Windows 7 Code Pack v1.0 Released – Managed code to help get at the yummy Windows 7 filling…

Charlie Calvert's Community Blog - Windows 7 Code Pack V. 1.0 Released

“…

Here are some of the features you can from managed code using the Code Pack:

• Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
• Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers.
• Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects.
• Explorer Browser Control.
• Shell property system.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
• Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)
• Sensor Platform APIs
• Extended Linguistic Services APIs
• Power Management APIs
• Application Restart and Recovery APIs
• Network List Manager APIs
• Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.

…”

CodePlex - Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework

“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 individual features supported in this version (v1.0) of the library are:

• [GD: Same list as above] 

What’s New in this update (v1.0):
The new features added in this update of code pack are:

• 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.

Other enhancements done in this update are:

• Bug fixes in all areas.
• Performance optimizations.
• Some improved and new samples (esp. for the new features in this release).
• Improved API reference documentation

…

Samples:
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. [GD: VB samples makes me smile… :]

Documentation:
The Code Pack also includes API reference documentation. API documentation files can be found in two separate files 'WindowsAPICodePackHelp' and ‘DirectXCodePackHelp’.

…”

 

Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework - Windows API Code Pack 1.0

“

Files
WindowsAPICodePack.zip
source code, 6848K, uploaded Thu – …

WindowsAPICodePack.chm
documentation, 4573K, uploaded Thu – …

DirectXCodePackHelp.chm
documentation, 4597K, uploaded Thu – …

DirectXCodePack_Requirements.htm
documentation, 13K, uploaded Thu – …

WindowsAPICodePackHelp
documentation, 4240K, uploaded Today – …

DirectXCodePackHelp
documentation, 4258K, uploaded Today – …

…”

Get your Managed Win7 coding on!

 

Related Past Post XRef:
Bridging to Managed Windows 7 Development – Vista Bridge to Windows Code Pack
Pimping your Win7 Taskbar – Extending the Win7 Taskbar with Managed Code
Vista Bridge v1.4 Released – Now with custom controls for Common File Dialogs, BreadCrumb control and Aero Glass
Vista Bridge (v1.3) available on MSDN Code Gallery
It’s the Bridge to… Vista – Getting and installing Vista Bridge Sample Library
Ease Use of Vista Task/Common Dialogs with Project Glidepath Windows Vista Bridge Package

“Is there a free alternate to application X, Y or Z?” Probably, but just how the heck do you find it? (Hint: You go to AlternativeTo.net)

404 Tech Support - AlternativeTo – Free Replacements for Popular Desktop and Mobile Apps

“AlternativeTo provides a simple, straight forward means to finding free software that will provide the same functionality as a commercial title. It offers listings for Windows, Mac, Linux, and online applications. They also have a fairly new Mobile section that offers listings of alternative software for smart phones like the iPhone, Windows Mobile devices, Android, Blackberry, S60, Palm Pre, and more.

Let’s say you need to edit some photos, particularly some .PSD files. So you start looking into Adobe Photoshop, but you find that it costs an Arm and a Leg in a better market than we’re in today. So, you just choose the tab that corresponds to the OS you’re looking for, Windows, Mac, Linux, or online or stick with the All tab and then type a search out for ‘Photoshop’. This will bring up a list of results and …”

AlternativeTo

“AlternativeTo is a new approach to finding good software. Tell us what application you want to replace and we give you suggestions on great alternatives! Instead of listing thousands of more or less crappy applications in a category, we make each application into a category. Think of it like forever evolving blog posts about good alternatives to the software that you're not satisfied with. And the "blog posts" are generated by you through suggestions, comments and votes.

…

…”

Yesterday, I was doing a fresh install of Windows 7 and needed an ISO mounting utility. I had used Virtual CloneDrive on Vista and was happy with it, but seeing that I now a fresh, clean and happy OS install, it was worth checking if there was a better alternate.

How do you find it? bing it and then hunt and peck, tweet, etc, etc?

Better yet, go to AlternativeTo.Net!

How is that I’m just now finding this site? It’s pretty much exactly what I need when I hunt for software…

[BTW, In the end I stuck with Virtual CloneDrive and it’s working great :]

Bonnie.Net – A free (reg-ware) .NET Framework Cryptographic API/library

Visual Studio Gallery - Bonnie.NET Standard Edition - .NET Framework Cryptographic API

“Bonnie.NET is a cryptographic API written for the Microsoft® .NET Framework. It allows the generation and management of cryptographic objects based on the today most used cryptographic algorithms.

Bonnie.NET reorganized the cryptographic classes of the Microsoft® .NET Framework giving to them a more developer-friendly common interfaces. Those permit the utilization of cryptographic elements even to the novices, allowing however the possibility to the cryptographic experts to implement complex cryptographic systems.

From a security point of view, Bonnie.NET is developed and maintained with great attention about security and code security. 

In fact, all the cryptographic operation are based on the today most secure standards and those are combined with the excellent protection level achieved by the .NET framework 3.5.  

All cryptographic data are kept secure in memory by the utilization of the SecureString class and ProtectedMemory class of the .NET framework. Moreover, the cryptographic objects inside the API are disposed and immediately garbage collected as soon as they complete their job.

…”

wecoffee – Bonnie.Net

“…

Bonnie.NET is a Microsoft® .NET framework API that implements almost all the instruments needed when developing code with enhanced data protection based on cryptography.

Bonnie.NET includes a complete set of instruments for X509 certificates and Smart Card based cryptography management

…”

From the PDF in the MSI;

“…

The principal crypto-objects are:
SymCrypter object: It implements all the methods needed to perform symmetric encryption using the common today adopted algorithms (AES, DES, RCS, TripleDES, Rijndael)

HashBuilder object: It permits to generate hashes of input data using algorithms such as MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512 and RIPEMD160

KeyedHashBuilder object: It generates message authentication codes (MAC) utilizing an Hash algorithm and an input secret key by utilizing well know algorithms such as HMACMD5, HMACSHA1, HMACSHA256, HMACSHA384, HMACSHA512, HMACRIPEMD160 and MacTripleDES.

Signer object: this object, with its derived classes, is responsible for signatures generation and validation. It utilized RSA or DSA asymmetric algorithms in conjunction with hash algorithms to obtain the signature of input data.

…”

From the license.txt;

“…

This software is free to use for commercial and non-commercial purposes. No commercial license is required.

…”

Plus there’s a good number of code samples;

 

Yes, I know .Net includes a number of native cryptographic features, but this free library seems to make them almost drop dead easy to use, all in a 125kb DLL.

Why do it the hard way when you can stand on the shoulders of giants? (when it’s free ;)

SPLibrary – Library to access SharePoint, without being on the SharePoint server (Think SharePoint Web Service Helper)

Mikael Söderström - SPLibrary – A SharePoint Library on a CodePlex near you

“I have just released SPLibrary, a SharePoint Library written in C# on CodePlex. It works with the SharePoint web services and do not have to run on the same server as SharePoint.

Examples

Get all sites

SPLibrary sp = new SPLibrary(new Uri("http://moss"), new NetworkCredential("user", "password", "domain"));
SPWeb[] webs = sp.GetWebs();

Get all lists for a site

SPLibrary sp = new SPLibrary(new Uri("http://moss"), new NetworkCredential("user", "password", "domain"));
SPList[] lists = sp.GetLists();

Get a specific list

SPLibrary sp = new SPLibrary(new Uri("http://moss"), new NetworkCredential("user", "password", "domain"));
SPSingleList list = sp.GetList("List ID (GUID)");

Get all items in a list

SPLibrary sp = new SPLibrary(new Uri("http://moss"), new NetworkCredential("user", "password", "domain"));
SPListItem[] listitems = sp.GetListItems("List ID (GUID)"); //All items
SPListItem[] listitems = sp.GetListItems("List ID (GUID)", Dictionary<string, string>); //

…” [GD: Post Leach Level: 90%]

CodePlex – SPLibrary

“…

A SharePoint library that uses the Web Services delivered by SharePoint. You can easily enter a URL to the SharePoint site and list sites, lists and items, search the site etc.

It´s written in C# and is compatible with .NET Framework 2.0 and later.

I started writing this library for test purposes, but it should be stable enough to use in production. If you intend to use it in production, make sure you cache so much as possible, such as sites, lists etc.

There can be some test code left, but that wont affect anything.

…”

If you’re looking for an example of how to access/talk to/get at/etc SharePoint via its Web Services, then this is a project you may want to check out.

It’s for those of you who want to interact with SharePoint externally, say from your own application, site, etc. SharePoint is “the thing” right now, leveraging your internal SharePoint and integrating it into your app’s may be one way of dipping your own foot into the SharePoint waters. I mean why right an admin UI, security, web UI, etc, etc, if all your app needs is a group of lists to hold things? Heck, let MS do the hard work and leverage, baby, leverage!

We have a project (that I hope we can release as Source Available one day, but that’s another story) where we interact with SharePoint, pulling down lists, items from lists, etc. This library might of saved us a good bit of time…sigh…

Six years just seemed to fly by… It’s my Sixth Year Blog-aversary!

Has it really been six years? [OMG, it’s ONLY been six years?  ;]

Yep, looks that way, it seems that today is my six year blog-aversary. Wow

In the past years I’ve used this annual blog-aversary post to go on and on about “stuff.” Things I learned in the past year, visit info, why I blog, etc, etc, yada, yada…

This year? I’m just going to keep it short and simple…

THANK YOU

 

There, that wasn’t so bad now was it?  If you really want all the “stuff” check out my past posts below. ;) 

 

Related Past Post XRef:
“One Million…” visits… Thanks!
Five Year Blog-aversary, and 500K+ Visit Milestone
Four Year Blog-aversary
Three Year Blog-aversary...
Two Years and Counting...

ZoomIt, the must have technical presentation tool, get’s a major update (with added Win7 coolness) – ZoomIt v4 released

Sysinternals Site Discussion - Updates: Zoomit 4.0, procdump v1.2

“ZoomIt v4.0: In addition to minor bug fixes, this update to ZoomIt, a screen magnification and annotation tool, has significant improvements to the live zoom functionality that’s available on Vista and Windows 7. For example, it removes the shadow mouse, it uses a better mouse tracking algorithm and on Windows 7 it adds zoom-in and zoom-out transitions.

ProcDump v1.2: This ProcDump now automatically generates 32-bit dumps for 32-bit processes on 64-bit Windows for easier debugging.” [GD: Post Leached in Full]

Windows Sysinternals – ZoomIt

“…

ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.

ZoomIt works on all versions of Windows and you can use pen input for ZoomIt drawing on tablet PCs.

Using ZoomIt

The first time you run ZoomIt it presents a configuration dialog that describes ZoomIt's behavior, let's you specify alternate hotkeys for zooming and for entering drawing mode without zooming, and customize the drawing pen color and size …

”

If you’ve ever been to any live Microsoft technical presentation then you’ve probably seen ZoomIt in action. This is one of the premier technical presentation tools and a must have for anyone giving like presentations…

 

Related Past Post XRef:
LiveZoom with the new ZoomIt v3.0
Sysinternals Update Day – Including new major release of Process Monitor (think PM + Network Monitoring = v2)

Avoiding a TFS Licensing Landmine – A little help wrapping your head around the TFS licensing landscape

Tamir Khason – Just code - TFS licensing model demystification or what should I buy for my company in order not to step on the licensing mine?

“Microsoft loves cumbersome licensing models . This is not because of their evil-heartedness, but because it make them possible to get more from bigger companies and less from smaller. However when you come into the real decision about how many and what kind of licenses you have to purchase, you stuck. Today we’ll try to make things clearer, at least for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio, which is very base things for any software house develops things using Microsoft technologies.

…

 

This is one of the most follow-up common questions I heard at TechEd09, “How do I get it and what does it cost?” And the answer is always, “It depends…<sigh>”

To help with the “<sigh>” Tamir has put together this great post. If you’re interested in getting on the TFS wagon, you need to check out this post.

Important Note: The Bible for TFS licensing is the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper. While I liked the post, since it’s not directly from Microsoft, it may not be 100% “right”. So again be safe and make sure you check out the white paper… “Friends don’t let friends license TFS without reading the whitepaper” (Thanks @briankel !)

Something we all need sometimes, some “Logik Redaction”

Logik – Redaction

“…

…

What is Logik Redaction?

Logik Redaction is a California red zinfandel created by Andy and Sheng for both our employees and our valued clients. Back in 2007 we decided that it would be a fun idea to create our own wine, so we hooked up with the amazing people at Crushpad in San Francisco and reserved a French Oak barrel to make our wine in.

Naturally, we named it Logik Redaction:

• Red = the sweet color of the wine (and in our logo)
• + Action = like Gridlogik™, the wine is designed to taste great and pack a punch (14.5% alcohol)
• = Redaction = A common term in the eDiscovery industry (to revise or edit)

…”

Now that’s some cool EDD/Legal marketing. The play on words just kills me (you’ll only really get it if you’re in the legal industry… but I can SO use some logic redaction sometimes! lol ;)

Make sure you click through to register for your chance to win an entire case…

(via Gabe's Guide to the e-Discovery Universe - I bet this tastes much better than moonshine in “native format”)

Nero now offering a “Free Forever” Version (Basic burn and coping only, email needed-ware)

Windows 7 Hacker - Nero Now Offers Free Version for End Users

“Windows 7 offers a lot more built-in burning features than any previous versions. However, I still prefer using the 3rd party burning tool for any my burning tasks. Nero is my favorite tool for this purpose.

Now it’s even better that Nero offers a free version that is promised FREE FOREVER. Nothing is better than that. It’s a striped down version that only contains simply data burning and disc copying features for CDs and DVDs. And it should be good enough for most of the people

…”

Nero – Nero 9 Free Version

“What’s better than free? Free forever! Nero offers you the chance to enjoy Nero’s world-renowned data disc burning and copying features for an unlimited time, absolutely FREE!

Enjoy basic data burning and copying capabilities for your CDs and DVDs from the world’s most trusted digital media brand, Nero.

 

…”

Sure Windows 7 is coming with ISO burning backed in, but still having this is cool… Hey it’s “Nero”!
(Why oh why doesn’t Win7 also include ISO mounting too? sigh… but that’s a whine for another day)

Anyway… Just enter your email address and the download enables and starts, quick and painless…

Standing up to say, “Installing Security Patches != Install New App’s” – Just say Yes to “Security Updates should only offer Security Updates”

THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS "DIVA" - Patchers Demand Security Updates Only

“Spread the word.  If you want to put in your blog site a campaign to showcase that you too are sick and tired of prechecking of software installers that are included in security updates. 

Put this code below into your blog site (in Community Server it's in the News section) to showcase that you have had it with vendors that are sneaking software onto consumer machines in the guise of security updates.

=====start here=====
<a href="http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/blogs/mowgreen/index.php?showentry=1564"><img src="http://imk3xq.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p1UoWJx5pbfw0Eua0Ybyw20g4Nb3NSaNwtb57Dy3ITBVUguIg513j_SoQHAjUuLg0RuhDZVbD8AMTDiUbDfNb92wldtgJuOGU/banthechecksmall.PNG" alt="[Security updates should only offer Security updates]" title="Let&#39;s get vendors to stop offering toolbars and extra software with Security Updates" border="0" /><br /><br />
=====stop here=====

It will resolve into that red banned check logo you now see on the left side of the blog and point to Steve Wechsler's campaign to stop vendors from doing this.

…”

The Clippings of Chairman Mow - Hey, Software "Vendors", Stop installing CRAP with your security updates !!!

“A notice appears on your PC about an update for Adobe Flash Player. Adobe, in their infinite wisdom, doesn't inform Users why this update has come out.

The User, thinking that it improves the Flash Player, hurries to install it, clicking quickly through the installation pages.
When the update is done, guess what ? There's another toolbar installed to Internet Explorer !!!

In the US, it will likely be either a Yahoo or Google tool bar.

Lord knows which tool bar Users in other regions find installed.

Or, there's an update to Sun Java. Again, there's no explanation about why there's an update. Once more, the beaten down weary from constant updating User doesn't notice that Sun is also offering a tool bar, which in the US is probably the MSN tool bar. European Users will likely have other crappy tool bars stuffed on to their systems.

Now, why are these "vendors" allowed to install 3rd party tool bars along with .... wait ... wait ... wait some more ...
SECURITY UPDATES

…

Signed,
One Pissed Off User Who Refuses To Take It Anymow !!!”

I HATE it when installing a security update, the “update” also wants to install new app X, Y or Z. I’ve bitched about this before, and am doing so again.

If you, vendors, feel you MUST include other crap stuff in your “security updates” at least have the decency to uncheck it by default! GRRR!!! Every time I install a “security update” and I have to uncheck a bunch of crap stuff it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and a feeling of dislike toward that company. It just smells bad, you know?

Look, I’m already pissed off that I have to apply this security patch for your software anyway… Now I also have to have to be careful to that I, or my family, don’t install MORE of your stuff, stuff that if I wanted I’d already have?

Yes, I know no code is prefect. Believe me I KNOW! And security updates are a fact of life and I appreciate that you are patching your software, but please just patch the software! Don’t “offer” other crap stuff with the patch.

Say it with me, “Security Updates should only offer Security Updates!”

Is that really so much to ask?