Devs start your engines, Windows 7 RTM Code Pack released

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Now that Microsoft has officially signed off on the Windows 7 RTM build and has released it to MSDN/TechNet subscribers, it's time for some API code so developers can start developing applications for Windows 7.

Microsoft has released the Windows 7 RTM Code Pack 1.0, available to the general public.

Microsoft's Charlie Calvert, Community Program Manager for the C# group said, "The Windows® API Code Pack for Microsoft® .NET Framework provides support for various features of Windows 7 and previous releases of that operating system. The Code Pack has reached version 1.0 and has been published on Code Gallery."

Developers familiar with the Code Pack will glad to hear that Shell Search API support has been added, Drag and Drop functionality for Shell objects has been added, support for Typography and Font enumeration DirectWrite APIs have been created, as well as support for Direct3D and Direct2D interoperability.

Microsoft also noted that the following individual features are supported in this release:

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.

You can download the API, requirements, help files, and more here.

(3 replies) #1 dagamer34 on 11 Aug 2009 - 03:58

Yep, hopefully all of the browsers will support the new APIs in Windows 7 soon.

#1.1 Karo - 323z IT on 11 Aug 2009 - 04:03

Yea I want to see tabs showing in the superbar like IE8 in Chrome

#1.2 revreddy on 11 Aug 2009 - 04:58

Next few months should be exciting to see all many popular applications push out updates. Some of them are already on top of their game, but this will just push the envelope on how much better integrated devs can make their software.

#1.3 ilike2burnthing on 11 Aug 2009 - 09:45

update to dev Chrome, although no tabs as of yet, jumplists and tasks are available

#2 McoreD on 11 Aug 2009 - 04:12

Yea this is awesome. Already supporting in our ZScreen 2.30.1 program...

#3 The_Decryptor on 11 Aug 2009 - 06:43

Yay, DirectWrite support.

#4 Jugalator on 11 Aug 2009 - 07:12

Great!

This is already documented on MSDN with header files available for C++ in the Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 SDK, but good to see it for .NET, of course!

#5 Calculator on 11 Aug 2009 - 07:56

Already found out about this three days ago in my Visual Studio C# RSS feed, great to see this made the Neowin headlines!

I have to admit, the Code Pack is awesome! I really love the Explorer control, just too bad that it's not backwards-compatible with XP. Now I have to look for a decent (free) XP alternative in order to keep my projects compatible...

(1 reply) #6 Omen1393 on 11 Aug 2009 - 14:41

I'd really like to see some applications written in Direct2D and see how the performance is. Isn't it supposed to be a competitor to OS X's Quartz?

#6.1 Intelman on 11 Aug 2009 - 15:10

I'd think more broadly. Windows 7 is a competitor to OS X.

(2 replies) #7 WB3000 on 11 Aug 2009 - 16:18

I wish it wasn't so large/connected together. I'm sure most people will find it useful, however I'd hate to add dozens of class files to my simple little project just to get a taskbar progress display...

#7.1 wakers01 on 11 Aug 2009 - 20:05

Have you tried using the .Net 4.0 framework w/ VS2010 yet? References are supposed to only add what you are using in code, instead of the entire dll. I know it's still in beta, but nice to know it's on the way.

#7.2 McoreD on 11 Aug 2009 - 23:17

References are only loaded when you are using the code, are do you mean something else?

(1 reply) #8 Zyphrax on 11 Aug 2009 - 20:31

Too bad they've set a minimum of .NET framework 3.5 SP1.
I don't think that would have been necessary.

#8.1 _dandy_ on 13 Aug 2009 - 13:10

Zyphrax said,

Considering that the library's main purpose is to take advantage of new features in 7 (which has 3.5 SP1 built-in), I don't really see that as much of a restriction...

#9 McoreD on 11 Aug 2009 - 22:07

We made use of Shell and Core DLLs here - you can check out the source as well

http://code.google.com/p/zscreen/downloads...0.1.0-setup.exe

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