During Wednesday’s keynote, Brian Goldfarb demoed an amazing Silverlight 4 client for Facebook. Beyond its amazing looks, this Silverlight 4 demo provides a full and complete desktop client application for Windows (and Mac). SilverFace is built on top of Silverlight 4 – also announced during the keynote. If you want a cool Facebook client application to work on from your Windows desktop, you should take a look at the Fishbowl for Facebook Preview. Fishbowl is a great WPF application that you can install and enjoy as a user, and at the same time it is a great code sample for developers whom are looking to write WPF applications that use Windows 7 features.  If you are interested, you can download the source code for Fishbowl.

In today's world, the client’s experience is more important than ever before. Your application doesn’t just have to be fun and interesting; it has to be good looking, polished, and functional, providing a “natural” user experience that just works. As a developer, you need to push the envelope and use any available technical tool that the OS provides or any other available means (if installed on mobile devices) to provide a superior user experience, or users will switch to the next guy. In such a competitive scenario, using the Windows 7 Taskbar to shave a few seconds from day-to-day tasks looks like a very obvious choice.

Both Silverlight 4 demo and Fishbowl applications each provide a great UX and enhance user productivity. Scott Guthrie also announced the Facebook SDK for managed code applications that combines the latest in Web and Client platform innovations with leading Social technologies (services) to help developers plug into Facebook. But, beside the new Facebook SDK and beside the great looks, the Fishbowl application is a great WPF (3.5) example that demonstrates how to write applications that produce amazing experiences on Windows 7.

As a WPF application, Fishbowl runs on multiple Windows versions, including Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, and it integrates with the Windows 7 Taskbar and Multitouch. One of the main ideas behind the Taskbar is to provide users with quick and easy access to their content and help them accomplish tasks and navigate between windows easier and with more confidence. For example, JumpList provides a great tool for surfacing common work items and tasks. If you have a task that you perform once or twice a day, taking two or three clicks to perform the task is not that bad. However, if you have a task that you perform 10, 20, or even 30 more times, using JumpList tasks or items in the recent category list goes a long way. Facebook users often check their wall, write notifications and messages, view friends' pictures, and so on. Therefore, in some scenarios, the Taskbar JumpList tasks, icon notification, thumbnail buttons, and other functionality become major tools in the application.

Fishbowl uses the taskbar to provide a quick, easy, and seamless integration with Facebook functionality directly from your Taskbar. Let’s review some of the user functionality before jumping into code behind.

The Fishbowl taskbar offers a few tasks even before you start your application. You can go to Facebook.com, or you can actually “jump” directly and see your wall, friend's picture, and more, as the following image shows. One of the amazing things in Fishbowl for Facebook is that it changes it functionality between the different modes of the application. Being able to use the taskbar differently for

different scenarios provides an amazing user experience in heavily used application like Fishbowl.

When Fishbowl runs in normal mode, the Taskbar JumpList reflects items and tasks that you can actually perform in the context of a running application, like viewing the last few notifications and messages that you received without opening the application, as shown by the following image.

If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image.

If you hover with the mouse above the Fishbowl control, you see the thumbnail preview provided by Windows 7 taskbar. However, Fishbowl uses the thumbnail button again allowing you to both view a preview of the application and act immediately upon the thumbnail preview as shown in the following image.

(And thank you Raman for writing so many PDC tweets J)

Fishbowl also has a mini-mode operation mode. This mode shows just one message in a small window. As you can see in the following image, a small arrow allows you to switch between messages. When you hover over Fishbowl taskbar icon, you can see the preview but you can also control the message, again using the taskbar thumbnail preview.

 

Besides great Taskbar integration, Fishbowl offers a great Multitouch experience, allowing you to scroll between messages using your finger to touch the touch screen. It is a little hard to illustrate Multitouch with screen capture so you will have to trust me on this one.

We've covered most of the Fishbowl features unique to Windows 7, and in the next post I will dive into the API that enabled these Taskbar and Multitouch features. If you are interested, you can download the source code for Fishbowl.

Developers! Developers! Developers! Greetings from the Microsoft PDC in LA – it’s Mark Relph from the Windows Ecosystem Team. I hope everyone is enjoying PDC this year either here in person or watching the stream at microsoftpdc.com. I wanted to give you a sense of what the Windows Ecosystem team is doing at PDC and the conversations we are having with our amazing developer community at the show. I just walked out of the Day 2 keynote that featured Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows & Windows Live Division and it was fantastic! (for a couple of big reasons)

A Hallway Discussion about Building Windows 7

Steven’s keynote began as a “hallway discussion” about how we developed Windows 7. We learned a lot from the Windows 7 development process. Steven described the engagement we had with beta testers, partners and the developer community across various channels including the “Engineering 7” blog and the Windows Ecosystem Readiness Program. These programs helped us to make sure developers had the resources they needed to be ready for Windows 7. We also found that a disciplined release and disclosure cycle was invaluable. Everyone wants to get code sooner, but having API complete and feature complete code that is actionable is far more valuable. This extended to our disclosure by ensuring all information was accurate and actionable to ensure we provided the ecosystem with correct information.

One of the key highlights from Sinofsky’s keynote was the role of telemetry and research in developing Windows 7. Telemetry is the broad set of tools we use to assess the engineering “integrity” of the Windows platform and how Windows is performing in the real world. This real world data has been incredibly valuable for us in enhancing the product. Without customers opting in to participate and send us real time data- we would not be able to make some of the improvements we made. Beyond the telemetry is the qualitative view—the type of research we do to gain an in depth understanding of how people use their PCs and what problems people would like to be solved. As developers we often feel “we know” what customers want. These are some of the tools that help us to remove our observer biases and to walk in the shoes of real customers.

The Windows 7 Ecosystem - Great Hardware Powered By Great Software

Steven then shifted to a focus on Developing for Windows 7. Steven’s keynote highlighted how vibrant the ecosystem around Windows 7 is. Along with Mike Angiulo, they demonstrated the opportunity developers have to take advantage of the range of hardware devices that run Windows. The ecosystem around Windows is really amazing. Think about the install base - there are more than one billion users who use Windows.  Those users want great applications and there are 3 million programmers building applications around the world and 90 percent of those developers target Windows.   You could also look at our telemetry from the beta cycle which shows more than 800,000 unique applications (which includes multiple versions, 32/64 bit & languages) running on Windows 7 during the beta timeframe.  From packaged ISV software, shareware and custom applications the number of applications available for Windows 7 is measured in the hundreds of thousands. Only 3 weeks after the launch of Windows 7 we know that over 25,000 applications from our partners in the Microsoft Partner Program have a public statement of support for Windows. Even more partners are striving for a higher quality bar by earning the “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. Today, 1700 hardware and software companies have delivered over 9,000 logo’d products.  Many partners are also coming out with public statements of support. One way to measure that is the Windows 7 Compatibility Center which provides compatibility information and upgrade path for some of the most commonly used products on the market. We have had 2 million visitors to the site since its launch on October 20^th. Today, there are over 25,000 products listed on the site with both 32-bit and 64-bit compatibility status and our database that is constantly growing. Finally if you take into account market impact, over the last several years, NPD data tells us that the top 4000 applications generated $4 billion in sales. This speaks volumes to the strength of the software ecosystem.   As I post this blog, it is clear that the Windows ecosystem is growing and thriving.

Speaking Of Hardware….

Steven spent a few minutes talking about what it takes to build a laptop. The decisions about processors, memory, inputs, video and the drivers the make the experience great. He talked about working with our friends at Acer to really experience what it takes to build a great PC. Speaking of hardware, there was one really big surprise…….

For all the full conference attendees of PDC09 we giving away a “PDC Special Edition” laptop!! It’s a cool machine and Brandon will be posting a full review on the machine to this blog very soon.

Finally, Steven talked about the future of IE. I won’t cover the details here, but my colleague Dean Hachamovitch will speak to the news over on the IE Blog.

Announcing the Winners of The Code7 Contest

Another way to look at the health of the ecosystem is individual innovation. Over the last few months we gave developers around the globe the opportunity to show the world their talents in the Code7 Developer Contest. Developers across multiple countries answered the call and we had finalists from around the world join us at PDC to show off their work for the final judging. I had the pleasure of hosting the final event during the pre-PDC Windows Developer Bootcamp. I’m pleased to announce the grand prize winner is Benjamin Bondi from the Middle East & Africa for his application called “Notes Everywhere” a WPF client that enables you to manage desktop notes everywhere by leveraging Windows 7 and Windows Azure. Benjamin will receive $17,777 and the accolades of his peers in the developer community!

The momentum of the ecosystem and excitement of developers has made PDC an amazing event to be a part of. Sinofsky’s movie theater analogy from the keynote is the best way to describe it. We’ve built a great theatre with awesome sound, a great projector, good snacks, and comfortable seats - but the theatre is only as good as the movie that brings it to life. The same can be said about Windows 7 – it is a great OS supported by amazing hardware & software. If you are a developers and want to bring your application to life on the big screen then think about building the modern Windows application by building on – the Ribbon User Interface, Jump Lists & Progress Bars, Libraries, Multi-touch, Ink, Speech, DirectX®, High Definition Audio/Video, sensors and a connection to the cloud. Check out a few of the resources available to you at the Windows Developer Center and watch for the Windows specific sessions from the PDC as they become available online at microsoftpdc.com

Here we are at the LA Convention Center, attending the FREE Windows 7 Seminar: Boot Camp. We managed to “sell out” (just a reminder-- it is free) this event, getting more than 1200 registrations. This day is all about learning what’s new in the Windows 7 kernel, how developers can take advantage of these feature, and then learn how to take advantage of some “user mode” features like multitouch, taskbar, sensor and location, and others.

Today started with Mark Russinovich, Technical Fellow and the man behind SysInternals and many of the improvements in Windows 7, describing some of the changes made to the Windows 7 kernel. Immediately after Mark, Arun Kishan, a Principal Architect for the process management components, described his work around the thread and process allocation that frees the kernel from its thread dispatcher locks and gives Windows 7 the ability to scale seamlessly to 256 cores. Then Landy Wang, a Distinguished Engineer in the Kernel team, described changes made in Windows 7 memory management, mainly focusing on memory Working Set and memory trimming.

After lunch, Jaime started his run, giving some insight and very useful tips about using the Taskbar, from understanding the difference between Application ID and Program ID to the effective use of custom previews. Jaime has only 60 minutes, but I am sure his tips for working with the Taskbar will prove very useful. For example:

• Tip1 – when writing your own jump list item or link, make sure you remember what items you wrote, because you can’t just “read” the jump list items
• Tip2 – if you decide to invest in cutom switcher and provide your own thumbnail preview and Aero Peak make sure you “save the state” of your application and images as DWM will not always perform for you.

I'll be up next, explaining Windows 7 libraries in depth, with a focus on useful tips for programming Windows 7 libraries, and specifically how to stay in sync with library updates. We have already had plenty of Windows 7 libraries posts - Windows 7 Programming Guide – Libraries, so I am not going into great detail. However, I do want to hand out the presentations and code samples used. All my demos as well as Jaime’s are part of the Windows 7 Training kit.

Right after our discussion about libraries, we will take a deep dive into the Windows 7 Sensor and Location platform. I just LOVE the endless amount of innovation and opportunity developers have generated while using this platform. After the Windows 7 launch on October 22^nd, we saw a large number of laptop models coming out with built-in sensors. Developers will most probably use these to create truly adaptive applications that adjust their functionality and UI based on sensor input. 

After our Sensor and Location Platform discussion, it will be Michael Oneppo's turn to explain the changes in the Windows 7 graphics stack. Michael's presentation is very interesting, as it describes some of the DirectX API that was down ported to Windows 7 as a result of the Platform Update for Windows Vista and the Platform Update for Windows Server 2008. For example, did you know that the Microsoft Direct3D API DirectCompute feature allows your applications to use a new pipeline stage in the GPU, the compute shader stage, to implement highly data-parallel algorithms with unmatched speed and performance? This means that now you can use GPU power for parallel programming, freeing your CPU to do other things. It is amazing how powerful these GPUs have become; allowing them remain idle would be a huge waste of resources. If you want to learn more, you can always view Chas Boyd PDC session – DirectX11 DirectCompute.

To close the learning part of the day, Jaime Rodriguez takes us through a quick tour of Windows 7 multitouch. Jaime is taking his usual practical teaching approach of focusing on a few tips and tricks that will make it easier for you to start using multitouch.

PDC 2009 takes place at the LA Convention Center on November 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th. As I wrote before, The Professional Developers Conference is the one event each developer has to attend. Windows 7 will become generally available (GA) to the public on October 22nd. 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.

Just in case you missed my previous announcement, 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.

During this year's PDC, we’ll host the Windows 7 Developer Center. The Windows 7 Developer Center gives you the opportunity to test your application on Windows 7, identify and solve problems with a group of consultants, and eventually get your application Logo-certified. Applications can be loaded onto a secure Windows 7 test platform in a private developer lab environment for Logo testing and submission. Our Windows Applications Developer Consultants can also help with Windows Compatibility questions or offer specific guidance for how you can make your application shine on Windows 7. You can pre-book a time slot right away, book a time when you get to the PDC, or just stop by Room 504/505. And guess what? It is all free; all you need to do is register.

Registration

You can pre-register for a 1-hour timeslot in the lab as outlined below. You can also register upon arrival at PDC09 by signing up at the reception station located in Room 504/505, or just stop by to talk about developing applications for Windows 7.

Monday 11/16	10:00 am	11:00 am	1:00 pm	2:00 pm	3:00 pm	4:00 pm
Tuesday 11/17	11:00 am	1:00 pm	2:00 pm	3:00 pm	4:00 pm	5:00 pm
Wednesday 11/18	11:00 am	1:00 pm	2:00 pm	3:00 pm	4:00 pm	5:00 pm
Thursday 11/19	8:30 am	9:30 am	10:30 am	11:30 am	1:30 pm	2:30 pm

 

Getting Started

Logo Test - To help maximize your time in the lab at PDC, we are asking that you run the Logo test and submit the .xml result report to our team for review prior to the event. Our consultants will analyze your results and prepare a report to review with you on-site at PDC.

VeriSign & WinQual IDs – In order to submit your product for Windows 7 Logo, you will need to obtain both of these credentials. Once obtained, you will be able to work directly with a Microsoft consultant through the submission process while on-site at PDC. (More info here - https://winqual.microsoft.com/.)

Follow these simple steps to register and prepare for PDC 2009:

1. Email srglabs@microsoft.com with 3 timeslots in order of preference from those listed above.

2. Download the Logo toolkit from MS Connect and follow the instructions for testing.

3. Send the .xml result report generated by the Logo toolkit to srglabs@microsoft.com for analysis.

4. Sign up for VeriSign & WinQual IDs that will be required for Logo submission by visiting https://winqual.microsoft.com/.

Additional Resources

• For general questions contact srglabs@microsoft.com

• For questions and more details about the Windows 7 Logo Program visit MS Connect

This is a great opportunity to prepare your applications for Windows 7, but there is limited availability so be sure to register early to get your preferred time slot.

You can learn about Windows 7 using the Windows 7 Training Kit for Developers or by viewing Windows 7 videos on Channel 9