ShinyBlue.dll) into the project folder. Then I added the XAML into the project, and added references to the dll and also to WpfToolkit:

This lets me use dynamic resources from the theme. This particular theme doesn't have a default background brush, so I edited the XAML for my window to use the background brush in the theme:

For everything except the background (the colour of the button, the checkbox, the foreground text colour for the label and so on), it's just a matter of adding the ResourceDictionary in App1.XAML:

The various controls look good together - that's the work of the theme. This is a pretty simple way to make a dramatic difference in your application. If you didn't look at WPF themes yet, you really should.

Kate

Design matters. I don't just mean software design, like what objects you'll have or what the interfaces will be or what database tables you'll use. I don't just mean planning before you code. I also mean visual design. I'll tell anyone who asks that I'm a grey-boxes-on-a-grey-background kind of girl, but that's mostly about my skills, not my aspirations. I can tell good looking from not so good looking, and I do get that being good looking makes a difference, at least for applications.

I read an interesting article called In Defense of Eye Candy and it has some good examples - mostly oriented towards web sites, but not entirely - about making it clear that a button is a button, and about the tone and mood you set with your design decisions. Worth reading.

Kate