PDC05: Day Four (Enhancing Your Win32 Application for Windows Vista)

I have not enjoyed the hands-on-labs in previous years, but this year I thought I should try an "instructor-led-lab." I was already very interested in adding the ability to view the content of a map file through the new Vista preview system. This feature was heavily demonstrated during the keynote. Because the site was near the lounges and the expo floor it was very loud. We wore wireless headsets (shared headphones, ick, I used my iPod earbuds) to better hear the instructor during the session. We went through the process of reading and writing properties from/to a file: author, subject, rating, etc. We added a support for a preview thumbnail which shows the content of the file. Then we added support for rich text output to go into a reading pane, like Outlook uses. The code was a lot of fun to write and the instructor did a great job keeping us all together.

I did notice that Windows Vista's explorer looks pretty unstable with it needing to be terminated after hanging on more than one occasion. Then I headed off to find Anson Tsao or Jeff Peil for help with my "framework" problem.