in

Melyssa’s Blog

June 2009 - Posts

  • New Globalization Functionality for Developers in Windows 7

    The 2008 Professional Developers Conference introduced several new features that can be expected with the release of Windows 7, one of which is the new support for writing language-aware applications. The presenters of one session pointed out why globalization really matters: over 90% of the world population does not speak English at all, and only 5.1% of the remaining percentage speaks it natively. If a developer provides an application only in English, then the developer is neglecting a vast majority of the population and severely limiting the usage of his or her application.

    In the past, it has been cumbersome to say the least to provide support for multiple languages. Developers have had to guess the current language by looking at local settings, or in the case of Web applications, HTTP header information, which could very often provide inaccurate results. Windows 7 will change all of this with a set of APIs, called Extended Linguistic Services, which will initially provide the following features:

    ·         Language detection: detect the language of a user’s text.

    ·         Script detection: detect the writing system, or alphabet, of a user’s text (some languages have multiple alphabets).

    ·         Transliteration: convert text from one writing system to another; i.e., Chinese Simplified to Chinese Traditional.

    ·         Support for 100+ languages.

    ·         Support for mixed languages (many users prefer to perform one set of tasks in one language, and another set of tasks in another language).

    To access the services, a developer will:

    1.       Call enumeration to get the list of available services (i.e., MappingGetServices()).

    2.       Pass the text to the selected service (i.e., MappingRecognizeText()).

    3.       Do something with the results that are returned by the service based on what it discovered (i.e., text not recognized, text recognized and it is Japanese, text recognized as Chinese Simplified and can be transliterated to Chinese Traditional).

    Developers can expect to follow the same general procedure for accessing new services that are added in the future. One of the Windows 7 team’s main goals in providing this set of APIs is to make the experience intuitive and easy to learn, and to not force developers to learn something new each time another service is released, which I’m sure we can all appreciate.

    To watch the session, visit Channel 9 on MSDN, Windows 7: Writing World-Ready Applications.

    Posted Jun 29 2009, 11:23 AM by mbell with no comments
    Filed under:

  • A Few of My Favorite Windows 7 New Additions

    1. Themes. Windows 7 has approached personalization of desktops from a different angle. Users have more control over the look and feel of their desktop with the use of Themes. The control panel for the Themes screen displays available themes in a graphical list, organized by user-created themes, online themes, and built-in system themes. Unique themes can be created by a user and even shared with others. It is very easy to create your own theme – just select one of the existing themes, then change either the desktop background, Windows color, sounds, or screen saver and save the theme as your own.

      Themes Screen Shot

    2. Snipping Tool. How many times have you needed to take a screen shot of something, only to have to also open that screen shot in some sort of image editing software, clip it accordingly, mark it up with comments, then save the image so that you can email it or include it in a document? If you’re like me, then the answer is more times than you care to think about. Now with the new Snipping Tool in Windows 7, this process has been greatly simplified. With the Snipping Tool, you can select what sort of “snip” you would like to take (free-form, rectangular, window, or full-screen). Once an area is selected, the snip automatically opens in a Snipping Tool window with a few handy tools, including save, copy, email, write, highlight, and erase. When you finish marking up the image, you can click the copy button and paste a flattened version into a document. Or, you may choose to email the image as an attachment. One feature I would add is the ability to type comments, but overall the Snipping Tool is very efficient and much appreciated.

      Snipping Tool Screen Shot

    3. Device Management. No longer do you have to manage your devices from multiple locations. With Windows 7, from one convenient location (Start > Devices and Printers), you can view all of your connected devices, update drivers, connect to new devices, and perform other tasks specific to a particular device with a right-click. In addition, when you plug in a new device to your computer, a new icon will appear in your Task Bar with a screen that provides you with device information and convenient links to common device tasks. This “Device Stage” can be customized by manufacturers to display relevant information about the device, images, and just about anything else they deem helpful to the user.

      Devices Screen Shot
    Posted Jun 08 2009, 11:15 AM by mbell with no comments
    Filed under:

  • Windows 7 Features Supported by the Windows API Code Pack

    If you would like to develop applications that access new Windows 7 features, you will want to download the Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. With this code pack (version 0.85, as of this post), you will find support for the following features:

    • Common file dialogs
    • Direct3D 11.0 and DXGI 1.0/1.1 APIs
    • Explorer Browser Control
    • Extended Linguistic Services APIs
    • Icon Overlay
    • Progress Bar
    • Sensor Platform APIs
    • Shell property system
    • Task Dialogs
    • Taskbar Jumplists
    • Windows Shell namespace objects, Known Folders and non file system containers

    Several of my favorite features include the support available for the Taskbar. One such feature is Icon Overlay, which allows developers to add status indicators to the icons in the Taskbar and provide subtle feedback to a user. For instance, it may be appropriate to indicate the current state of an application that is running in the background, but not necessarily viewable in an open window on the user’s desktop. This can be accomplished by adding an image to the application’s icon in the Taskbar as particular events occur within the application. Indicators can also be overlaid while a user interacts directly with the application and can be used to provide another means of communication to the user.

    Additionally, the ability to add tasks to Jumplists that are accessible via the Taskbar gives developers the option to provide convenient links to various actions related to the application, all with the right-click of a mouse. As an example, if a function of an application requires the user to frequently upload images for processing, then the developer can provide a quick link that is configured to open the user’s images folder, upload and process a selected image with just one click. The potential for this type of functionality is limitless, and is one of many exciting additions to the Windows 7 development environment through the Windows API Code Pack.

    To download the Windows API Code Pack, please check out the MSDN Code Gallery (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack).

    Posted Jun 05 2009, 10:37 AM by mbell with no comments
    Filed under:
Powered by Community Server (Commercial Edition), by Telligent Systems