Until now, taking advantage of the UI improvements in Windows 7 (and even some features in Vista) took a fair bit of work – there was a lot of stuff that wasn’t available through the .NET Framework. You’d have to either switch to C++ or resort to hacks in order to access these goodies.

That’s all changed with the newly-released Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework. Written in C# – with some DirectX stuff written in C++ – this library acts as a wrapper that gives managed code access to features including:

• 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
• Shell search API support
• Drag and drop functionality for Shell objects
• Support for Direct2D/Direct3D interoperability
• Support for typography and font enumeration DirectWrite APIs

The system requirements are:

• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or later
• Windows 7 RTM (although many features will work on prior versions)
• DirectX features require Windows SDK for Windows 7 RTM
• Some Direct3D samples require the March 2009 release of the DirectX SDK

We’ll cover the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework over the next little while in a couple of places – certainly on this blog, as well as at the TechDays 2009 cross-Canada conference in the Optimizing Your Apps for the Windows 7 Experience session.

Download Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework (v1.0)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.