Windows 7 is now available to the public and anyone can buy and install Windows 7, whether for a new computer or an existing one. Soon, people from around the world will run your applications on Windows 7. They will expect the application to work and to feel as though it is a native Windows 7 application that takes advantage of new Windows 7 features and technologies like the Taskbar, libraries, touch, and sensors.

As Windows 7 approached GA, we continued to release new developer content to help you get up to speed with the new operating system. Now that it's here, Windows 7 GA is a great “excuse” for us to give you a quick update on all the Windows 7 developer content that is available to help you learn how to write a great Windows 7 application.

Below is a list of locations where you can find Windows 7 developer content.

Updated Windows 7 Training Kit – (Download it now)

To help you get your application onto Windows 7 as soon as possible, we updated the Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers. You can still find all the previous topics such as Taskbar, Sensor and Location, Libraries and Shell, Multitouch, Ribbon, etc. New to the kit are labs that work with VS2010 and use the new MFC improvements in VS2010 (download VS2010). We also added VB to all of our managed solutions – truly, no developer is left behind.

 

Windows 7 Online Training on Channel 9 Learning Center

Let’s assume you are interested in learning about Windows 7 libraries, or how to add some cool Taskbar functionality to your application, but you don’t want to download the entire training kit. Well with the Windows 7 Online Training Kit located on the Channel 9 Learning Center, you have immediate access to all Windows 7 learning units individually. Each learning unit (like the Taskbar) includes a few hands-on-labs and related videos. This gives you quick and easy access to most of our training material. For the rest of the content, like PowerPoint presentations and additional demos, you will have to download the Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers. The following image shows part of the managed code hands-on-lab for the Taskbar.

As always, the Windows 7 Topic Area on Channel 9 still features specific Windows 7 videos and screencasts. Over the past few weeks, we created new videos that I am sure you will find exciting and helpful, including a new Mark Russinovich video. As a friendly reminder, the last video Mark did, “Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7, was a Channel 9 blockbuster. If you haven't already viewed it, I highly recommend it, and make sure you see Mark’s new video Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7 Redux. Don’t forget to stay up-to-date with other topics:

• Using Windows 7 – Contains consumer- and user-related videos such as how to install Windows 7 and how to set up a home group network
• Programming Windows 7 – I don’t really need to explain what goes here, right?
• Last but not least, “Under the Hood” –Covers deep architectural Windows concepts

MSDN Developer Center

The MSDN Developer Center also received a “Windows 7 GA refresh” and now sports a new look and much improved functionality. The MSDN Developer Center includes a lot of Windows 7 material that extends the training content on available on Channel 9. You can think of the MSDN Developer Center as a hub for the Windows 7 content that will give you a great head start as you develop applications that will shine on Windows 7. You can find information about specific topics, review different programming models, learn about the developer tools that you can use, watch videos, and read blogs.

A New Book for Windows 7 Developers

Among the other things that you will find on the MSDN Developer Center, is a list of recommended Windows 7 books for developers. It turns out that over the past few months, I’ve been busy writing a Windows 7 book with three amazing co-authors: Laurence Moroney, Sasha Goldshtein, and Alon Fliess. Together, we wrote Introducing Windows 7 for Developers. It covers most of the exciting Windows 7 features like the Taskbar, Libraries, Sensor and Location, Multitouch (including new WPF 4 support with VS2010), and even Silverlight out of

browser (including touch :). As far as I know, this is the first Windows 7 developer book, and I hope you will find it useful. Mark Russinovich found this book helpful while integrating Windows 7 features with the Sysinternals tools and he wrote the foreword for this book.

I hope this list will help get you on your way to writing amazing Windows 7 applications.

The Professional Developers Conference (PDC) is the one event that all developers who use any Microsoft technologies must attend at least once in their professional careers. It’s the flagship event for developers, offering the most comprehensive, future-looking, technically deep, densely-packed set of sessions from Microsoft speakers you can find anywhere. This year’s PDC is no exception and you can expect it to be a very exciting event.

My first PDC was PDC08, held last November at the LA Convention Center. As one of the people at Microsoft who work on Windows 7, I was fortunate enough to be in the loop regarding Windows 7 @ PDC08, and was able to contribute (even if only in a small way) to one of the keynote. During the Day 2 keynote,

Steven Sinofsky presented Windows 7 to the world and for the first time people outside of Microsoft saw the new Taskbar, the Windows Ribbon, and witnessed a live multitouch demo. Attendees received a 160G hard drive (makes you wonder what they'll get this year…) with Windows 7 build 6800 (does anyone remember this build number?). The Windows team presented a lot of its technologies in a series of impressive sessions. And since then, through the different versions of Windows--Beta, RC, and RTM--we continued to push new content to help developers ramp up and get ready for Windows 7.

Windows 7 will become “Generally Available” (GA) to the public on October 22^nd, exactly two weeks from today, and this year’s PDC takes place right after Windows 7 GA. With the pre-release veil of secrecy lifted, during this year's PDC we can dive deep (very deep) into Windows 7 to extend our understanding of how Windows 7 works and, even more importantly, how developers can take advantage of all the great new improvements and features Windows 7 has to offer.

To start with, on the day before PDC09 starts, there is a FREE Windows 7 (seminar) Boot Camp led by top Microsoft Windows experts like Mark Russinovich, Landy Wang, and Arun Kishan. Then, during the PDC proper, we’ll have several deep-dive Windows 7 sessions.

So here is the first set of Windows 7 sessions that we are announcing:

This first one is probably my favorite topic (I am a geek, what can I say). What could be more important than performance, especially as it relates to Windows 7 and applications running on Windows 7? This has to be a MUST Attend session for any developer who writes any software (native or .NET) for Windows (and not just Windows 7) – this is truly a unique opportunity.

Optimizing for Performance with the Windows Performance Toolkit

The Windows team uses the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) to optimize the Windows OS. Come and see how the Windows Performance team used the WPT throughout the Windows 7 development cycle to optimize for customer scenarios and how you can leverage many of its features and capabilities to help you build faster applications on Windows. This session will present case studies that demonstrate how you can use the toolkit to pinpoint areas for improvement in your application and provide you with some best practices to follow in order to create applications with optimum performance.

The next two sessions are also personal favorites (you can’t blame me for loving Windows 7), as I think these technologies represent new levels of user interaction and adaptive user interfaces:

Building Sensor- and Location-aware Applications with Windows 7 and .NET

How many times have you thought to yourself, “My application would be so much better if it knew where the user was?” With Windows 7 and.NET Framework 4.0, you now have the tools at your fingertips to location-enable your applications. Based on the new Location platform for Windows 7, the location API in .NET Framework 4.0 provides a single, consistent API to get you your latitude and longitude regardless of the underlying technology that acquired it—allowing you to focus on creating exciting, differentiated location-aware applications.

Windows Touch Deep Dive

Windows provides applications with a default experience for gestures and touch interaction. This provides applications that you want to go beyond that basic experience with a powerful platform to build upon. This session is targeted at developers interested in building touch-optimized experiences. We’ll look closely at some of the more powerful portions of the Touch platform, like manipulation and inertia processors, as well as cover real-world problems that developers have encountered and overcome. Come help build the next generation of user experiences!

Another highly recommended session is the Windows Ribbon session. Before you dismiss the Ribbon, I suggest you take a second look and read between the lines of the Windows Ribbon native API. There is a lot of very interesting software architecture in the current API that provides a glimpse into tomorrow’s “commanding framework.”

Windows Ribbon Technical Deep Dive

This talk will cover some of the more subtle and complex aspects of ribbon implementation, like designing a great gallery (a critical task for any ribbon), adding an outspace MRU, etc. We will draw from specific experiences with Windows Live and other partners and spread the learning that those teams amassed as Windows Ribbon guinea pigs.

A lot has been said about the update to the Windows 7 graphics stack. This stack plays a major role in the performance improvements Windows 7 offers. You, as a developer, can tap into that user experience and start enjoying a rich and modern graphic framework that pushes GPUs to their limits.

Modern 3D Graphics Using Windows 7 & Direct3D 11 Hardware

Dig deep into the capabilities of Direct3D 11 and Windows 7to gain practical knowledge that will help you push graphics to the limit. Learn about the new tessellation stage in Direct3D 11, which enables an unprecedented level of rendering quality by dynamically generating geometry on the GPU. In addition, see how the multi-core improvements in the Direct3D 11 runtime can help you scale your application to take full advantage of all of the cores on a machine. Finally, take a peek at the power of DirectCompute (the hardware-accelerated general purpose computing technology) in a graphics application context.

Advanced Graphics Functionality Using DirectX

The number of PC configurations is exploding. With both netbooks and high-end desktop systems using the latest in graphics hardware, creating an application that can target all of these systems is getting harder every year. Join us as we explore the many options available in Windows 7 to facilitate graphics development across all kinds of hardware configurations, from low-end integrated GPUs to top of the line discrete GPUs. Learn about Direct3D 10 Level 9, which enables Direct3D 10 applications to run on pretty much every computer in the market today. Check out WARP, our new software rasterizer that lets your application use high-quality graphics even when there’s no graphics card. Finally, learn about Direct2D, DirectWrite, WIC, and the interoperability of Windows 7 technologies for making slick, high-quality graphics for your applications of the future.

The last session for today’s post, but most certainly not the least, is about the Windows API Code Pack for the Microsoft .NET framework. This is a framework that I have a personal interest in and I often blog about. With Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4, .NET developers have an easier life. Nonetheless, there are still a great number of valuable Windows APIs that are NOT in the framework. This Open Source library provides a good intermediate solution.

Developing with the Windows API Code Pack for .NET Framework

The Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework provides a source code library that you can use to access some new Windows 7 features (and some existing features of older versions of the Windows operating system) from managed code. These Windows features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework. This session will show you how to access features like taskbar integration, JumpLists, libraries, the sensor platform, Direct2D, and more.

Have you ever wondered how Windows 7 resumes from sleep in less than 2 seconds? Or how Windows 7 can scale up to 256 cores? Or maybe you just want to want to learn about any Kernel improvements that will make your application run faster with no extra effort from you?

Well, guess what? On Monday, November 16^th, the day before PDC 2009 starts, we are running a FREE Windows 7 Workshop – AKA Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp. That is  right, it's FREE for anyone who wants to attend. Windows 7 is one of the most exciting pivotal releases of the year. As part of the wave of activity surrounding the product launch, we're opening up this workshop to anyone who wants to attend - even if you're not able to join the rest of the conference. So, if you live LA, its surroundings, or even the Bay Area, you can attend this workshop for FREE!

Wait a minute! By now, you must be thinking to yourself, “If it is free, it can’t be that good.” Well it turns out that this Windows 7 Developers Boot Camp will include top Microsoft Windows experts like Mark Russinovich, Landy Wang, and Arun Kishan. These are the guys who are behind a large number of the amazing performance improvements in Windows 7, and this is your onetime chance to meet them in person for an intense, deep, and high-quality session. Mark, Landy, and Arun will start by talking about Kernel and architectural improvements, for example, the Kernel Dispatcher Lock, new and even more efficient Windows Memory Management, and Trigger Start Services, among many other topics.

Next, they’ll take a dive deep into the different APIs, paying special attention to the new shell integration points in Windows 7 such as the taskbar, libraries, and search. Right after that, they’ll give some tips for getting the most out of today’s hardware using the Sensor & Location platform, multitouch, and the new graphics libraries (Direct2D, DirectX 11) that take advantage of the GPU.

Regardless of whether you’re a C++, C#, or Visual Basic developer, if you're building a Windows application and you want your application to have the best possible performance, experience, and look-and-feel while running on Windows 7, this event is for you! I know I will be there; what about you?

Register for the PDC Workshop or read more info about the Windows 7 Boot Camp.

The Windows Home Server Team has announced today the beta of Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 (PP3). And if you’re running Windows 7, Windows Home Server PP3 comes with several new features designed to take advantage key Windows 7 features:

• Full Image-based Backups of Windows 7 PCs. After the Windows Home Server Connector is installed on your Windows 7 PCs, Action Center should no longer display that your files are not being backed up.
• Windows 7 Libraries Support. Music, Photos and Videos shared folders from your Windows Home Server will be added to Windows 7 Libraries. Content saved to these shared folders will be able to be quickly accessed through your Windows 7 Libraries. And any application, like Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center, will be able to access content saved on your Windows Home Server through Libraries as well.
• Windows Search 4 is now included. With Windows Search 4, PP3 offers improved query search times, indexing times and reliability. Easy search through a Library in Windows 7 with files stored in multiple locations.
• Windows Media Center Enhancements. Archive old recorded TV shows onto your Windows Home Server in a variety of formats. Use Console Quick View to see statistics about your Windows Home Server through Windows Media Center.

More in-depth information on these features – see their blog post on PP3.

The Windows Home Server Team does not yet have a final release date for PP3 however they are shooting to have PP3 available shortly before GA of Windows 7. If you’re running Windows Home Server and have several Windows 7 PCs – I encourage you to give PP3 a try and help the Windows Home Server Team make PP3 rock.

To beta test PP3, please sign up as a beta participant of the Windows Home Server program on Microsoft Connect. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll be able to download PP3.

Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 will be a free update to existing Windows Home Server users via Windows Update.

I’ll be installing PP3 on my HP MediaSmart Server EX470 either tonight or sometime over the weekend. I’m stoked about the Windows 7 integration!

Do you want to win a free trip to Los Angeles and a free ticket to PDC 2009? Do you think you have what it takes to win $17,777? Do you think you can write an amazing Windows 7 application?

Well, if your answer to any of the above question is "Yes!" then say hello to the Code⁷ Contest. The Code⁷ contest is where your application design ingenuity gives you the opportunity to get millions of eyes on your work, plus a trip to LA for PDC09, and up to $17,777 in cash!

Code⁷ is a special coding contest for developers. It is a great opportunity to show the world your creativity and coding powers. It is a way for you to cash in on your knowledge and skills.

This is not just another standard code contest; this contest gives the finalists the opportunity to present their application at PDC 2009 in LA. The first prize is a real gem: $17,777 in cash, the opportunity to present the application to Microsoft executives at PDC 2009, plus worldwide interest in your application including a massive “marketing bump” for your application.

To enter, you must:

Build an original, consumer-oriented client application prototype that runs natively on Windows 7 (for example Win32, WPF, MFC or WinForms – not an Air application or just a gadget) and addresses one or more of the following topic categories:

• Simplify My Life
• More Media, More Places
• Gaming
• Work From Anywhere
• Safeguard Your Work
• Applications for a Better Tomorrow

The application must use at least one of the following Windows 7 technology features; however, judging will give more weight to entries that take advantage of more than one of these features:

• Libraries
• Windows Touch
• Shell Integration
• DX11 (DirectX 11)
• Sensor and Location Platform

So if you have being following my blog you have some advantage.

The contest has several stages and few rules you need to be aware of:

• To enter this contest you must create and submit a video in which you describe and demonstrate your application.
• The first qualifying round starts at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time (PT) on July 13, 2009, and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on October 10, 2009 (“Entry Period”). You will be able to able to submit your video until midnight October 10, 2009. Your entry will be included in a pool with all eligible entries based on your geographical region.
• Entries received by 11:59 p.m. PT on August 15, 2009, will be eligible to win an “Early Bird” prize described in the Winner Determination section below.
• Following the close of the first qualifications, a panel of judges will select two runner-up winners and one Finalist from each Region.
• Following judging, Microsoft will notify all winners and finalists and provide instructions for submitting their applications for evaluation.
• Finalists will be invited to present their applications to a panel of judges at the Microsoft Partner Developer Conference 2009 (PDC09) in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

For the complete contest rules and legal notice, please refer to the “RULES” section on the Code7 Contest Web site - https://www.code7contest.com/.

So, what are you waiting for? Get going and start working on your Windows 7 application!

This week we released the Windows 7 RC Training Kit for Developers as part of our ongoing effort to give you, all the Windows developers out there, and valuable content to work with while making your application shine on Windows 7. This version of the training kit includes 10 presentations and 8 Hands-On-Labs (HOL), covering most of the Windows 7 light-up features as well as application compatibility topics. Note that the HOL gives you the opportunity to get firsthand experience in programming key Windows 7 Light-Up features, such as the Taskbar, Libraries, Multi-Touch, Sensors and Location, Graphics, Ribbon, Trigger Start Services, Instrumentation and Event Tracing for Windows (ETW). We also provide a brief Application Compatibility overview.

This is an “early preview” to the full set of Windows 7 Training for Developers that will be released shortly after RTM. You can download the training kit and get started, but make sure you have a Windows 7 RC machine to work with, and install Visual Studio 2008 SP 1 and Windows 7 RC SDK as some of the native applications requires libraries from the SDK.

Modules:

Taskbar

The Windows 7 Taskbar is a differentiating opportunity that allows applications to shine on the Windows 7 platform. The new Taskbar streamlines many end-user scenarios including launching applications, switching between running applications and windows within a single application, managing recent/frequent user destinations, accessing common application tasks, reporting progress and status notifications through the taskbar button, and controlling the application without leaving the taskbar thumbnail. The Taskbar is the end user’s primary point-of-contact for initiating and managing activities; as such, the integration of the new taskbar features into modern Windows 7 applications is a critically important goal. This module talks about the different aspects and APIs associated with programming the Windows 7 Taskbar.

Libraries

Libraries are the new entry points to user data. Libraries are a natural evolution of the 'My Documents' folder concept that blends into the Windows Explorer user experience. A library is a common store of user defined locations that applications can leverage to manage user content as their part of the user experience. Because libraries are not file system locations, you will need to update some applications to work with them like folders. This module explains the basic concepts underlying Windows 7 Libraries, including how to make your application library-aware, how to work with libraries as though they were file system folders, and how to leverage the library system.

Multi-Touch

Windows 7 features improved touch and gesture support that empowers developers to quickly and easily create unique application experiences that go beyond simple mouse pointing, clicking, and dragging. The new multi-touch APIs support rich gestures, such as pan, zoom, and rotate. The Windows 7 Multi-Touch Platform also provides raw touch data inputs and advance manipulation and interties. This module explains the basics of Windows 7 multi-touch and its APIs.

Sensor and Location Platform

Windows 7 has changed how developers use sensors. The Sensor and Location Platform includes native support for sensors, expanded by a new development platform for working with sensors, including location sensors such as GPS devices. Built on the Sensor platform, the new Windows Location APIs enable application developers to access the user’s physical location information. This module explains what the Sensor and Location Platform is and how to work with its APIs.

Ribbon

Windows 7 incorporates the Ribbon interface introduced in Office 2007 throughout the operating system, enabling improved user interface development on the platform. This means that developers can eliminate much of the drudgery of Win32 UI development and deliver a rich, graphical, animated, and highly familiar user interfaces by using a markup-based UI and a small, high-performance, native code runtime. The Ribbon control helps developers improve usability by exposing your application's most frequently accessed features directly to end users. The Ribbon makes it easier for end users to find and use application features because functionality is more visible, resulting in greater productivity. This module shows the different aspects of the Windows 7 Ribbon and provides a guide on how to incorporate the Windows 7 Ribbon into existing applications.

Background Processes, Services, and Tasks

Services and background processes have tremendous influence on the overall performance of the system, and therefore the applications. If we could cut down on the total number of services, we could reduce the total power consumption and increase the overall stability of the system. The Windows 7 Service Control Manager has been extended so that a service can be automatically started and stopped when a specific system event, or trigger, occurs on the system. Trigger-start capabilities remove the need for services to start up automatically at computer startup and then poll or wait for an event to occur. This module explains the different options available to developers for configuring and using trigger-start services.

Windows 7 Instrumentation and Performance

Windows 7 includes new Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) capabilities that developers can take advantage of during the development process to optimize application performance. Instrumentation has always been part of Windows, but Windows 7 includes new ETW underlying technology that makes the task of including instrumentation in your application a whole lot easier. This module describes the different options for using instrumentation in Windows, including the new ETW.

Windows 7 Application Compatibility

Windows 7 is built on top of Windows Vista, which means if your application does not work or if it has some issues when running on Windows Vista, most probably it will have similar issues running on Windows 7. This module is a short overview of the top major issues regarding Windows 7 compatibility, including Data Redirection, Service Isolation, Version Checking, and High DPI.