Category Archive for Software DevelopmentC++ AMP Open Specification PublishedAs promised, Microsoft has released an open specification of C++ AMP: Accelerated Massive Parallelism Read the official announcement.  Mandelbrot Using C++ AMPIt is time to start taking advantage of the computing power of GPUs… A while ago I wrote an article about how to use the Microsoft Parallel Patterns Library (PPL) to render the Mandelbrot fractal using multiple CPU cores. That article can be found here. This new article will make the Mandelbrot renderer multiple times faster by using a new Microsoft technology called C++ AMP: Accelerated Massive Parallelism, introduced in the Visual C++ 11 Preview. How to programmatically toggle the visibilty of the desktop iconsThe following code will toggle the visibility of the desktop icons, and will update the checkmark in the menu when you right click the desktop. HWND GetDesktopHWND()
{
HWND hProgman = FindWindow(_T("Progman"), 0);
if (hProgman)
return FindWindowEx(hProgman, 0, _T("SHELLDLL_DefView"), 0);
return NULL;
}
void ToggleDesktopIcons()
{
HWND hWndDesktop = GetDesktopHWND();
if (hWndDesktop)
SendMessage(hWndDesktop, WM_COMMAND, 0x7402, 0);
}
Call for C++ Community folks in Belgium – January 10th meetingI’m going to try to get a C++ User Group going in Belgium, and got support from the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Belux Team Are you passionate about C++ and interested in finding like-minded people? Feel like coming together, setting an informal User Group in 2012? We’d like to support you in that and have a call to action for you. Marc Gregoire, C++ MVP and author of the book Professional C++, 2nd Edition is one of the folks passionate about the technology and interested in starting up a more active C++ community in Belgium. Are you interested? Join Marc and the MSDN Belux Team for an informal discussion at the Microsoft office in Zaventem on Tuesday January 10th 2012 at 6:30 PM. Contact Marc through email, leave a note on the MSDN Belux Team blog or reach out to Katrien De Graeve from MSDN Belux via her Twitter and we’ll see you in January. If you are looking for some of the other Microsoft technology communities there is the full listing here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/nl-be/cc196311. Introduction to WIC: How to use WIC to load an image, and draw it with GDI?The Windows Imaging Component (WIC) is a flexible and robust API for working with images on Windows. The API is extensible. Third-party vendors can create new image codecs (readers and writers) to make new image formats available to all applications that use the WIC API. Here is a brief description from the MSDN:
The MSDN states the primary features of WIC as follows:
WIC comes with the following standard built-in codecs:
All codecs can both load and save the specific image format, except the ICO codec which can only load icon files and not save them. Reading all this, it looks like WIC is pretty powerful, and the best part is that it’s easy to use as I will demonstrate in this article. Read the rest of this entry » C++11 Standard Published by ISOThe ISO International Organization for Standardization has now officialy published the C++11 standard
You can read the complete press release here. “Professional C++, Second Edition” Featured on the Microsoft VC++ Team BlogMy book “Professional C++, Second Edition”, published by Wiley/Wrox, is now featured in a dedicated post on the Microsoft Visual C++ Team Blog Windows 8 Developer Preview
The developer preview also includes a preview of Microsoft Visual Studio 11 express edition, which makes it very easy to make Metro style applications in C++, C#, VB.Net, or JavaScript. Any serious developer should download this preview and learn as much as possible about the new Windows platform. Go to the BUILD website to download the preview and to download interesting video recordings of the sessions on the BUILD conference. Work On My Book “Professional C++, Second Edition” Is Finished
C++11 Now the Confirmed NameYesterday, I wrote a post about the fact that C++0x was unanimously approved. See also Herb Sutter’s update on his blog. Now I can finalize the last pieces for my “Professional C++, Second Edition” book (Wiley/Wrox). This is a great day for the C++ world! C++0x Unanimously ApprovedThe new C++ standard has been unanimously approved and is now an international standard. Microsoft’s All In One Code FrameworkJust a small post to let you all know about the All In One Code Framework from Mircosoft. Description from Microsoft:
Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1Microsoft has released Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1. Introduction to the Standard Template LibraryStephan T. Lavavej (aka STL
I found them very interesting Introducing the Windows Kernel Transaction Manager, Transactional NTFS and Transactional RegistryWindows Vista and later versions of Windows have a so called Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM). This makes it easy for application to use transactions. There are two big components built on top of the KTM: Transactional NTFS (TxF) and Transactional Registry (TxR). With TxF you can combine several file system operations into a transaction and either commit or rollback the transaction as a whole. TxR allows you to do the same thing with registry manipulations. File system transactions and registry transactions can be grouped into a single transaction. That way we can ensure that all file system modifications and all registry modifications are fully executed or none at all. I wrote an article that gives a very brief overview of TxF and TxR to give you an idea of what you can accomplish with it. Creating your own transaction manager other than TxF or TxR is also possible but requires you to create a Win32 transaction aware service (= resource manager) which is outside the scope of this introductory article. You can read the full article on codeguru.com. The New MFC Animation APIIntroductionMicrosoft Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 includes a number of enhancements and new features for MFC developers. One of those changes is an animation API to make it easy for you to create animations in MFC applications. This article will briefly introduce this animation API. Visual Studio 2010 SP 1 BetaMicrosoft has released Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta. It’s available right now for MSDN subscribers and will be available to everyone on Thursday. It includes a new help viewer that I mentioned in my previous blog entry and “Win7-specific MFC APIs to support use of Direct2D, DirectWrite, and Windows Animation Technologies”. I can’t wait to try those out Get more details here. Visual Studio 2010 SP1 – Help ViewerMicrosoft is planning to include a new help viewer with Visual Studio 2010 SP1, which is long overdue You can see a presentation here. Free eBooks Related to Microsoft TechnologiesHere is a list of free eBooks related to Microsoft technologies.
Enjoy Native C++ Development is Still Being UsedI just stumbled upon an article mentioning that Evernote abandoned WPF and the Microsoft .NET framework and rewrote their application from scratch in native C++ code
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By now, virtually everyone on this planet heart about the Windows 8 Developer Preview that was launched a couple of days ago on the Microsoft BUILD conference.
I just finished everything for my book “Professional C++, Second Edition” by Wiley/Wrox 
