Windows7 The Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework (formerly VistaBridge) is a source code library that provides access to the new Windows 7 features from managed code. These features are not available to developers today in the .NET Framework. Download the free code pack and check out this video of the Code Pack in Action.

The features included in this version (v0.85) of the library are:

  • Support for Windows Shell namespace objects, including the new Windows 7 libraries, Known Folders and non file system containers.
  • Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
  • Windows 7 Explorer Browser Control supporting both WPF and Windows Forms.
  • Support for Shell property system.
  • Helpers for Windows 7 Taskbar Jumplists, Icon Overlay and Progress bar.
  • Support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 common file dialogs, including custom file dialog controls.
  • Support for Direct3D 11.0 and DXGI 1.0/1.1 APIs.
  • Sensor Platform APIs
  • Extended Linguistic Services APIs
To build the library in Visual Studio 2008, get the code on the Code Pack site and then extract the contents of the ‘WindowsAPICodePack0.85.zip’ file in a new folder, open the included ‘WindowsAPICodePack.sln’ file and build it. If you are building for DirectX, you’ll need to include some additional files. Help file for the library can be found in a separate zip file 'WindowsAPICodePackHelp0.85.zip'. 

Please note that this library is currently a work-in-progress and this release is version 0.85 of this library. The final version of this library will be available around the time of the Windows 7 RTM release. Various features in the library could change between now and final release.

Two minute videos demonstrating some of the features in this release are now available:

This should get you started in lighting up Windows 7 features in your applications.

For more information, see Windows 7 Managed Code APIs.

Also available, See Windows 7 From a Developer Point of View in msdev.com Videos and Gunther Lenz's videos Windows Taskbar in 10 Minutes – Part IV: Preview and Window Peek.