Introducing WinFX - The Application Programming Interface for the Next Generation of Microsoft Windows Code Name Longhorn

Brent Rector

PUBLISHED BY Microsoft Press A Division of Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, Washington 98052-6399

Copyright 2004 by Microsoft

All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data pending.

Rector, Brent

Introducing WinFX The Application Programming Interface for the Next Generation of Microsoft

Windows Code Name "Longhorn" / Brent Rector. p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-7356-2085-7

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 QWT 8 7 6 5 4 3

Distributed in Canada by H.B. Fenn and Company Ltd.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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IntelliSense, Microsoft, MSDN, MS-DOS, Visual Basic .NET, Visual Studio .NET, and WinFX are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries . Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners .

The example companies, organizations, products, domain names, e-mail addresses, logos, people, places, and events depicted herein are fictitious. No association with any real company, organization, product, domain name, e-mail address, logo, person, place, or event is intended or should be inferred.

Acquisitions Editor: Robin Van Steenburgh
Project Editor: Kathleen Atkins
Copy Editors: Roger LeBlanc and Jennifer Harris

Body Part No. X10-25659

As always, I dedicate this book to Lisa, Carly, and Sean. I ve finally convinced Lisa that one really does write a book by staring at the screen for days, occasionally poking a key on the keyboard. She has this funny thing about deadlines and typing in text. Carly s become dangerous now that she can write and understand code. But she likes my Here thar be Dragons comments in nasty pieces of code. My budding author, Sean, provides editorial comments that enliven my days. Thanks to you all for putting up with my mental, if not physical, time away while focused on this book.

Acknowledgments

Without the support of the numerous people, this book wouldn t exist today. While everyone I mention has provided me invaluable help in one way or another and has made the book far better than it otherwise would have been, any remaining errors are entirely my fault.

First, I must thank Jim Allchin. He had the original idea for the book and that ultimately resulted in my suffering, umm, creating this work. Seriously, though, Longhorn is such a fantastic new technology, and the experience of working with it and talking to those creating it was such great fun and so highly educational that it only occasionally seemed a Sisyphean task.

I d also like to thank Brad Abrams and Darryn Dieken. Without their amazing support, there would be no book. Microsoft is such a large company and so many people are contributing to Longhorn that I was continually asking Brad and Darryn for guidance through the Minoan labyrinth that is Microsoft.

Nick Kramer deserves extraordinary mention and kudos. I can t thank him enough, so I ll simply say, Thanks, Nick. Bill, you should give Nick a big raise. ^[1] Pablo Fernicola, Sean Grimaldi, Jeff Kirkham, and Yasser Shohoud also went out of their way to help.

Numerous other people helped me so many times, I ve lost track. Those who come to mind are, in no particular order, Chris Anderson, Kevin Gjerstad, Vivek Dalvi, Mark Alcazar, Alex Hopmann, Peggi Goodwin, Mike Deem, Warren Barkley, Allen Marshall, Lisa Osse, Matt Rhoten, Ravi Soin, and David Switzer.

I must, of course, mention my Microsoft Press torturers editors, Robin Van Steenburgh and Kathleen Atkins. When I d hit a roadblock, Robin would fix it. When I would I d leave out a contraction, Kathleen would make me put it back in. She was assisted in her efforts by Roger LeBlanc and Jennifer Harris. Without their efforts, this bok wuld be mulch harder to reed. J

About the Author

Brent Rector

Brent Rector is president and founder of Wise Owl Consulting ( www.wiseowl.com ), and has over three decades of experience in software development. Brent has designed and implemented operating systems as well as new computer programming languages and their compilers. Brent started developing Windows applications using Windows 1 x beta in 1985 and has been involved in Windows development ever since. He is the author and coauthor of numerous Windows programming books, including ATL Internals and Win32 Programming . Brent is also the author of Demeanor for .NET ”the premier code obfuscator for .NET applications.

^[1] Yeah right. Like I actually know Bill. I have, though, seen him from the back of every single Professional Developers