Professional C# 4 and .NET 4

Appendix A. Guidelines for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

WHAT'S IN THIS APPENDIX?

• The Windows API Code Pack

• Restart Manager

• User account control

• Windows 7 directory structure

• Command links and task dialogs

• The taskbar and Jump List

This appendix gives you the information you need to know about developing applications for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and how you can use new Windows features from .NET applications.

Note

This appendix targets features important for developers. It does not cover features useful for a Windows 7 user or a Windows Server 2008 administrator.

If your applications are not targeting Windows Vista or higher, you should be aware that while WPF, WCF, WF, and LINQ are also available for Windows XP, this is not the case with the topics covered here. Also, some of the features are only available with Windows 7. If you're still targeting Windows XP, you should be aware of issues running your applications on Windows 7 and you should have a special focus on user account control and directory changes.

OVERVIEW

The Windows API has many new calls that expose new functionality available with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2; however, as of the .NET 4 release many of these calls are not available from the .NET Framework. The Windows API Code Pack helps here as it contains .NET classes that wrap native API calls to make them available from a .NET library. You can use this library within your .NET applications. You can download the Windows API Code Pack from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack ...