"Vista Bridge" and You
Well ... here we are - a really, really long time since my last entry. The pestering from folks to actually update my blog with useful and current information has become overwhelming for me, so I've finally caved and am now typing away. I'm actually grateful for the pestering, however - I've had lots of cool stuff to share for a number of months now, but just couldn't seem to, um, get around to it.
The main bit of "cool stuff" is the project into which I've been pouring much of my time - a sample library called "Vista Bridge". I've been the main developer on this project since its inception, and the somewhat cutesy name was my brilliant idea :), but there are now several other MS folks who have been helping it roll along. For that help, big kudos go to Catherine Heller for getting the whole thing rolling, Ernie Booth for some great sample material, and most recently Yves Dolce, for covering some new areas that I haven't had the time to hit yet. And though I expect the list to grow over the next couple months as more MS folks contribute.
Vista Bridge is a sample - or set of samples - that ships with the Windows SDK, primarily designed to provide a starting point for managed code developers wishing to make use of the HUGE numbers of cool new Vista APIs. Each targeted API is wrapped in a totally .NET-friendly set of managed wrappers, with a rough goal of exposing anywhere from 50% to 100% of the native functionality provided by Vista. In a number of cases, we even provide a fair bit of value in the managed library above and beyond the native API, in an effort to make it fit with .NET library design requirements or to leverage additional funcionality of the rest of the .NET Framework. Task Dialog is a good example of this additional functionality, which allows you to ... but I'm getting ahead of myself; more of the specifics in another post.
I've had a number of folks ask how this "sample library" is to be used, as it covers much native API surface area that isn't exposed in the "official" managed frameworks. The answer is fairly convoluted, mostly because there are several different ways you can use samples in general, and this set of samples in particular. "Sample library" can be read to mean an example of a .NET framework library that happens to expose Vista functionality - and this is an accurate description, as the library can be used as-is or with slight modification, just as a framework library would be. Or it could mean a library - a collection - of individual samples, to be used for study, inspiration, or tactical copy/paste into your own code. However, the operative word in both interpretations is "sample" - Vista Bridge is sample code, and therefore has all the legal disclaimers of any other sample code from Microsoft. Summarizing that legalese is generally frowned upon, as I'm a developer and not a lawyer and therefore almost certainly bound to screw it up, BUT I think if you use commonsense when you make use of this (or any other) sample code, you'll be golden.
Okay, glad that's out of the way ... :) Next post: what the heck is covered in Vista Bridge, and what is planned for the future?
