cool, new  sessions revealed –  http://blogs.msdn.com/pdc/

Future Directions for Visual Basic, and see why Visual C++ 10 is the New 6. But wait…there’s more! See how the next version of Visual Studio adds even more support for agile development and get a first look at the new UML designers in Visual Studio Team System. 

and don’t forget some tips

3.  Taxis are cheaper than renting a car 
4. Don't miss the keynote
5. Go early for breakfast
6. Take advantage of MS provided session planning tools (coming online in the next month)
7. Take a laptop - but don't break it out in a session
8. Have fun… it’s a great experience!more details on http://zachbonham.blogspot.com/2008/06/microsoft-pdc-2008-tips.html

You think some things will never end...you think your parents will live forever, that a relationship will never fade, that you have all the time in the world. And then reality hits. On 27.06.2008 that reality hit  again when Bill Gates officially ended his 33 year full-time job at Microsoft.

I grow learning in school on Commodore computers and few years later in High School using the first x86 with DOS and first 286 with Windows 3.1 then  I realized where DOS and Windows came from - this company called Microsoft. And that Bill Gates ran it. I became even more fascinated with computing, seeing what plans they had. Dealings with IBM, this new graphical interface that let you manipulate stuff as little pictures, making it easy for my mom to create docs and pictures, eventually OS/2 and Windows 3. This Gates guy seemed so incredibly smart and forward thinking. But back then I knew that something big was happening, Microsoft was at the center of it, and I wanted to be part of it.

My goal in life from that point was to work and get closer to Microsoft. I considered him then, and still do now, a visionary.

funny Bill end movie : http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25408326?GT1=43001

and some funny Impressions about working with

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Dan/Favorite-Bill-Gates-Stories/

Live Writer – new tech preview release available for download

The Windows Live Writer team released a new tech preview earlier this week.  Here are some of the new features in this release:

Video and Image Publishing Enhancements

• Upload videos to Soapbox
• Image cropping and tilting
• Additional border styles
• Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
• Support for centering images

Editing Enhancements

• Auto Linking
• Smart quotes/typographic characters
• Word count

UI Improvements

• Revised main toolbar
• Tabs for view switching
• Improved category control with search/filtering

Get it @ http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/0/9/809604cd-bd08-42c8-b590-49c332059e64/writer.msi.  See the WLW team blog at http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/.

Shortly after public update over windows update service of XP SP3, MS product Teams release an new series of SP1, with quite nice useful features and fixes.

Virtual PC 2007 Sp1 Product Version: 6.0.192.0  Additions version for this build: 13.820

What is available in this release?

This release provides support for the following additional Host and Guest OS’es

Host                                             Guest (only 32 bit)

Windows Vista SP1 (32 and 64 bit)   Windows 2008 (Standard), Windows Vista SP1

  XP SP3                                        XP SP3

For more information, see the Release Notes at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f3d3eb5-5e03-4712-999c-e96f91bdf128&displaylang=en

The Virtual PC website will be updated shortly with this release information at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx

Virtual server 2005 R2 Sp1 update with Server 2008 support!

This update provides support for the following additional Host and Guest OS’es with KB948515.msp

Host                                                          Guest

Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS)  Windows 2008 (Core, Standard, Datacenter, Enterprise, SBS)

XP Professional SP3 (non-production only)               XP SP3

Windows Vista SP1 (non-production only)                Windows Vista SP1

(Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)                     (Business, Ultimate, Enterprise)

After installing the update:   Product Version: 1.1.629.0   Additions Version: 13.820

KB948515.msp update to Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 is now available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a79bcf9b-59f7-480b-a4b8-fb56f42e3348&displaylang=en

For more information about the software update and the fixes made in this release, see the KB article at:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948515

This is great!  I'm impressed that it will run on Server 2008 core, I'll need to try that one out.  I agree that Hyper-V will RTM soon, but it's nice to have options. 

is an new version of WinDBG (Version 6.9.3.113) released with some improvements regarding symbols server support some other usefull commands check this out here http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/whatsnew.mspx .

and is a windows debugger extension open project on codeplex, quite interesting stuff you have to use  the DDK build to compile, but it works, and the team have an blog too, quite interesting stuff up there http://blogs.msdn.com/ntdebugging/

Also an quite interesting topic regarding debugging large and complex applications posted by one of the Phoenix compiler team member on VC Blog, basic is how to use the /RTC compiler flag for run time error checks. This can help you find places where there is unintended data loss, finds usage of uninitialized variables, detects overruns and underruns, stack pointer corruption and stack corruption.

You can find more information about this at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8wtf2dfz(VS.80).aspx

Quite a busy quarter for product Teams zune related, we have an zune software update, with cool missing features (drag & drop, etc) , you can read more info here :what'snew

second good part is that once with 2.5 firmware update, comes also the possibility to extend zune functionality with custom applications , quite cool using XNA 3.0 .Read more about this at http://creators.xna.com/whatsnew.aspx

and not in last, quite interesting news about Zune Phone, and his hype features :

cool, most expected event on the way, get the news here http://msdn.microsoft.com/pdc.

and Save the date!

I'm just back from an Community Event in Bad Homburg, were Boris Jabes from Visuals Studio  and ++ Compiler Team had digging into brand new feature pack TR1 and MFC updates. Were quite a lot of interesting stuff, mostly known from beta version, but quite few were quite hype.

As first example - tuple function, How often in the field development we have needs as one function to have more then one return values, ok, you may said, you pass them byvalue parameters, but that's not what an real c++ guy does, right, so here  comes the "new" - Tuple.

   1: int x; double y;

   3:  

   4: x, y = DoSomething();

An follow the code that is the TR1 Support in the new Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack. for this purpose.

   1: #include <iostream>

   2: #include <tuple>

   3:  

   5: using namespace std;

   6: using namespace tr1;

   7:  

   8: tuple<int, double> DoSomething()

   9: {

  10:     int x = 10;

  11:     double y = 20.0;

  12:     return make_tuple(x,y);

  13: }

  16: int _tmain(int argc, _TCHAR* argv[])

  17: {

  18:     int x;

  19:     double y;

  20:  

  21:     tie( x, y ) = DoSomething();

  22:  

  23:     cout << x << endl;

  24:     cout << y << endl;

  25:     

  26:     return 0;

  27: }

Return value it is as tuple defined (line8) and with tie function(line 21) to the right values assigned.

Other things, quite alot, VS 2008 is cool but what's next will be hype, at least from c++ dev. vision .

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb725993.aspx

so keep learning and improve c++ , future is passion :)

quite fast after 2 months of beta release the RTM version of the Feature pack is here, C++ Community is looking forward for next generation of applications using TR1 and new looks and feel.

.For more details please see the VCBlog at http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2008/04/07/visual-c-2008-feature-pack-released.aspx

You can install the feature pack from  http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=D466226B-8DAB-445F-A7B4-448B326C48E7&displaylang=en

have fun with

beginning of the end, "Singularity", interesting name, but even more interesting what's behind.

here is the Stuff : http://research.microsoft.com/os/singularity/ and not only it is open source on codeplex, quite interesting core internal stuff, but this time, not only Native, mostly Managed, while is a OS written in C#.

few days ago i got an email with some interesting content, at the begging i don't link it with older issues using  Driver development framework on Vista sp1, using Auto Windows Update, but - Evrika !!!

"KMDF Users:  A patch from Windows Update (KB 938371) interferes with installation of the Kernel Mode Driver Framework on Windows Vista.   Testing of the fix is in progress.  Until then, we ask that you not release device drivers using KMDF version 1.7.  "

yeah, that is looks like , driver development Intellisense, with VS 2008, wow quite cool

and least but not last following text from Visual Studio ReadMe.txt, but for sure my opinion will not affect ,Microsoft's policy on this issue.

DISCLAIMER: Visual Studio is not officially supported by Microsoft for driver development. The only currently supported build environment is the command window that comes with the WDK.

The VS extension team (http://blogs.msdn.com/vsxteam/) release this month some cool tools to improve the development with VS 2008 and some for the 2005 version :

PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008
DB Connection Visualizer
TFS Quick Search
VSWindowManager
NUnit integration in Visual Studio 2005
Resource Refactoring Tool
Flat Solution Explorer
Source Code Outliner PowerToy

screen shot of powercommands

and here is the place where all are on http ://visualstudiogallery.com/Default.aspx, cool stuff

and at the end some fun - real life at Microsoft video, quite funny stuff

http://on10.net/blogs/tina/Life-At-Microsoft/

  regarding the application virtualizsation were allot of news in the past weeks after release of Windows Server 2008, what feature is for an server operating system and how can be used in high scalability server configuration , performance same as many other info you can get on :

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/servermanager/virtualization.mspx

interesting part is how you can programmatically interact with, just an small sample

Renaming a Hyper-V Virtual Machine


VBScript:

Option Explicit


Dim WMIService

Dim VM

Dim VMManagementService

Dim VMSystemSettingData

Dim VMName

Dim NewVMName

Dim Result

'Setup variables for the VM we are looking for, and the new name

VMName = "Windows Server 2008"

NewVMName = "Windows Server 2008 - new"
'Get an instance of the WMI Service in the virtualization namespace.

Set WMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\virtualization")

'Get a VMManagementService object

Set VMManagementService = 

WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_VirtualSystemManagementService").ItemIndex(0)
'Get the VM object that we want to modify

Set VM = (WMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Msvm_ComputerSystem WHERE ElementName='" & VMName & "'")).ItemIndex(0)
'Get the VirtualSystemSettingsData of the VM we want to modify
Set VMSystemSettingData = (VM.Associators_("MSVM_SettingsDefineState",

 "MSVM_VirtualSystemSettingData")).ItemIndex(0) 

'Change the ElementName property

VMSystemSettingData.ElementName = NewVMName
'Update the VM with ModifyVirtualSystem

Result = VMManagementService.ModifyVirtualSystem(VM.Path_.Path,

VMSystemSettingData.GetText_(1))

and what hardware is supported on :

http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/4/8/e48d5cff-53d2-4eed-85bf-4af50e25b78c/relnotes.htm

http://blogs.technet.com/softgrid/ is an public availability of SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 and 4.2 HFRU2.

I am pleased to announce This cumulative update for SoftGrid v4.1 SP1 and v4.2 provides the latest updates to SoftGrid.  In addition to stability improvements, this update contains the following changes:

• The log level of the "Error reading from socket" message is now Debug. Therefore, the message does not appear in the Sft-server.log and the Windows event log at the default log level when you use SoftGrid Virtual Application Servers together with a hardware load balancer. 
• SoftGrid Sequencer now preserves OSD GUIDs when it opens SoftGrid v3.2 sequencings for a package upgrade.
• Intermittent "0xBE" Stop errors that occur at system start on multiprocessor computers have been addressed.

New capabilities

This update provides the following new capabilities:

• SoftGrid now supports deployment of Virtual Application .msi files that are generated by the MSI Utility for Microsoft Application Virtualization to SoftGrid clients that are running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows 2000 Server/Advanced Server and that have Terminal Services enabled.
• SoftGrid 4.2 HFRU2 now supports Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

Please Note:  The 4.1 SP1 KB article incorrectly identifies Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) as a new capability of 4.1 SP1 HFRU2.  We're in the process of changing the article now so you should see it updated soon.

SoftGrid 4.1 SP1 HFRU2 Bits: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938497

SoftGrid 4.2 HFRU2 Bits: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941408

that from MS area, VmWare made only true major announcement made at VMworld Europe 2008 is about the release of VMsafe APIs.on last days of European conference, new announcements , new features are here http://www.virtualization.info/. Main reason security in virtual environment ,

While security products like antivirus will still have to install inside a dedicated VM, they will be able to monitor what's happening inside other virtual machines from a completely new perspective: the hypervisor level.

This will allow checking which traffic is entering or leaving a VM, or even which data is being executed inside it (looking at CPU states, memory pages and OS processes list). All done in a transparent way.

The revolutionary approach has two remarkable benefits: first of all it saves precious physical resources and management efforts without duplicating the same security agent inside each guest OS, secondarily it prevents the security agents from being directly attacked and possibly disabled.

Several malicious codes usually try to disable the existing protections before infecting the system, granting themselves the longest lifetime possible. With the new architecture made possible by VMsafe the chances to succeed in this task are much less.

VMware announces VMsafe with the support of notable security players: from the anti-virus ones (Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro) to the firewall ones (Check Point, Fortinet), passing through several other categories.

so, than be virtual and stay safe

:)

The motto of this 2 weeks begin with "new" regarding the MS technologies for 2008 and OS also.

SO, we have the huge Launch Event and for the life of the real life coders , we have an RTM of windows SDK, .Net SDK.

What’s New:

The following is a small sampling of what’s in this SDK, with a more complete list available in the Getting Started section in the Windows SDK documentation.  I'll be writing more about new features over the coming weeks.

· Supports development for .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista (including SP1), and Windows XP

· Supports building on and targeting all architecture platforms: x86, x64, and Itanium (check out the new Visual Studio 2008 C++ compilers, for IA64 that you can't get anywhere else)

· Visual Studio 2008 C++ command line compiler toolset (with /analyze support) and matching CRT

· The SDK headers, libs, and tools integrate with VS2008 when both the SDK and VS2008 are installed.  (Check out the new SDK Configuraton tool that lets you switch between multiple versions of the Windows SDK and multiple versions of Visual Studio.  It's cool.)

· New tools such as XPerf, SqlMetal, xsltc, gc, topoedit, aspnet_merge, and wsdcodegen

· Documentation and samples (2200+ sample projects) to explain usage of new Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 features, as well as previous platform features

Karin Maier from SDK team, post some info's about it

http://blogs.msdn.com/karinm/archive/2008/02/10/released-windows-sdk-for-windows-server-2008-and-net-framework-3-5.aspx

Windows Performance Team has released Windows Performance Tools Kit to the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/perftools.mspx

This is the same tool Windows team uses to diagnose Windows performance problem. Along with the tool comes with a 60-page Quick Start Guide. It offers significant details how the system works.

Having a performance problem lately? Fire up Xperf and look at the pretty chart.

I have wrote in an previous post (mfc 2008 extension) about the new MFC update, for a while now the feature pack it is public in an beta preview, cool news , cool functionality etc.

I try to install the brand new feature pack - VS90-VCFeaturePack-Beta-KB945273-x86x64-ENU on an Vista machine with SP1 RC1 english , with Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development edition, and unfortunately i get the message
"None of the products that are addressed by this software update are installed on this computer. Click Cancel to exit setup."
i try to work it out with process explorer, hoping that are some files, or registry access, but without success

Property(S): KB945273.AllowRemoval = 1
Property(S): KB945273.PatchCode = {16578A8D-EC67-4E45-85B5-170870853EF7}
Property(S): PATCHNEWPACKAGECODE = {16578A8D-EC67-4E45-85B5-170870853EF7}
Property(S): PATCHNEWSUMMARYCOMMENTS = This patch contains the logic and data required to install Visual C++ 2008 Beta Feature Pack
Property(S): PATCHNEWSUMMARYSUBJECT = Visual C++ 2008 Beta Feature Pack
MSI (s) (80:E0) [22:18:34:828]: Product: Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite - ENU - Update 'Visual C++ 2008 Beta Feature Pack' could not be installed. Error code 1603. Additional information is available in the log file C:\DOCUME~1\Marius\LOCALS~1\Temp\Visual C++ 2008 Beta Feature Pack - KB945273_20080126_201736125-Msi0.txt.
MSI (s) (80:E0) [22:18:34:828]: Note: 1: 1729
MSI (s) (80:E0) [22:18:34:828]: Product: Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Suite - ENU -- Configuration failed.

i have post the issues to the VC team , you can trace the post evolution here :

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2651090&SiteID=1

Is true once that the year is passing away faster and faster , I get used (maybe influenced from the corporate world) to make an 12 months  personal and professional review of  activity and not last time some plans for the new coming year.

Professional

here are more highlights then in the personal area, while as everybody know the IT business require more and more and even more  time.

I was first time in my professional career speaking on a Conference.I had 2 sessions about Windows Driver Foundation and Driver development on Advanced Developer Conference 2008 in Mannheim for around 150 people. was an special feeling that i miss it for long time from university years. and were i meet amazing guys from the wave of MS technologies ( Dariusz Parys, Neno Loje, Dominik Baier,Bernd Marquardt)

In November I reached 10 years of full time experience in Software Area of the IT business.( still enough to go till retirement , and counting .... ) .

I and the Team , we get the Independent Software Vendor and OEM Hardware provider,  Competence in the Microsoft partnership with our products suite.

thanks' all colleagues for good and bad days and keep working on maintain the quality that our customers are used with :)

From the technology point , I have migrate to Vista SP1 Beta, and Visual studio 2008 with all new features and advantages of the Native and Managed development environment.

 

Personal

I was playing with my young colleagues Team in regions Streetball tournament , and lucky we got the 5 place from 20 teams

  Were different events in the personal area -  I got 31 , yeah still amazed how hast the years are passing , but anyway - Think positive  i begin to plan the version 2.0 of our life experience .

   I run at 6km running contest and I've got from 560 people the place 150 with 30 minutes for the distance, can be better but without an good training it is acceptable.

   we had great time visiting Sicil(http://picasaweb.google.com/dumian/Sites_History) and Lazarote from relaxing point of view,

and last but not least i must thank to my wonderful wife for supporting me in all of these.

interesting topic from one of the Imaging Guys on MS Campus - Eduard Koller

Is almost one year now, from the moment that I have an Zune 1, one of the few here in Europe, quite happy with  while i can dock it in my car, to my home cinema receiver and of course at work and trips.

Zune Tattoo Guy Seeks to Change Legal Name to...Microsoft Zune.

  I am not talking about his forum name mszunefan. He wants to change his legal name from Steven Smith to Microsoft Zune. After some brief research he has discovered that trade names can be used as legal names if no profit is made from the name change. Get the whole story from the horses mouth.

v2.0

This November, it is the launching of new Zune players:  Zune 4GB; Zune 8GB; Zune 80GB; MS will continue to sell Zune 30GB (the Zune started selling last year). All of these devices will have wireless sync, updated wireless sharing, an FM tuner, and a bright LCD color screen to display music, pictures, videos and podcasts. Zune 4, 8, and 80 have a new design, and a touch sensitive button called the Zune Pad. The Zune Pad will let you browse through menus either by brushing or clicking.

Zune Players: Some details:

• Zune 4GB and Zune 8GB come with the Zune Pad, have a 1.8 inch screen, and will come in pink, red, green and black. Zune 4GB will retail for $149.99 and Zune 8GB will retail for $199.99.
  Dimensions of Zune 4GB and Zune 8GB: 3.6 x 1.62 x 0.33; Weight: 1.7oz
• Zune 80GB has a 3.2 inch screen  and comes with premium headphones, standard. It’s a high quality audio and video experience on the go. Zune 80GB will retail for $249.99
  • Dimensions of Zune 80GB: 4.26 x 2.41 x 0.51; Weight 4.5oz
    • Note that the 3.2 inch screen is 14% larger than Zune 30GB’s 3.0 inch screen, while Zune 80GB is 27% smaller than Zune 30GB
• And for early adopters: everyone who owns or buys a Zune 30GB will automatically get the new features through a firmware update – “firmware update 2.1.” Zune 30GB will continue to retail for 199.99
  • Dimensions of Zune 30GB: 4.43 x 2.47 x 0.65; Weight 5.6oz

And here’s the list of Zune features (IE, features that everyone will get with firmware update 2.1):

• Wireless sync: wirelessly updates content on the device when it is within range of the PC with the Zune Collection on it, or on the same wireless network.  You can start the sync manually or, when its plugged into  AC power, Sync will automatically start after 1 minute of inactivity. This is so the battery doesn’t get drained by the automatic sync.
• Expanded wireless send capabilities: you can now keep a track for three plays (the time restrictions are out of the equation) you can also send a track  you’ve been sent on to other Zune owners.
• Lossless playback will be supported on every Zune
• Podcasting – that is, automatic RSS based subscription to both audio and video podcasts via Zune Marketplace (more on ZMP below).
• You’ll be able to sync your Vista Media Center TV content to your Zune and watch it on the go.

Zune Software and Zune Marketplace:

Redesigned both the Zune Software and Zune Marketplace from the ground up – check the screenshots below. Here’s what you can find in ZMP this holiday season:

• Over 3 million tracks
• Over 1 million DRM-free MP3s that you can play on your Zune or any other digital media player
  Thousands of music videos
• Over 1,000 free audio and video podcasts
• For about the price of a CD per month, you can buy a Zune Pass subscription to download whatever music you want for a flat rate.
• PC to PC send: Zune users can send links imbedded with a song’s metadata from the inbox in their Zune PC software to someone else.  The recipient follows the link to sample, buy or download the song on Zune Marketplace.

Zune Social:

Something I’m really really excited about, is launching the Zune Social, an online community beta. It’s a place that gives folks a place to share their music tastes, knowledge and experiences with other folks. It extends the connection from device-device to PC-to-PC. Here are some details:

• Zune Card: Anyone will be able to create a free, customizable Zune card. You can personalize your Zune Card with your picture, custom backgrounds, biographical info and more. Your card will automatically update with the music you listen to on your Zune or with your Zune software.
• You can browse your friend’s pages, invite friends, send and receive song recommendations, and post comments to their profile pages.
• You can browse your favorite artist’s pages to find other listeners with similar musical tastes.
• Each song within the Zune Social will have a playable 30 second clip, and if you like the song, you can link directly into Zune Marketplace to buy the song (using Microsoft® points or on your Zune Pass). 
• You can check out Zune Social community-generated charts to see the most-played artists, songs and albums, or read comments and recommendations posted by other Zune community members on album and artist pages.
• You’ll eventually be able to post your Zune card to mainstream social networking sites  Wherever your Zune card is located, it will automatically update with the music you’re currently playing.  

And  have a new line of accessories – for details on that, check the page on Zune.net.

One of the most important event of the year in the MS technology area is the TechEd in Barcelona on 5 – 9 November with an important audience and for sure super MS Team's speakers.

As top speakers - Somasegar, Michael Howard , Kate Gregory, Steve Texeira, Ale Contenti

and Are covered more than 7 talks about different C++ topics, ranging from debugging to interop to MFC, about “MFC Updates for Visual Studio 2008 and Beyond”.   In this session were introduced the major new features we’re implementing for MFC.  With these features, developers will be able to create modern applications that leverage the “look and feel” of Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio.

Also were presented these updates to the MFC Libraries! Special thanks to the VC++ Libraries Team!

Kate Gregory also talked about C++0x and TR1 during a couple of “interactive sessions” or “chalk talk”. Again, great interest on the new TR1 extensions and on what will come from the C++ Standard.

MFC is back with new functionality

Pat Brenner, from the Visual C++ libraries team give a sneak peek at a major MFC update .  Were added a number of cool new user interface components to MFC, this blog post is going to be graphics heavy.  Modern user interface elements

This update to the MFC library will enable developers to build modern user interfaces with support for the Office 2007 Ribbon Bar, Office-style menus, Visual Studio-style docking toolbars, tabbed documents and much more. All of the components included in the update will run on Windows 2000 and above.

Let’s take a look at some of the Office 2007 Ribbon Bar support. Below is an image of an MFC application built with the Office look and feel:

The ribbon support includes support for the application button (the large round button at the top left), the quick access toolbar (the small set of tools just to the right of the application button) and the standard ribbon components. Each tab on the ribbon (e.g., the “Home” tab above) allows access to a category of tools. Each category is divided up into a set of panels (e.g., “Clipboard” and “Font” above) and each panel contains a set of ribbon elements. These ribbon elements can have a wide variety of styles

Perhaps many of you would like to build applications that utilize some of the functionality we’ve had in Visual Studio.  For example, one of the most requested features is support for the smart docking we added in Visual Studio 2005.  With this new release, all the cool user interface features you’ve seen in the past versions of Visual Studio are at your disposal.

Let’s take a look at some of the Visual Studio support. Below is an image of an MFC application built with the Visual Studio look and feel:

MFC now implements its own menu bar and toolbar, which is fully customizable like the Visual Studio toolbar and menu bar. This means that buttons can be moved between toolbars, and even from the toolbar to the menu bar and vice versa. Custom toolbars can be created, and commands can be added to them. And the images for the individual toolbar buttons can even be changed, and custom images can be created and used. Support for docking panes is also included—these panes can be grouped into one docking frame as above, they can be floating as well as docked, and they support auto-hide mode like in Visual Studio, so a docked pane will slide out from the edge of the frame when its tab is hovered over, mimicking the Visual Studio behavior. There is also support for tabbed MDI documents (which can be grouped) like in Visual Studio.

Ribbon Elements

In addition to all the features supporting Office, Internet Explorer and Visual Studio “look and feel” there are a number of built-in cool elements you can use in the ribbon in your application.  In the images below, we provide a quick visual introduction to what’s included in the library.  The images come from the RibbonGadgets example that ships with the library.

In the image below you can see large and small buttons, as well as check boxes. The buttons can be simple (so they just respond to a click), or they can drop down a menu or be a split button which responds to the click or drops a menu depending on the click location.

In the image below you can see a variety of color choosers. These can be embedded in the ribbon, or they can be attached to a button. The table of colors associated with the chooser can be customized in your application. There is a color picker dialog which offers even more flexibility, including the ability to choose the color of any pixel on the screen and use that color.

In the image below you can see support for edit boxes, combo boxes and spin controls, as well as the font picker control, which can display the font names in the font (as in Word) so you get an instant preview of the font appearance.

Below you can see a few more ribbon elements. Several of these, including the progress indicators and the links and sliders, actually make more sense on the ribbon status bar, which you can see in the first image at the top of this article.

Powerful application wizard

We’ve also beefed up the MFC Application Wizard (see the images below) quite a bit to enable easy use of these new features in MFC. We’ve added a couple of options to the “Project Style” category which will allow you to build a project that looks something like Visual Studio or an Office application by default. We’ve added the option to use tabbed MDI document windows rather than the old MDI style. And we’ve added the ability to choose the look and feel of your application with the “Visual Style and Colors” combo box.

An option that is hidden in this image is a checkbox that allows your application look and color to be changed at runtime. You can choose your application look and color at design time, but if the user wants to change it, he can do so easily. This is possible because the drawing of all the user interface elements is done via what is called a “visual manager”. The visual manager takes care of all the drawing of elements, so if a different look is desired, all that is required is to switch to a different visual manager, and redraw the window, and your application instantly has a completely new look. As you can see in the image below, a number of schemes are supported, including Office 2003, Visual Studio 2005, and several different Office 2007 schemes which use different colors. All of these are implemented using visual managers.

An option that is disabled in the image below (because ribbon was chosen instead of menu bar) is a checkbox that enabled “personalized menu behavior”. This means that the menus will not show all commands by default, just like in Office applications. When a menu is hovered over briefly, the menu will expand to contain its full set of commands. And as the application is used, the most-used commands are added to the menu by default, so over time, the menu will become personalized to how it is being used.

Below is a screenshot of a running application which uses a ribbon. This is actually the application created by the Application Wizard when the “Office” project style is chosen. There is an Outlook-style navigation bar docked on the left side of the frame, and a caption (or message) bar at the top of the client area. Note that the application button, quick access toolbar buttons, and the ribbon elements have keyboard hotkeys which are available when the Alt key is pressed. On the right hand side of the ribbon is a drop-down element named “Style”, and from it you can choose which color you’d like the application to be presented in.

Easy to update existing MFC code

One of the great things about the new components is that they’re easy to incorporate into existing applications. All of the new behavior is encapsulated in new classes, and none of the existing classes have been modified. If you want to update your existing MFC application to use the new menu bar and toolbar support, all that is required to update your application to the new look is to change the base classes of your application and frame windows, and add a few lines of code, and you’ve just updated your application to have a more modern interface. 

Below is an image of the new DrawClient sample. This is a remodel of the DrawCli sample that ships with MFC—it’s been updated to include Ribbon support.  Most of the modifications to the source code were in mainfrm.h and mainfrm.cpp. The ribbon is currently built entirely in code. The ribbon is created and then the various ribbon elements (application button, quick access toolbar, categories, etc.) are added via calls to ribbon member functions. However, the underlying command architecture did not have to change—all the ribbon controls can be associated with a command identifier, and when the command is fired, it is handled via the existing command handlers. The object drawing code did not have to change in any substantial way—it was only augmented to allow a few new capabilities. One of these capabilities is something I’ll call “command preview”. This means that, just like in the new Office applications, you can see the effect of a command before actually choosing it. For example, the purple rounded rectangle is active below. As you float the mouse over the large color buttons in the ribbon, the rectangle will temporarily change color to match the color of the button the mouse is hovered over. When you click on the button, the color of the rectangle will then be changed.

We’re pretty excited about all these new additions to MFC.