Yesterday April 1st (not an april fools đ ), I got an email from Microsoft saying that I got the Microsoft MVP Visual C++ Award for 2008. MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional.
On the same topic, I’m also looking forward to the Microsoft Global MVP Summit in Seattle. This is a 4 day gathering of MVPs from all over the world and starts on 14th of April. It will be a great time to get to know some fellow MVPs. đ
I was trying to port a screensaver from Visual Studio 2005 to Visual Studio 2008.
After loading the project in VS2008, compilation went without any problems. However, when I tried to test the screensaver on a Windows XP box I got the error message that the function ChangeWindowMessageFilter could not be found in user32.dll. The first thing I did was to open the MSDN and search for this ChangeWindowMessageFilter function. According to the documentation ChangeWindowMessageFilter is only available on Windows Vista. I obviously didn’t use that function myself otherwise I would have known about it in the first place đ So I checked the libraries that I was linking to. The most obvious candidate would be the ScrnSave.lib library. I searched for it and it was linking to the version that was installed by Visual Studio 2008 in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Lib. To make sure I did a “dumpbin /symbols ScrnSave.Lib” on it and it was indeed using the ChangeWindowMessageFilter function.
It is pretty strange that this ScrnSave.Lib is dependent on a Vista API call. This just annoys developers that try to create a screensaver that still works on Windows XP. It should be pretty easy for the developers of ScrnSave.Lib to dynamically load the user32.dll and see if ChangeWindowMessageFilter is available.
Anyway, the easiest and quickest workaround that I’m using right now is to use the ScrnSave.Lib from the Visual Studio 2005 installation. After recompiling my screensaver with this older library it works again on Windows XP.
Microsoft released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on March 18 in English, French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. You can get it from Windows Update or the Microsoft Download Center. In April, Windows Update will begin to download SP1 automatically but will only install it after explicit agreement of the user. In April, SP1 will also be available in the remaining 31 languages.
On some systems Windows Vista Service Pack 1 might not be available for installation from Windows Update and might not be offered by Automatic Updates. This can have several causes. If this is happening for you, check KB948343.
A list of all changes/fixes in SP1 can be found here.
The Microsoft Visual Studio Ecosystem team has officially launched the new Visual Studio Gallery site at http://visualstudiogallery.com/. This new web site is a resource center for all Visual Studio extensions and includes everything from free VS PowerToys like tools to VSIP products. Any developer can post information and a link for their Visual Studio extensions. The goal for this website is to give developers an easy way to find extensions for Visual Studio. Visual Studio extensions might include products and free applications in the form of macros, add-ins, packages, project templates, or other types of extensions to Visual Studio that are packaged up and ready to use by the developer to improve their development experience.
See also the announcement on the VSX Team Blog.
Maybe a bit late, but for those who missed the announcement, Microsoft has released a beta of the Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack.
The Visual C++ 2008 Feature Pack extends the VC++ Libraries shipped with Visual Studio 2008.New MFC features include:
This feature pack also includes an implementation of TR1. Portions of TR1 are scheduled for adoption in the upcoming C++0x standard as the first major addition to the ISO 2003 standard C++ library. The following feature are currently supported:
Note: This feature pack does not include C99 compatibility or support for special math functions.
Microsoft TechDays are the new Microsoft Developer & IT Pro Days. TechDays 2008 will be held in Ghent (Belgium) on March 12 and 13. March 11 is the official launch of brand new versions of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 in Belgium & Luxembourg.
The following speakers will be on the TechDays 2008:
If you are interested in this event or want more information, just click the banner below.
Marc Gregoire
marc.gregoire@nuonsoft.com
Software Project Manager
Software Architect
Scrum Master
Microsoft MVP VC++
Founder of the Belgian C++ Users Group (BeCPP).
