Developing for Windows Vista

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For those of you unable to make it to DevConnections in Florida this week, there is some terrific content being presented by some great speakers. 

Today was "Microsoft day" (meaning all of the sessions were presented by Microsoft employees), and this morning I got to see Jono Wells, a product manager at Microsoft who works on the Windows Vista developer story, present two sessions on developing for Windows Vista, the latter of which focused predominantly on how UAC (User Account Control) affects developers and on what developers need to know about UAC in order to write better applications for Windows Vista.  A lot of what Jono presented is similar in content to the article by Chris Corio in our January 2007 issue, Least Privilege: Teach Your Apps To Play Nicely With Windows Vista User Account Control.  There, Chris dives into what UAC is and how it actually works, how manifests are used to inform Windows Vista of permission/elevation needs, and so forth. If you're new to Windows Vista and are interested in knowing more about UAC, it's definitely worth checking out. 

Jono was nice enough to plug my two sessions later in the week, both of which focus on using managed code to develop applications targetting Windows Vista.  The first session is on implementing preview handlers in managed code, something I wrote about at Vista and Office: View Data Your Way With Our Managed Preview Handler Framework.  The second session is on using P/Invoke and COM interop to access some of the many incredibly useful APIs new to Windows Vista.  If you're in town for the conference this week and are interested in developing for Windows Vista, I think it'll be worth your while to come check them out.

If you're not in town this week, no worries; we have plenty of great Windows Vista development content scheduled for upcoming issues of MSDN Magazine!  In the meantime, treat yourself to some of the many Vista-focused articles we've already run, all of which are available for free on our Web site on the Windows Vista topic page. 

-Stephen