Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework

Thanks for putting this up! I'd love to see you write some support for the new Windows 7 API for the Windows Biometric Framework.

hi SBussinger. Check out Dan Griffins biometric sample for info on how to call the Biometrics Framework: http://www.jwsecure.com/dan/2009/02/17/new-test-devices-for-biometrics-project/

Does this release include (or will include) support for multi-touch features?

Multi-touch features are not likely to be included in this release of Windows API CodePack.

Thanks for this release..

Will these become a part of .NET Framework 4.0? If not, at what point will they be added?

It would be nice if the documentation included information about the minimum supported version of Windows for each feature, and some idea of how the API will fail on an unsupported platform.

Thanks for this effort! Are we going to see the new DirectX features, d2d and direct text ?

D2D 1.0 and DirectWrite support are there in the new release!

Does this mean we can use Direct3D with managed code? As we did with DirectX 9 and Managed Direct3D? Thanks.

Yes!

Will we ever get support for the Ribbon?

Hi there - will there be support for the Mobile Broadband API at some point?

Thanks for nice Lib. I'm interesting about support of D3DX general and D3DX Math. And, like a RyGuy12, what about Ribbon?

RyGuy12 - The V1.0 release of the Code Pack will not have support for Ribbon. We are considering this feature for future versions.

cjmarsh - Thanks for the feature request. We will add Mobile Broadband API support to the list of potential candidates for future releases.

REVAN - We do not have full support for D3DX but we have basic Math and utilities library that we have used to build our samples. In addition, the included DirectX utilities (in Samples) show how to wrap D3DX interfaces and methods.

Same question as wayne_p:
"Will these become a part of .NET Framework 4.0? If not, at what point will they be added?"

I wouldn't say it could be included there - the Beta version does not include it, so why the released version would? Anyway - why would you like it included there? Isn't it better to just have the source code that you can bend to your needs easily?

@cjmarsh - There is already a whitepaper on using Mobile Broadband API with managed code at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connect/wireless/MB_ManagedCode.mspx

May I just add - that this could be the greatest single thing Micrsoft could have done to drive Vista / Windows 7 adoption. Core API's moved to managed code - it's like my birthday come early. Thank you.

Thanks for that API! I will start using it right now to code applications compatible with Windows 7.

i'm just curious (and i've seen a few others) if there's something like this for windows xp that anyone knows about? we're kind of stuck on it here at work...

For those who want to use biometric features from Windows 7, you could take a look here: http://weblogs.asp.net/thomaslebrun/archive/2009/08/19/windows-seven-how-to-use-biometric-authentication-in-your-net-applications.aspx

Is there are any plans for Media Foundation wraper in next releases?

I have taken the sample for the Shell PropertyEdit Sample, rewrote it for a form app and it works great on Vista. Is there a way to get it to work on an XP computer????

I have installed Framework 3.5 sp1 on the XP machine and the program will run without exceptions.

The program contains four function:
1. Get property value
2. Set property value
3. Enumerate properties and values.
4. Give information about a specific property name.

On the XP computer the program will run without errors but only function #4 will return a value.

I hope their is just something I am missing.

Please drop the WinForms Dependencies. if you want everyone to use WPF then stop using WinForms. For the next release you should split more code into the "Core" library and then have WPF library and a WinForms library.

THANK YOU! this is so much easier then having to look around the web for something.
I'm just woundering, is there any thing for the new VHD API in this?

The newer Intel CPUs have a built-in floating point operations counter. Will Windows 7 provide an interface to this counter? In other words, will it be possible to call something like QueryPerformanceCounter() to access the FLOPs that a program has executed?

@CElliott: Looks like the APIs are already there and easily callable from .NET (using pinvoke):

MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd458671(VS.85).aspx
PInvoke: (only couple; I am sure you'll find others on pinvoke.net)
http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/kernel32/QueryPerformanceCounter.html

and

http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/kernel32/QueryPerformanceFrequency.html

I can only assume most of the installation instructions have been left out. They didn't even say to use C#. C# couldn't find the files in the locations the ZIP folder put them. The supposedly VB samples are looking for C files! Microsoft, how about some instructions on how to actually install and use these!

There is nothing to "install" ... It's a zip file with sources and samples. Download the file, unzip, run the samples SLN files.

Well, of course you need a few things, like .NET 3.5, Visual Studio seems pretty useful, so is a C# or VB compiler and C++ for DirectX, Windows SDK and DirectX SDK. I suppose C++ was missed from the list, but really everything else is mentioned above.

Check Windows Ribbon for WinForms at [url: http://windowsribbon.codeplex.com/]
This is my work for provding .NET WinForms users access to the ribbon feature.
It is build on top of Windows API Code Pack and tries to follow the same convensions.
Sample projects included.

Is there any plan to include the WINSCARD functions in a later release?

DirectCompute would be a nifty one. It would be great to be able to speed up math-heavy .Net apps without having to resort to unmanaged code.

Shouldn't this be rolled into a .NET Framework release/update? It'll make it easier to roll out the runtimes to servers/workstations. Nice features, by the way. As someone else pointed out, DirectCompute would be nice...

Awesome! Can't wait to play with it!

So does this mean the Microsoft supports access to DirectX with Managed code? How is this different from Managed DirectX? What does this mean for XNA? Can I assume that XNA is what Microsoft is still pushing for Indy game development?

This is great news for tool development. By that I mean access to DirectX through Managed code.

Why did you choose a minimum of .NET 3.5 SP1? If you could lower that to 3.0 or even 2.0 a lot more people would start using it. Great set of tools though, I think they should be part of the framework, nice WPF controls.

Is there any plan to add an API for controlling the Desktop Wallpaper Slideshow?

I'm proud to present [url:Windows Ribbon for WinForms|http://windowsribbon.codeplex.com/],
a library for using windows ribbon in WinForms applications.
It is a managed wrapper around the Windows Ribbon Framework (formerly known as Scenic Ribbon)
and includes all the ribbon features supported by the framework.
The [url:documentation|http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/arik/archive/2009/12/23/windows-ribbon-for-winforms-part-0-table-of-contents.aspx]
shows how to use every feature from a WinForms application.
Also, the project site contains 18 sample applications that showcase every feature along with the full source code of the wrapper library.

As others have suggested, this is a great set of tools, but many of us out here in the "real world" are still working with .NET 2.0, so your decision to require .NET 3.5 SP1 is very, very disappointing. Why should I have to force all of my users to upgrade to .NET 3.5 SP1 just so that those of them who run Windows 7 can have a measly jump list with custom tasks? Is that too much to ask?

@bokonon, You could strip out what you need or even remove the incompatible code and reduce the .net framework. Most people have at least 3.0 if not 3.5 sp1. Once you get the framework installed, windows update auto updates that version. Vista has 3.0 built in, Windows 7 has 3.5 sp1 built in. So the only real problem would be XP users, and imo that isn't going to be a issue in about 1-2 years. Try to see if it runs the 3.5 client profile.

BTW, the 4.0 client profile, is a huge improvement and 4.0 is coming around the corner. My apps require 3.5 for the linq and other efficiencies and it hasn't been a problem for my userbase.

How are we supposed to use this with Visual Basic? Instead of C# that is...

Have any plan to multi targeting for frameworks? Net 4.0 can't using dll without recompile and 2.0 version will be nice for mainstream. And why no support of media foundation in interop maner for example?

If you are using .Net 2.0 you can on startup check if current user uses Windows 7, and then invoke CodePack's methods via Reflection. You have to add compiled dlls like Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack.dll into your .Net 2.0 output directory. If user uses Win7, load this assembly using Assembly.Load("Microsoft.WindowsAPICodePack") and then invoke all needed methods.

Using Reflection provides no need to reference CodePack's .Net 3.5 dlls into your .Net 2.0 project. This is dirty method, but effective and simpler than using native calls to Windows API.

IMPORTATNT: You can also create a .Net 3.5 project that uses CodePack and initializes all needed things (like JumpLists). This project could contain only one class (eg. Win7Initializer) with one method (eg. void Win7Initializer.Initialize()). This method has to initialize Win7 features. Compile it into eg. Win7Initializer.dll. Then in your .Net 2.0 project check if user uses Win7 and then use reflection to load Win7Initializer.dll and call only ONE method: Win7Initializer.Initialize. Simple?