Windows7TaskbarFeaturesinNET4-msdev..docx

Windows 7 Taskbar Features in .NET 4OverviewThis paper provides an overview of how to quickly implement Windows 7 taskbar features using .NET 4.0 by walking through a light-weight sample with Visual Studio 2010. The Windows 7 taskbar features implemented are:Jump ListProgressIcon OverlaysCustom Categories in your Jump ListThumbnail PreviewThumbnail Toolbar ButtonsAll of these features are implemented using classes in the System.Windows.Shell namespace that is new to .NET 4.0. The MyTaskbar sample application demonstrates using these features in declarative XAML and imperative C# code.The simple sample application has two primary functions: 1) lookup customers by their ID, 2) generate invoices for customers. Fear not, there isn’t much logic behind either of these functions. The primary purpose of the application is to demonstrate some Taskbar features used in proper context.Figure 1: MyTaskbar Sample ApplicationGetting StartedYou can follow along by opening the completed sample project “MyTaskbar” in Visual Studio 2010, or by creating your own project. The classes we will use to interact with the taskbar are found in the new .NET 4.0 /en-us/library/system.windows.shell(v=VS.100).aspxSystem.Windows.Shell namespace. Although the .NET 4.0 Framework will run on Windows XP SP3 and beyond, these features are only available when running on Windows 7. When run on operating systems prior to Windows 7 the application will gracefully ignore the Windows 7 specific features.To demonstrate the MyTaskbar sample application, launch the executable and pin it to your taskbar by right clicking on the application icon in the taskbar and clicking on “Pin this program to taskbar”.To look up a customer enter one of the following IDs (CON, FAB, TRE) and hit enter or press the Lookup button. Clicking on the Generate Invoices button or clicking the JumpList task will launch a hypothetical long running process and display a progress bar. You can pause and resume the invoice generation t