With Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced a whole new window manager which provides a better experience to the user and an independent graphics surface to us developers by taking advantage of graphics acceleration hardware (your graphics card or integrated GPU).

In a three-part blog post, I will show you how to use a wrapper around the Desktop Window Manager Application Programming Interface in order to control its state, change colorization, or change the rendering policy of windows from your Windows Forms and .NET 3 Presentation Foundation programs.
Read the rest of this entry »

(This is the first in an ongoing series about PDC 2008)

While perusing the PDC 2008 website’s preliminary agenda, I came across two sessions that really caught my attention:

Windows 7: Graphics Advances
Windows 7 enables you to advance the graphics capabilities of your applications while carrying forward existing investments in your Win32 codebase, including GDI and GDI+. New enhancements to DirectX let Win32 applications harness the latest innovations in GPUs and LCD displays, including support for scalable, high-performance, 2D and 3D graphics, text, and images. Also learn how to leverage the GPU’s parallelism for general-purpose computation such as image processing.

and

Windows 7: Web Services in Native Code
Windows 7 introduces a new networking API with support for building SOAP based web services in native code. This session will discuss the programming model, interoperability aspects with other implementations of WS-* protocols and demonstrate various services and applications built using this API.

After reading these, I could come to only one conclusion: Microsoft is building an unmanaged version of WinFX (at least the WPF and WCF components of it), currently known as .NET Framework 3.0.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of this. Long first revealed a job description back in March that related to a new, native UI framework for Windows 7. The PDC session overview doesn’t add much (outside of the WCF component) to what was revealed there, but it does seem to indicate that this framework hasn’t been cut from Windows 7.

A native WinFX excites me for many reasons. One reason is that it opens up the robustness of the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to native developers, most likely with a significant performance gain versus the current managed WPF developers use now.

Also, according to the job description, this framework will use a markup language to define user interfaces (Most likely XAML or something extremely similar), which means designers will be able to use their knowledge (and code) across Win32, .NET and Silverlight now. This could speed adoption of all three technologies, which is nice.

Perhaps the most exciting things to the average user are the possibilities this offers up to Microsoft for Windows 7 itself. Microsoft jettisoned most of its vision for a graphically rich shell when it reset Longhorn development and realized that building Explorer in .NET and on top of a framework that was still in development was a bad idea. Now that this framework (milcore) is done, Microsoft should be able to harness its power rather easily through this new unmanaged WinFX framework without having to completely rewrite Explorer.

In other words, much of the UI goodness from the early Longhorn prototypes could wind up in 7.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

The last couple of weeks, I have been working incredibly hard on a tool to create Vista Style Builder. Vista Style Builder supports everything that is needed to create Visual Styles for Vista:

• Import and export images
• Change, add or remove properties
• Import and export STREAM images
• Compile into a totally new MsStyles-file

In this post I will highlight some details of Vista Style Builder (VSB) which show how much easier this application makes it to edit MsStyles.

Read the rest of this entry »

I can give a pretty interesting perspective on the Windows 7 leak, considering said perspective is coming from someone who has had this build for 3+ months as of the writing of this post.

Before I really jump in, I should explain why leaks of this magnitude are bad. Believe it or not, these leaks do hurt Microsoft and the dev process of the operating system, especially this early in the cycle. When a leak happens, Microsoft has to devote time to investigating the leak and trying to pin down a source, ultimately the internal source or OEM who leaked it. Leaks are also bad because there are just some things that aren’t ready to be seen outside of Redmond yet, especially by the average Joe user. Say a build leaks, and average Joe doesn’t like a certain feature, or even more realistic, finds a real nasty bug. He blogs about that and next thing you know everyone is jumping on the slingfest bandwagon and presto, bad image before the product is even out of the gate.

The main thing about the 6519 leak that gets me is the fact that it leaked after so much time. I can only assume that it came from someone in the group that got the build about a month ago, and for some reason was looking for a “15 minutes of fame” moment. There is, however, a silver lining to all of this. The build is hard coded to expire on June 6th, after which date the activation system will lock you out of the system. Why someone would leak after expiration, you ask? Well it’s actually a pretty simple answer. They get their little moment of fame and (they think) cause little damage to Microsoft since Joe user can’t use it on a daily basis. The fact is though, the beta community is rather unique, we take builds of OS’s and actually use them on our machines to tinker with and see the direction that Microsoft is going with the future of Windows. With 6519, running on the current date is now impossible, but the OS can be used if you set the date back before expiration, which some will probably be willing to do, just for bragging rights.

I guess the point I am trying to make with all of this is 6519 never should have been leaked, but it is the unfortunate fact that we have some people in this community that just can’t seem to keep anything under wraps and thinks that leaking a build will gain them some kind of celebrity status. That could not be more inaccurate. Within the last few years leakers have been looked upon as the black sheep in the community, for the exact reasons that I mentioned earlier. The fact is that these people will never learn, and will likely continue to do things like this.

News broke this week that a number of senior Yahoo engineers are leaving. Despite the fact that all of them stressed that their walkouts have nothing to do with the now-failed Microsoft merger, there’s a good chance that that’s probably what it is. Let’s take a quick look at why the departures of Jeremy Zawodny, Jeff Weiner, and others are related to the fallout of a failed Microsoft buyout and the problems Google poses to some of Yahoo’s best engineers.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been roughly seven and a half years since Microsoft released Windows XP to the masses in October 2001. Meanwhile, it’s been a little short of a year and a half since Vista first became widely available. However, many people, myself included, are still running Windows XP. Some people don’t like the changes in the new OS, while others like me just see no reason to shell out the money and buy it. Windows XP has served us well, and many would like to keep it that way.

I personally have always maintained that I would jump to Vista in a heartbeat if we got a machine, but that time hasn’t come yet, and frankly, for my pocketbook’s sake, I’m glad. There are some, though, who still want to get Windows XP when they buy a new machine. I’m not about to jump into a big debate on the topic – it’s just the way it is.

Many computer manufacturers took to expected approach in early 2007 of going “Vista-only”. People asked to get XP back, and many companies (Dell especially comes to mind) went and offered it up again. Microsoft then came out at a later time and said that they would continue offering XP to OEMs and at retail until June 30, 2008 – the end of the month. Some were maddened by this, wanting still to stick with XP.

While I was browsing around last week, I came across this interesting gem on a local computer shop’s web site:

Now as the image says, this shop is no small little thing, they are Microsoft Gold Partner and have close ties with Intel as well. However, I found it interesting that one of the biggest computer manufacturers, Dell, would stop selling XP on new systems on June 18, while this small shop could sell it until January 2009. It now appears that Dell figured it out, and mooted the point made in the above image.

According to a story on Neowin, Dell is now going to offer Windows XP Professional on new computers through “at least 2009 and likely longer.” The story mentioned that this means either Dell stocked up on a “year’s worth” of licenses, or is preceding an announcement by Microsoft saying that XP Pro will continue to live on. Note that Dell is not forgetting Vista here – they are including both media so that users can upgrade when they’re ready. Is it a smart move on Dell’s part? It would appear so at first. I mean, it will surely make people happy, at least those not sure if they’re ready to take the plunge yet

But come on, it’s been 16 months since Vista hit the shelves and some people are still not ready to give up XP? If you’re going to miss a car 16 months after you sell it, or call your son or daughter every day, twice a day, for 16 months after they move out of the house, people will: a) think you’re crazy, and b) in the case of the children, probably hurt you, or at least get rather irritated. However, it’s a completely different story here, and I’m not convinced it should be. Service Pack 1 is here, and although it’s not a huge “life saver”, it is a service pack. This is the magic milestone many people wait for (just look back over comments concerning Vista’s launch). And then look back further. I’m sure there was a transfer period with 2000/98/Me to XP, but was it over a year long? It surely wouldn’t seem to make sense.

The “magic” Service Pack 1 for Windows XP was delivered on September 9, 2002, about 11 months after it became generally available. For Vista, SP1 came on February 4, 2008, literally just 5 days after its one-year anniversary of general availability. So while it was a little longer development time, it still launched five months before XP is to “die”. I think that’s plenty of time to get adjusted.

Wired has an interesting article on how the iPhone boosted smartphone sales for other manufacturers (most notably RIM and Palm). With the next version of the iPhone now released, you might be asking yourself

• What will Microsoft do to keep Apple from breaking into the enterprise smartphone market?
• Why haven’t I bought this new iPhone yet?
• What’s that pretty thing in the Crystal Ball?

Now might be a good time to analyze the potential impact Apple’s iPhone might have on Windows Mobile.

Read the rest of this entry »

With Vista, Microsoft redesigned Windows Explorer a lot. One of the biggest changes was the removal of the customizable toolbar. Up to Windows XP, adding or removing the buttons that were displayed in Explorer was a simple chore.
With Vista, this customization ability is gone; the toolbar is replaced by a so-called green shaded “commandbar,” and none of it can be customized unless you are willing to take a dive into the registry.

In this post, I will show you a way to add custom buttons — like in the above image — to the commandbar by adding items to the registry. Unfortunately, not all buttons (e.g. New Folder) are possible via this way.

Read the rest of this entry »

Despite being one of the most hotly anticipated game launches on the PS3, AeroXperience is hearing of retailers selling copies of Metal Gear Solid 4 before its official launch in 6 days time. One such case involved NeoGAF member Randam_Hajile buying a copy of the 80Gb MGS4 + PS3 bundle from Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. He comments that “it was in the glass case with the 40 gigs. I asked if I could buy it and they said yes. It was the only one in the case, but they were still unloading shipment for the night so they may be getting more.”

Another incident involved Neowin member Audioboxer buying a copy from eBay. His copy appears to have an Australian box, but a UK retail disk inside. According to his comments, the game runs by default at 1080p. The game also includes an installation screen, featuring Solid Snake smoking a cigarette, which burns and shrinks as the installation progresses. This is likely to cause controversy, especially in the UK, where smoking for theatrical performances is banned unless absolutely required for the performance. The installation screen also teases Xbox 360 owners, warning that the game is designed ” exclusively for use on the PlayStation 3″ .

NeoGAF member’s story and pictures

NeoWin member’s story and pictures

Goodbye Resource Hackers and Hex-Editors. Hello Visual Style Builders.

Yes that’s right, Builders! This week, AeroXperience was the first to get exclusive previews from Andreas Verhoeven’s Vista Style Builder.

I happen to be one of the fortunate people testing this application and giving feedback to Andreas mostly from an End-users Perspective. This Application does everything we could do before plus loads more. Whereas before we could only see numbers for images, now we will be looking at descriptions or, at the very least, class names. Instead of Hex-editing, we can insert/edit class properties using a language we can one day understand. At the moment, most of us will not understand what each Visual Style class does as they have not been publicly documented, so this is where I hope to step in and help.

I don’t want to Speak for Andreas as I am sure you will be hearing from him soon, but from what I gather, his plan is to make an application that the end-user can understand and use easily. Due to the large content of .msstyles, that will not be an easy thing to do. At the moment Avestyle is a Work in progress, but Andreas worked hard to make the application as usable and functional as possible. The actual core of the application works beautifully, but the UI is still in the process of being built. In the early builds, the Vista classes will be displayed in the application with the class name and a description.I am currently researching these classes to organize the Treeview in the application in a way where the user can find what he/she is looking for.

So Instead of researching image numbers and variant hex-edits, I will be focusing my attention on researching Vista class names and property names. This will most likely be more useful to us all as I am really confident that AveStyle is the way forward. Look out for more blog’s right here at AeroXperience about the new Customizing possibilities avestyle has to offer.

www.vistastylebuilder.com | Aves Pages | AeroXperience Forum Discussion

If anybody else would like to start getting familiar with class and property names, you will find the following links useful.

• Vista Visual Style Class names
• Property Identifiers