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 (v0.90) of the library are:

• Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
• Known Folders, Windows 7 Libraries, non-file system containers, and a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities.
• Windows 7 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.

What’s New in this update (v0.90):
The new features added in this update of code pack are:

• Tabbed Thumbnail and Thumbnail Toolbar features in Taskbar area.
• Direct3D 10.1/10.0, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite and WIC APIs in the DirectX area
• Power Management
• Application Restart and Recovery
• Command Link
• System defined Shell icons
• Network List Manager APIs

Other enhancements done in this update are:

• Bug fixes in all areas.
• Many new and improved samples.
• Addition of VB.NET samples in some areas.

Requirements:

• Minimum .NET Framework version required to use this library is 3.5.
• This library targets the Windows 7 RC version, though some of the features will work on the older versions of Windows operating system.
• DirectX features have dependency on Windows SDK for Windows 7 RC and March 2009 release of DirectX SDK.

Building the Library:

• To build the library (except the DirectX related features) in Visual Studio 2008, please extract the contents of the ‘WindowsAPICodePack.zip’ file in a new folder and build the included ‘WindowsAPICodePack.sln’ file.
• To build the DirectX features, build the 'DirectX.sln' file inside the DirectX directory. Please read the DirectX Readme file (DirectXReadme.mht - available as separate download and also included in the help files) for additional information about building and using DirectX features.

Samples:
The Code Pack also contains sample applications built using this library. Most of the samples are written in C# and have their own solution files. Some VB.NET samples are also included.

Please note that the VB.NET samples currently do not have individual solution files (they have only project files). You can add these .vbproj files to a solution created by you or can use the default solution file generated by Visual Studio. To build the VB.NET samples, please add the .csproj files for the needed Code Pack assemblies in the solution (right click the solution Add | Existing Project, and then browse to the needed .csproj files like core.csproj, shell.csproj, sensors.csproj etc.)

Documentation:
The Code Pack also includes API reference and some conceptual documents. Help files can be found in two separate .chm files 'WindowsAPICodePack.chm' and ‘DirectXHelp.chm’. Overview document and DirectX Readme documents are also available as separate downloads for quick reference.


Please note that this library is currently a work-in-progress and this release is version 0.90 of the Code Pack. The final version of the Code Pack will be available around the time of the Windows 7 RTM release. Various features in the library could change between now and final release.

Note:
Some users may experience a security related issue when opening the help files or the Visual Studio solution. Contents of help files may not be visible or a security warning similar to “Unknown Publisher” or “This file came from another computer and might be blocked” may pop up. If that happens, the user won't be able to load the solution projects because Windows will block it.

To remove that error, please unblock the help files and zip file before extracting it (right click the file | select properties | click Unblock button).

Videos:
Two minute videos demonstrating some of the features in this release are now available:

• Explorer Browser
• Common File Dialog
• Taskbar Progress bar
• Taskbar Overlay
• Taskbar Jumplist