Search results matching tag 'Windows 7'

Evolution of Windows Explorer

AvdMeulen — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 13:05:15 GMT

Nice post of Steven Sinofsky on MSDN blogs about the history and future of Windows Explorer.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/08/29/improvements-in-windows-explorer.aspx

(edit 31-08-2011)
And Martin Tirion of Microsoft Netherlands wrote about it a day later (in Dutch).
http://blogs.microsoft.nl/blogs/ux/archive/2011/08/30/windows-explorer-in-windows-8-en-user-experience.aspx

Booting from VHD files and using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Workstation

hvdkamp — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:39:35 GMT

For my work I'm using a laptop that has several operating systems installed. Depending on the customer related work, e.g. office work, giving presentations and developing software, I'm booting one of these environments.

My multi-boot installation consists of several environments including:

Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2007
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2010
Windows Server 2008 R2 with SharePoint 2007 and Dynamics CRM 4.0.

All the operating systems boot from a virtual hard disk instead of using virtualization by booting an operating system that hosts an other operating system.

I prefer using VHD files and booting from them because of several reason, e.g.:

The whole virtual memory is available for use on the work environment, instead of loosing virtual memory to an operating system that hosts a guest operation system using virtualization
Creating backups of a whole operating system is easily done by just backing up one .vhd file.
Normal hardware and drivers are used instead of emulated hardware and drivers.
By creating a clean installed base environment, you can quickly go back to that state or derive environments based on the base environment.

People often ask me:

How do you install operating systems on a VHD file and setup up a multi-boot environment?
How can you boot from a virtual hard disk?
What did you change to your Windows Server 2008 environment so that it looks like Windows 7?

You can get answers to all of these questions by visiting "How can I install Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 to a virtual hard disk (VHD) file?" about how to install an operating system on a VHD. Visit Win2008r2workstation.com which explains how to convert your Windows Server 2008 R2 server to a workstation.

Improved Jump Lists Post – and a bit more

fabulous — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:32:00 GMT

Well, I've used up all my sick days so tomorrow I'm calling in dead. In the meantime, I thought of posting a review on a couple of things I have learned over the past few months. The first thing I will work on is code to deal with Jump Lists. My first post on the subject was after my first attempt and doing things the old way, in code. Code junkies like me who've been coding since the green screen days of MS-DOS will probably attack a problem in code first. WPF has changed that in that you can achieve a lot of the same results without writing a single line of executable code. XAML is the answer.

Well, I finally worked on a real app that would benefit a lot from jump lists. And this time, I approached it using XAML. The application even had an overlay icon to notify the user when a long running asynchronous operation was in progress.

Jump Lists

The first file I edited when trying this in XAML is the Application.xaml (app.xaml for C#). This is because the Jump List belongs to the application.

<JumpList.JumpList>
    <JumpList JumpItemsRejected="JumpList_JumpItemsRejected" JumpItemsRemovedByUser="JumpList_JumpItemsRemovedByUser">
        <!-- Add ApplicationPath attributes to point to the app you wish to run when your task is clicked.
             You can also place an Arguments attribute which can specify command line arguments for the app.
             You can also assign an Icon to the task by specifying an IconResourcePath attribute. -->
        <JumpTask Title="Calculator" Description="Launch the windows calculator"
                  IconResourcePath="C:\Windows\System32\Calc.exe" ApplicationPath="C:\Windows\System32\Calc.exe" />
        
        <JumpPath Path="C:\Users\Public\Readme.txt" />
    </JumpList>
</JumpList.JumpList>

This piece of XAML registers event handlers to deal with the scenarios when a jump item is rejected, or when a user removes it from the list. In the second scenario it is recommended that you skip loading the item the next time your app runs to respect the user's wishes.

It then adds a JumpTask that runs the windows calculator, and a JumpPath. For the jump path to register, you should register your application to open the file type in question.

Overlay Icon

The overlay icon is very simple too. In this case, I wrote one line of code to remove the icon, and one other to remove it. Here is the XAML for it.

<Window.TaskbarItemInfo>
    <TaskbarItemInfo />
</Window.TaskbarItemInfo>

<Window.Resources>
    <DrawingImage x:Key="IconOverlay" >
        <DrawingImage.Drawing>
            <ImageDrawing ImageSource="Offline.png" Rect="0 0 32 32" />
        </DrawingImage.Drawing>
    </DrawingImage>
</Window.Resources>

You place this in the .xaml file for the main window. In this case, the source is a png, but it can be an icon. The code to show and hide the icon in the task bar follows:

' To add the overlay icon.
Me.TaskbarItemInfo.Overlay = CType(Me.Resources("IconOverlay"), ImageSource)

' To remove the overlay icon.
Me.TaskbarItemInfo.Overlay = Nothing

That's it. Here is the same in C#.

// Add the overlay icon.
this.TaskbarItemInfo.Overlay = (ImageSource)this.Resources["IconOverlay"];

// Remove the thing.
this.TaskbarItemInfo.Overlay = null;

That's really all you have to do.

Conclusion

In a production app you'll need to do more however. You may have more than one scenario in which you'd want to show an overlay icon, in this case, you'll need to handle the various events or situations that fit your application. In the case of the jump list, you may want to load your jump items dynamically so you can determine what the user wishes to see or to reflect the overall status of the application. There's no point in having a "Publish Local Data" if there is no local data to publish.

Hope this helps. Happy coding.

Extend VHD with Windows 7

Mark Willems — Wed, 12 May 2010 10:46:00 GMT

My favorite feature in Windows 7 is the built-in partition manager! Often I copy VHD files from colleagues and use those as a starting point for my own development. Sometimes I run into the issue that I want to install additional software on the image but there is no more space available on the image.

My solution for this is the following:

Take a backup of your VHD.
Run the "VHD Resizer" tool to add extra disk space to the VHD.
Start the VHD and take a look at the disk via Disk Management. You will see that the disk has now extra unallocated disk space.
Because the disk is the system disk you cannot use DISKPART to add the unallocated disk space to the system partition. But….. Windows 7 is there to the rescue
Shutdown the VHD and again take a backup.
Go to Start\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management in Computer Management select Disk Management.
In the right pane expand “More actions” and select “Attach VHD”
Specify the VHD you want to extend
Right the partition you want to extend and select ‘Extend Volume’
Complete the ‘Extend Volume Wizard’ and the result should be an extended VHD file as shown below. After that detach the VHD by right clicking the Disk and then selecting the option 'Detach VHD'

Windows 7 Ultimate Commemorative Edition

Fernik — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:00:00 GMT

After 6 months of waiting, last week I received my Windows 7 Ultimate Commemorative Edition. This edition is an special edition awarded to beta testers for their positive feedback.

I am really thankful to Microsoft for considering my feedback valuable. I was accepted into the Windows 7 Beta Program since Beta 1 release. As with many other Microsoft beta programs I did learn a lot about operating systems, testing and the tough decisions that Microsoft has to made in order to continue supporting legacy applications and at the same time enable the next generation of software. It is not an easy task, it encompass more than software engineering. There were thousands or great ideas, I believe the top ones made their way into this release. There were many voices to listen among users, power users, developers, admins, partners, OEM, system integrators, etc. I realize that the management of such a project it is an epic adventure, which I would like to have the chance to live.

Here are some pics:

Last year I started a site about the Windows kernel. Although I am still studying it, and it takes me some time to write quality posts.I invite you to visit it at http://kernelexplorer.net/blogs/kore.

Jump Lists

fabulous — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:00:00 GMT

I’m a firm believer in the mantra “When all else fails, read the instructions.” For most items, I just get stuck into what I need to do and figure out the details on the way. This is what I did when I started using VS2010 beta 2. I have never used a beta 1 product before, and I’m usually hesitant to try out beta 2 products, but I wasted no time with VS2008 and VS2010 because of the huge potential they carry.

As soon as my installation was done I opened Visual Studio and started to write some code. This was cool. I then unpacked the samples to see how some of the new things were done, and then finally I started to apply some of the new techniques to some applications that I already have.

One thing I tried this morning on Windows 7 was to add a jump list to my app. I wanted to add two tasks, and a recent file list. Piece of cake; to be exact, piece of cake without the flour to bake the cake with in the first place. After finding the namespace in Object Browser, I started playing around with the various classes to make the application work but there was no feedback; no jump list, no crash, no error message, Nothing (or null in C#). So I added a handler for JumpItemsRejected event.

The first bit of luck I got was a message telling me that there is no registered handler when I tried to add a JumpPath object. I figured this is because the file type used by my application hasn’t been registered on Windows so I associated this with my program by using Open With in Windows Explorer and tried again; then the weirdness began. I got the same message from my code, there is no registered handler. Meanwhile, I right clicked the task bar button and lo and behold, my JumpPath was right there.

I ran the code again, and again, and again, and again. But this time there was no joy, in place of the JumpPath, I got the message box. I changed the code multiple times to see if anything would change. But the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, without a Catch block. At this point, I mounted the VS2010 iso and installed the documentation for the first time. When that was done I searched for JumpList and got 33 results which helped me not one bit. It was the same info as what you would find in the Object Browser, no example code. So I went back to the insanity.

I added a task to the JumpList and that worked, only the JumpPath was rejected. All this was in a sample application that opens a .csv file, and the task was calling the same app with an argument of ”-doNothing”. The code in the startup procedure checks for an argument and displays it in a message box,or loads as normal if there is no command line argument. I invoked the task and take a wild guess what I got! The jump list with the JumpPath included.

It’s a conspiracy I tell you. It didn’t take me long to get to the bottom of it, the program that was registered to handle the file type is Jump.exe, the build result. The program that was running when I pressed F5 in the IDE is Jump.vshost32.exe (I am on Windows 7 64 bit). After spending a large part of the morning trying to get rid of the error in my code, I discovered that there wasn’t one; how annoying.

I don’t know if this is a known issue, it it isn’t then it is an unknown issue isn’t it. But I think the documentation for the final version should tell us that you should run the registered application for a Jump path from Windows Explorer or run without debugging from the IDE . This of course is assuming that the application you are writing has been registered with Windows for the file type you want. And something else for my wish list, give us some samples please. This isn’t an issue big enough that we have to try to figure out ourselves in the morning before heading to the office.

If you want to see the VS2010 code for creating Jump Lists, click here. Remember to register the .code file type before running this code (see the sample.code file inside the solution for instructions). Or better yet, run it without registering and have fun trying to figure out what went wrong. Happy coding.

Federated Search in Windows 7

fabulous — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:56:00 GMT

I wrote some software some time ago that is used by a mining company for maintaining their stores, HR, and monitoring production. I have been discussing with the MD about ways to give him reports in a centralised manner.

Earlier, I had written a reporting app which can be plugged into the main app for his managers, or can run stand-alone for his own use. The problem is, he doesn't need all the reports it serves, and there are now a bunch of mine shafts and offices that he will need information from, since the company has expanded from mining chrome in one town, to mining gold and chrome in different towns. Seeing as he has a lot of work and a number of other concerns I am not involved in, I couldn't place a whole lot of apps on his machine just for reporting when all he wants to do is see some bottom line figures.

While I was thinking of a solution, I happened to attend a conference on Developing for Windows 7 about 2 weeks ago. One demo the speaker gave was on federated search. He searched for a Steve Balmer video and got a bunch of YouTube results right there in the Windows Explorer shell (in a similar format to the picture below) and I thought, whoa! I had been thinking of writing a shell extension for him to use which would go and search for his data from the various sources and he could see them all unified but this demo saved me a lot of time and effort. After the conference I asked how this works, and was told all I have to do is create an .osdx (Open Search Description) file, and Windows can use that as a search provider.

My main concern was how much code I'd have to write but was happy to hear that I didn't have to re-write a single line of code. The osdx file can specify a service that I have already written that aggregates the data from all the various sites and the results can be displayed in the explorer window.

This is what I am reseraching now, to see how best I can present these results in detail when he finds something he wants info on. I haven't isntalled the Windows 7 beta so this is something I was completely unaware of. For those like me who haven't heard of this, it is a feature that allows you to search multiple locations from within the Windows environment. For instance, if you want to find something on Bing, Youtube and amazon, you select search providers for these locations and type your search once, and you will have your results displayed right in there.

I will be updating you on my findings in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, here is something that I found on MSDN that I think will be useful for understanding the schema for the osdx file (XML based) and how this works under the hood.

MSDN article for Federated Search

TechDays 2009 Chile >> Demo Code

Fernik — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:14:00 GMT

Hi, this post is just to share the sample application that was showcased on the session "How To Develop .NET Applications that take advantage the new features of Windows 7". The session was hosted by Daniel Montero and me at TechDays 2009 Chile. As a side note the focus of the application was to feature all the possible uses of the Taskbar. Although you may find useful how we applied the Linguistic Services API and the managed RIbbon control for WPF.

The managed Ribbon control for WPF can be downloaded from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa973809.aspx by clicking on the link "License the Office UI".

DemoCode.Zip

Windows 7

AvdMeulen — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:13 GMT

I’ve been using Windows 7 Enterprise (RTM) for about a week now, and I must say, I really see the benefits of working with it. Although you might consider it “Windows Vista +”, I’m sure that there’s still plenty of new features I haven’t noticed yet.
But for the end user (like me) there are a couple of things that I’ve used now (whether it’s desired or not). Here is an overview of these features for those who are thinking about using this new OS.

Taskbar
For those who didn’t know yet, Microsoft changed the way the “start-bar” works. It’s now called Taskbar and it has combined the Quick-launch and the Active-programs part.
When you’re working with it the first time, you kinda get to used to it first. But after you’ve configured it, it’s working just fine. Although I sometimes miss a quick overview of all my open windows (especially explorer-screens), the preview mode you see when hovering over the group is pretty neat (Seeing all your Internet Explorer tabs in the taskbar). But I wonder if it is faster when switching between screens, because you first have to see the group, then selecting the window. On the other hand, your Taskbar is now much more organized.
If you want to read more about the new Windows 7 Taskbar you can view this blog post.
Docking
A feature I'm using frequently is the docking feature. This allows you to drag a window to the side or top of the screen where it will be resized to a specific portion of your screen. (you can also use the Windows-Button in combination with an Arrow-key)

Especially when trying to copy file’s between two explorer windows you can dock each to a side of the screen. Or when you’re writing a document where you will use different resources (other documents, internet browser, tooling, etc.).
This feature is something I’ve missed in previous versions and I’m very happy that this is implemented in Windows 7.
Window Transparency
When using Alt-Tab, hovering over a screen in the Taskbar or hovering over the Desktop button, the active windows become transparent.
Maybe this is not really useful, but more a “pretty” feature. Tough with alt-tab or the hovering in the Taskbar it comes in handy to let you focus on the particular window. Be aware when on large monitors, because when hovering quickly over different windows, all these fast changes can make you dizzy!
Desktop button
The desktop-button (or Windows-button in combination with D) is not really something new. But the change is they’ve now placed it in the right-bottom corner.

I used the “show desktop” function very often in the XP and Vista, but always with the shortcut, because finding the button with your mouse took too much time. Now they’ve changed this, and that’s a good thing. Just throwing the mouse to the corner is a lot easier.
The transparency kicks in when hovering above it, so you can see what's on your desktop. Now you can see the icons and (sidebar) gadgets. By the way; this is also what happens when using the Windows-button with the Spacebar. In Vista this showed the Sidebar. Now it makes all the active windows transparent.
Integrated fingerprint reader
As the Windows OS evolves, additional functionality becomes a standard part of the OS. This also applies the the fingerprint support.

Instead of using 3th party software, you now can use your reader directly with Windows. And I must say, It works quite well. It’s faster and more stable then what I used to have on Vista. Although I first had a little issue with the Ctrl+Alt+Del when logging-on which I explain next.
Ctrl+Alt+Del
When using your computer in a Domain like I do for my work, you have to use the Ctrl+Alt+Del for entering your username and password.
Although this isn’t really a problem, I did not have to do this when I used Vista. It's annoying in combination with the fingerprint reader. Because it’s not possible to scan when you haven’t pressed the Ctrl+Alt+Del yet (this also applies when locking your computer). And when you’re fingers are already on the keyboard, it’s just as easy to enter your password.
After a bit of research I found out that you can actually remove this extra action through Local Security Policy (run “secpol.msc”).
There you can find the option “Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL” in “Local Policies” > “Security Options” . When setting this to Enabled you’ll remove it.
Early adopters = Driver problems.
When you’re an early adopter, you will encounter the problem with missing or incompatible drivers. But just after installing I’ve encountered only 2 problems. Video-card drivers and the Card-reader drivers.

I were able to fix the Video-card drivers by installing the Vista-drivers and then using Windows Update because it could now identify the Video-card.
The Card-reader doesn’t have downloadable drivers, because in Vista it was installed automatically by the OS. It’s quite odd that now with Windows 7 it didn’t install by default.
Fortunately I don’t need the reader now, but I do hope that in time drivers will be made available by the manufacturer.

For the time I’ve worked with this new OS I think I made the right choice for switching to Windows 7. It certainly has benefits that I use. And with the driver problems… Well, I expect it’s just a matter of time. You can always try using the Vista-drivers.

More discoveries regarding Windows 7

Robin Paardekam — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:46:00 GMT

It's months ago since I wrote my last blog post. It was about the things I did like about Windows 7. Now that the RTM is released for Technet and MSDN subscribers, I replaced the RC that I was running with this RTM, UIltimate edition. There are some more interesting changes I found which probably are worth mentioning here. This time however I'd like to point out some rather nasty findings as well. More pictures will be added soon.

Burn ISO files from context menu.
Too bad only "burn" is available, I'd rather see "mount", but this definitely is a step in the right direction.

Simple way of setting up a homegroup.
I currently use two machines which both run Windows 7. I use the same workgroup on both machines, but I believe even with different workgroup names, they both discover each other and will notify you about the possiblities to easily share pictures, music, etc. You can define what to share and with whom very easily, and only if you enter the (automatically generated) right password you will be able to join another's homegroup. An easy and fast way of setting up home networking I must say.

Improved Paint layout and functionality.
Many of you will laugh about this, but I do think Paint has improved (finally). Ofcourse you still can' treally compare it with Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or Paint .NET, but for small, quick drawings or screendumps, etc. it works very well. The ribbon was added to "unify" the look 'n' feel of it together with other Microsoft applications and well, though it's not the best improvement I have ever seen, it does work rather well like this.

Faster network discovery & more compact Networking Center.
When I opened up the network environment I noticed how fast the network list got populated. It took just a few seconds before the list of hostnames got longer and longer. I am certain this is a performance improvement compared to Vista nd earlier versions. Also the Network and Sharing Center is made a little more compact, showing you (almost) all information you need in one screen. One question still remains: am I the only one who thinks you need too many clicks before you see your IP-Address etc.? I was hoping you could find that information (maybe together with MAC-address) in just one simple click... unfortunately I was wrong.

"Play to" aka DLNA support in MediaPlayer.
When you own DLNA-certified devices you can hook it up with your Windows 7 PC to stream content like music, pictures and video to those devices, for example your TV. From the explorer context menu, as well as the MediaPlayer context menu on your Windows 7 machine you can initiate the stream and push it over to the device of your choice. The device will auto-sense the stream and will start playing it instantly! I don't own DLNA-devices myself but with two Windows 7 PC's you can stream from machine A to machine B as well so I did use it a little bit. I now wish I had a nice DLNA-certified HD TV!

Improved MediaCenter look 'n' feel.
The new MediaCenter application just had a small facelift. It's not a big difference, specially not for those who simply had a look at it in previous versions, but I used it quite often so for me it is an improvement seeing the new Music Library interface and the "Now playing" screen. All Album Art found in your library will be used as tiled wallpaper when playing music. It looks awesome if you ask me. When watching Live or Recorded TV and you navigate back to the main menu, the background shows a slightly faded out view of the footage that keeps playing. Most of the options and configurations seem untouched as far as I've seen.

Dynamic desktop wallpaper feed.
I accidentally came across a blog of someone who liked the new Bing searchengine look 'n' feel so much that he want to have the Bing-backgrounds as desktop wallpaper on his workstation. If you format your RSS-feed in a particular way, it can be used as an image-feed for your desktop. This seems to work in Windows Ultimate only btw.

Linking online ID's to local Windows 7 account.
You can connect your Windows Live ID directly to your Windows 7 profile. This way it's easier and faster to use Windows Live applications like Live Messenger, Writer and Image Gallery and it's mandatory to make your media library available through computers over the internet. Currently there's only one online ID provider available (which obviously is Microsoft Windows Live) but more will follow according to Microsoft. I did not manage to get this working on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit I must add. On my 32-bit machines it worked fine.

System often freezes for several seconds / minutes.

Still no visualization of defragmentation.
I've used several third-party defragmentation tools in the past, for multiple reasons. What I do like about those other tools is that they all make visible how the defragmentation process is doing. It's visualized with these blocks that get moved around. A perfect representation of the "mental model" I have of defragmenting.

Unreliable MediaCenter performance.
One of the machines (the 64-bit) keeps crashing on MediaCenter. I could use it for about a day, but when I started it up again to make some screendumps it kept crashin hard. When opening the Music Library it simply shows a small error-box that there was an audio error. So when I then try to use the Search-option, it crashes within a second.

Search results matching tag 'Windows 7'

Evolution of Windows Explorer

Booting from VHD files and using Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Workstation

Improved Jump Lists Post – and a bit more

Jump Lists

Overlay Icon

Conclusion

Extend VHD with Windows 7

Windows 7 Ultimate Commemorative Edition

Jump Lists

Federated Search in Windows 7

TechDays 2009 Chile >> Demo Code

Windows 7

Taskbar

Docking

Window Transparency

Desktop button

Integrated fingerprint reader

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Early adopters = Driver problems.

More discoveries regarding Windows 7