I just stumbled across an article that might interest those wishing to perform development specific to the Windows 7 platform from a managed code environment (.NET).
Windowsteamblog.com have announced a downloadable Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework. As some of you may know, most Windows 7 APIs are written in native code C, C++, and COM APIs, and provide no .NET equivalents, but this pack intends to bridges that gap. The Windows SDK team have put together this pack to provide you with a managed code .NET API which interfaces to these unmanaged code libraries, providing a simple to understand and easy to access mechanism which enable many of the features typically much more difficult to access.
More information direct from Windows Team Blog article:
As mentioned in the Windows 7 .NET Interop Sample Libraries post, most Windows 7 APIs are written in native code C, C++, and COM APIs, and have no .Net equivalents. This makes the life of managed code developers a bit hard, forcing them to create their own interoperability layers for communicating between .NET and the native Windows APIs. Some native APIs are easy to wrap and use from managed code, requiring simple interoperability efforts like adding a reference to a COM type library. However, some are extremely problematic and require a lot of knowledge about the “Win32” programming style. That is exactly why the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework was created.
In the Windows 7 .NET Interop Sample Libraries post, we highlighted few samples codes showing how to access the Taskbar, Libraries, Sensor, and multi-touch from .NET, and we also promised to report in the near future on a new project, Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework. The Windows SDK team built the Windows API Code Pack to provide easy access to Windows 7 features for .NET developers , lowering the bar for developers who want to target Windows 7 Client applications. Basically, it is the closest thing a .NET developer will have to managed code APIs for Windows 7.
Sounds pretty cool huh?
Check out the remainder of the article at windowsteamblog.com as well as the download links.
3 Comments
That’s awesome!
Ah good morning Chris! You do check my blog, hehe cool
Graham O’Neale,
There were many reasons why Windows 7 was written the way it was and you have mentioned a few of the benefits of it. I encourage you and all Windows 7 RC users to head on over to Microsoft Springboard to learn more about the many new features and why they were developed.
http://tinyurl.com/832nco
Jessica
Microsoft TechNet / Springboard
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[...] Then you’ll want to grab the Windows API code pack for MS .NET framework – here. This .NET source code supports new Windows 7 developer features via managed code APIs including the following: Shell features, Direct 3D 11.0, and Sensor Platform APIs. More about the value of this download from this blog post. [...]
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