Wyatt Says...

There are many Windows 7 controls already out there. I’ve included the best open source .NET components available. If you have other great controls, add them to the comments.

For each control I’ll list what versions of .NET it compiles for and what versions of Windows it will run on.

Windows Ribbon for Windows Forms

Arik Poznanski has a great series of posts about the ribbon control he wrote that wraps the Windows 7 API.

Download it now – full source code & examples. Also, view his series of articles (9 of them as of today).
Works with: Windows Forms (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5)
Windows Versions: Only Windows 7

Windows API Code Pack for Microsoft .NET Framework

This is a mammoth control collection that is the work of 3 people.

Here are the major features:

• Windows 7 Taskbar Jump Lists, Icon Overlay, Progress Bar, Tabbed Thumbnails, and Thumbnail Toolbars.
• Windows 7 Libraries, Known Folders, non-file system containers.
• Windows Shell Search API support, a hierarchy of Shell Namespace entities, and Drag and Drop functionality for Shell Objects.
• Explorer Browser Control.
• Shell property system.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Common File Dialogs, including custom controls.
• Windows Vista and Windows 7 Task Dialogs.
• Direct3D 11.0, Direct3D 10.1/10.0, DXGI 1.0/1.1, Direct2D 1.0, DirectWrite, Windows Imaging Component (WIC) APIs. (DirectWrite and WIC have partial support)
• Sensor Platform APIs
• Extended Linguistic Services APIs
• Power Management APIs
• Application Restart and Recovery APIs
• Network List Manager APIs
• Command Link control and System defined Shell icons.

Download it now – full source code & examples.
Compiles with: Windows Forms (.NET 3.5) & Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
Windows Versions: Windows Vista & Windows 7

Windows 7 Progress Bar

Windows 7 Progress Bar is an open source progress bar component that allows you to add a progress bar to your program’s taskbar button. In addition, you can control the different states of the progress bar (normal, error, and paused) for Vista & Windows 7.

Download it now – full source code & examples.
Compiles with: Windows Forms (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5)
Windows Versions: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

VistaMenu

VistaMenu is a menu component that allows you to add Windows 7 and Windows Vista-style menus with icons to your program. It’s written in C# and works with all .NET languages.

Download it now – full source code & examples.
Compiles with: Windows Forms (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5)
Windows Versions: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

SplitButton

SplitButton is a button control with a region that shows a context menu when clicked. It’s written in C# and works with all .NET languages.

Download it now – full source code & examples.
Compiles with: Windows Forms (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5)
Windows Versions: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

LinkLabel2

LinkLabel2 is a fixed version of the Windows.Forms LinkLabel control. It features the correct system “hand” cursor, and correct font rendering.

Download it now – full source code & examples.
Compiles with: Windows Forms (.NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5)
Windows Versions: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7

7 Days of Windows 7

Join me tomorrow when I talk about Finishing touches: Make your .NET app shine with professionalism. See the full list of articles in the series.

One of the great things about Vista and Windows 7 is the user isolation. Even admin users need to “elevate” their account to make system changes. Take this Date and Time dialog from Windows 7 as an example:

Every user can view the Date and time, but only administrators can change it.

Adding this ability to your .NET application

Although this series of articles is called “7 days of Windows 7” this particular article is applicable to Windows 2000 – Windows 7.

Step 1. Do we have permission?

The first step is to check if we can write to system registry or system files & folders. There are many ways to do this, but the easiest method is a simple Windows API call:

// check if user is an admin for Windows 2000 and above
[DllImport("shell32.dll", EntryPoint = "#680", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern bool IsUserAnAdmin();

This will return false if you’re a limited user on Windows 2000 – Windows 7, and will also return false if you are an admin but aren’t elevated on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

In other words, it will return false if you don’t have permission to access system files & registry. And ‘ IsUserAnAdmin” returns true if you do have permission.

Step 2. Notifying the user that elevation will happen: UAC Shield Icon

To set the shield icon to one of your buttons you have to do a few things. First, set the FlatStyle of your button to “System”:

Next, you need to define a couple of functions:

public static bool AtLeastVista()
{
    return (Environment.OSVersion.Platform == PlatformID.Win32NT && Environment.OSVersion.Version.Major >= 6);
}

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern IntPtr SendMessage(HandleRef hWnd, UInt32 Msg, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);

public static void SetButtonShield(Button btn, bool showShield)
{
    //Note: make sure the button FlatStyle = FlatStyle.System
    // BCM_SETSHIELD = 0x0000160C
    SendMessage(new HandleRef(btn, btn.Handle), 0x160C, IntPtr.Zero, showShield ? new IntPtr(1) : IntPtr.Zero);
}

Now, simply use this snippet in your code:

…
// UAC Shield on next button for Windows Vista+
if (AtLeastVista())
    SetButtonShield(btnName, true);
…

Step 3. Re-launching process with administrator privileges

All we have to do now is show the elevation dialog and elevate the current program. You might want to specify some arguments, but the barebones of it is as follows:

ProcessStartInfo psi = new ProcessStartInfo
                           {
                               Arguments = "-justelevated",
                               ErrorDialog = true,

                               // Handle is the handle for your form
                               ErrorDialogParentHandle = Handle,
                               FileName = Application.ExecutablePath,
                               Verb = "runas"
                           };
try
{
    Process.Start(psi);
    Close();
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    // the process couldn't be started. This happens for 1 of 3 reasons:

    // 1. The user cancelled the UAC box
    // 2. The limited user tried to elevate to an Admin that has a blank password
    // 3. The limited user tries to elevate as a Guest account
    MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}

Step 4. Code signing

Chances are that if you try to elevate your application you’ll get an ugly yellow elevation box:

To get the nice UAC box you’ll need to code sign your application. I won’t link to any code signing providers (because the list is huge), but you can get a code signing certificate from anywhere between $100 for 3 years to $400 or $500 for a single year. It depends on the company you use and the amount of searching you want to do.

7 Days of Windows 7

Join me tomorrow when I talk about Every possible Windows Vista and Windows 7 .NET Control You could ever want. See the full list of articles in the series.

This will be another easy tip because all the work is already done and wrapped up in a nice little control. It’s open source and handles all of the details, get it here.

Progress bars in Windows 7 are nearly identical to what they were in Windows Vista. They’re green, animated and have 3 states: Normal, Error, and Paused:

Using Windows API

To get both the 3-state progress bar (regular, error, and paused) along with the taskbar progress bar we need to use some Windows API. The easier of the two to implement is changing the state of the progress bar. This works on Windows Vista and Windows 7:

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto)]
internal static extern int SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, int wMsg, int wParam, int lParam);

SetPaused()
{
    // 0x410 = PBM_SETSTATE
    // 0x0003 = PBST_PAUSE
    SendMessage(progressBar.Handle, 0x410, 0x0003, 0);
}

SetError()
{
    // 0x0002 = PBST_ERROR
    SendMessage(progressBar.Handle, 0x410, 0x0002, 0);
}

SetNormal()
{
    // 0x0001 = PBST_NORMAL
    SendMessage(progressBar.Handle, 0x410, 0x0001, 0);
}

Then there’s the matter of the taskbar progress bar in Windows 7. You can download the Windows7ProgressBar source code (zip file) to see how I did it, but the gist of it is you need to implement the ITakbarList3 Interface, and then use the SetProgressState to set the state (Normal, Error, Paused, or Marquee) and SetProgressValue to set the value.

7 Days of Windows 7

Join me Monday when I talk about Drag & Drop icons. See the full list of articles in the series.