How to add Windows 7 Jump Lists to a application - winforms

I want to add custom jump list entries to my application in Windows 7.
The menus I am referring to are the following.
Pin a application to the taskbar.
Now right click on the application.
Some applications like windows media player etc. have custom options that you can run.
How do I go about adding these to my application.

The Windows Team Blog has some articles about Jump Lists and other new Windows 7 Shell features:
Developing for the Windows 7 Taskbar – Jump into Jump Lists – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Those are geared towards C++ applications, there are also managed code APIs which package those in a way a little easier accessible to .NET developers.

For .Net code, there are some good example and libraries in the Windows API Code Pack
The Samples\Shell\TaskbarDemo specifically deals with the TaskBar APIs and shows how to do Jump Lists and control the icon.
Not sure if it has any examples of custom actions like Media Player.

Related

Do any of the Windows system applications use WPF?

Context: I am looking for examples of popular applications that use WPF for their UI.
With Windows 8 and Windows 10, certain parts of the OS got a new 'look-and-feel', for example:
The system settings dialog
The taskbar and the start menu
The calculator app
The task manager
Do those or any other Windows system applications use WPF for their UI?
This question already provides a list of existing applications that use WPF: What real world WPF applications are out there?. However, I would like to know if there are any builtin Windows system applications that use WPF.
None of those applications use WPF. Instead they use UWP, which was inspired by WPF, but is quite a different framework underneath.
There are WPF applications in many default Windows installations, though. For example, the PowerShell ISE is one.
You could try Snooping them to find out - It's not been updated for several years but I tried it on a splinter new 4.6 app I'm developing and it's detecting it and works fine. Whatever it can detect is certainly a WPF app - the inverse is not true however.
That being said it did not detect calculator or task manager for me.

Silverlight application for Windows Embedded

I am developing a Silverlight application for Windows Embedded and I am using Blend2 for making GUI.
SL for Windows Embedded will not support the C# code and we have to use C++ as we know this.
So my question is: I created a sample GUI in Blend2 and I created one button. When I click that button it should move to another screen & it will show that and for this what should I put in function definition?
It seems your question is about making your first steps in this technology, I would recommend to take a look on this tutorial. I also found this video tutorial regarding using .net compact framework with Silverlight for Windows Embedded, you may find it useful too.

Question regarding WPf/Silverlight/Windows Phone7 Developemt

I have experience coding in C# (console and Windows Form applications). For something to do in my free time, I've been intending to pick up another language, and have my sights on something thats a little more content rich. However, I'm confused about the following:
Windows Forms are used to develop GUI applications for windows. What is WPF and how is it different from Windows Forms
Does Windows Phone development use C#, or exclusively Silverlight? Or does it just use the .NET framework, and you can use either of the two?
Adding to other answer(s):
WPF uses an XML-based markup called XAML to describe the UI, like HTML does for a web page. The XAML file is paired with a "code-behind" (.cs or .vb) file that is compiled together when the app is built. Adding an XML element to the XAML file is equvalient to declaring an object in the code-behind file. For many classes, you can choose to do one or the other.
Use can use C# or VB.NET language to write Windows Phone apps (although currently only C# is available in the free Visual Studio Express that comes with the Windows phone tools on App Hub). Silverlight is a subset of the .NET Framework, whose classes can be used to write phone apps. You can also use the XNA libraries to develop phone applications.
I HIGHLY recommend Charles Petzolds free ebook for more. He does a great job of explaining this in the first couple chapters: http://charlespetzold.com/phone/index.html
Hope that helps!
Win Forms are a light object oriented wrapper around the basic Win32 GDI primitives.
WPF and Silverlight do their own rendering, don't use GDI and are built on XML-based layout and the MIL.
Windows Phone Development uses Silverlight with C#. The WP7 version of Silverlight runs on a modified version of Silverlight 3, which in itself uses a modified/minified .NET framework. So WP7 development uses all of what you mentioned in question 2.
I can't give a much better answer than #jeffmaphone for question 1, so please look at his response.
Windows Phone 7 uses Silverlight for the UI but the code can be C# or VB. This page of Code Samples for Windows Phone has both but:
In order to build and run Visual Basic samples, you must install additional developer tools. For more information, see Installing Windows Phone Developer Tools.
For more information see the Windows Phone 7 Developer Guide
1) Windows Forms is one method to develop GUI apps for Windows, WPF is another (for Vista, 7 and XP SP2). In general, Windows Forms is great for simple, quick and dirty applications, while WPF works well for more complex and flashy applications.
2) Windows Phone uses Silverlight for non-game applications and XNA for games. In both cases, you can use C# as the logic layer. In other words, C# code decides where to put things in the UI, while Silverlight or XNA are different ways of talking to a display.
Be careful about searching for Silverlight tutorials, because not all of Silverlight is on the phone.
Here are my suggestions:
1) Check this discussion :WPF versus Winforms
2)Generally Windows Phone 7 supports two frameworks for developing applications– Silverlight and XNA. Check MSDN for reference:
The Silverlight and XNA Frameworks for Windows Phone
Features Supported in Silverlight for Windows Phone
PS: One of the best resource for Silverlight development is the official Silverlight web site: http://www.silverlight.net/

Multi-target rapid prototyping using Microsoft technologies?

I want rapid prototyping: Quickly define screens, links, buttons etc. I want to easily interact with sample data. I want to see things "moving".
An example would be a mail account: I would like to say that a message has a sender, date, subject and content, then say that a "message" screen displays a list of message headers, and clicking on a message header opens a "view message" screen where a "reply" button leads to a "create reply" screen.
You know - Gmail :)
There are two catches:
I want multi-platform targeting: At this stage I'm not yet sure which parts of the project would run on the web, on desktop clients, or maybe on tablets and smart devices (Ok, Ok: iPad/iPod/iPhone).
I know and like Microsoft technologies: C# (or VB), ASP, Visual Studio etc. So I wouldn't like to switch to Rubi, PHP etc.
I thought Sketchflow was the answer, but this is Silverlight which is not portable.
I believe this need is not mine alone, so probably a solution exists out there!
Any suggestions?
Like you say, it's a difficult choice.
Either you stuck with MS Technologies and the answer is Sketchflow (then Blend) and Silverlight which make development very easy, but that are not "standard" : works well on Windows, MacOS and quite well in Linux with MoonLight. Silverlight should work well with Windows Phone 7 but won't work with Apple Iphone/Ipads.
Either you can do it in HTML5, which will be standard, compatible with the most recent browsers (forget about IE 7, Firefox 3 and co) but then the development will not be as easy.
I don't know your app's complexity but i would start doing silverlight + webservices and a Iphone/Ipad app later (using the same webservices via json).
For information, the silverlight penetration rate is 55-60%.

Is Windows Phone 7 User interface based on Silverlight?

I've heard that Windows Phone 7's user interface (UI) is completely based on Silverlight. Can anybody confirm this? Or it is implemented by other frameworks?
Windows Phone 7 will support developing apps in either Silverlight or XNA.
Are you asking if the shell, etc that comes on the phone itself is written in Silverlight? My first question would be "why does it matter what Microsoft used?" It's probably a good bet that they leveraged it, but I doubt they did everything in SL. At some point they have to get down to the OS. For example, I doubt the built-in media player core or Office apps are SL.
Looking at the unlocked emulator image contents would certainly let you deduce which parts were developed with what technologies. I leave that exercise to you.
Indeed Silverlight is used for third-party apps on Windows Phone 7, plus XNA is supported too as mentioned.
However the Office apps and some first-party applications are written using the Iris framework which is an internal only developer framework similar to WPF, it is the same framework used for the Zune Software (Dorado) which is used to sync to a Windows Phone 7 device.
Yes it is based on Silverlight
I can tell you one thing, they are using Expression Blend (or a modified version of it) for parts of the core UI design. You can see the developers using this on one of their promo videos.

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