TaskDialog editor in the Platform SDK? (where is it)
I saw a PDC demo last night on the integration with Vista (using the common file dialogs, integrating into the search, using task dialogs instead of long text message boxes, etc).
While explaining the taskdialog APIs and showing a sample, the speaker used a SDK tool called TDEditor (task dialog editor), it looked like XAMLPad :-) but for the sdk.. xml syntax allowed you to create the task dialog easily/quickly, and then the tool generated the c++ class file, header and resource files needed for your dialog. It was also a good way to preview your dialog before you started coding.
I tried searching around for it in the Nov. SDK, but I can't seem to find it. I did find some SDK help on the TaskDialog APIs, but not a whole lot of sample code as well. And since the SDK only runs on XP/Win2k3, I am guessing you cannot use these Vista APIs?
Any help on finding that tool or even code samples for the taskdialog will be really helpful.
Thanks
- Keeron
The editor that you saw is called "TDPad." It was included in the PDC SDK Handout. If you don't have a copy of it you'll need to wait until we release the Beta 2 SDK. We'll also post TDPad on MSDN when Beta 2 is released.
As for running the tool, you can run TDPad on XP/Win2k3 to author your dialog and generate sources. You need to run it on Vista to actually get a preview of the dialog since we use the TaskDialogIndirect function to display your prototyped dialogs.
TDPad looks great (I don't want to reinstall the PDC SDK though. Could you guys maybe post it alone?).
The thing is, I'm using C#. That makes the generated C++ quite more difficult to use. I don't think we'll see a managed code version, will we?
I could always write one... I guess...
Hi,
I don't think the taskdialog editor TDPad is available (if you see above replies). It should be available either in the next SDK release or the one that follows Vista Beta 2.
However, inorder to get started Ian Griffith just posted couple of blog entries (last week) on his expereinces with the TaskDialog APIs. I went ahead and tried few small demos using the December CTP and was very pleased with it. I still can't get the Wizard type dialogs Ian did, but the API is there ... just need to put that thinking hat :) (until MS releases some sample or someone blogs more in detail).
Ian's blog: http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/
Also, I don't see a managed version for the SDK yet (you can still call unmanaged APIs from C#), but I do belive that the managed APIs will start to show around Beta 2 release. I'd assume there's are versions of these SDK tools (e.g. TDPad) that spit out the managed code. Would be really cool to use these APIs easily with WinFX.
Just ran into this post from awhile back ...
We're currently working on a sample wrapper for TaskDialog (and TaskDialogIndirect), incorporating as much of the new functionality as possible. It won't be a prime time supported wrapper in the box, but it should be a good starting point.
I'm designing the API on it so that it works well with WPF, as well - so you'll get something like
<TaskDialog x:Name="myTaskDialog" Caption="Howdy" >
...
<TaskDialogButtons>
<TaskDialogButton Text="Foo" />
...
</TaskDialogButtons>
</TaskDialog>
etc. Should work pretty well. The challenge is that there's a lot of additional functionality in TaskDialog that doesn't match the "MessageBox with static Show" model. For instance, the progress bar ...
Thanks Jeff for the info on the new APIs/Wrapper for TaskDialog. I look forward to it (hopefully in the beta 2 timeframe?) :-)
Anyways, this may not be related to what you might be doing but throwing out the question anyways - Is there a possibility (directly, via the Vista SDK or using regular windows SDK) to have TaskDialogs in XP and Win2k3?
The problem most companies that develop products for the next gen will have a problem in designing the UI - the app would be looking really different on Vista (with these new task dialogs, aero wizards, etc) while on XP, it'll all be standard UI (messagebox, old-style wizards, etc). That also means doing the work twice - since there is no easy 'run-time conversion' for these. Is there a way to to use the taskdialogs API on XP? (the glass effect and Vista-like rendering of the controls won't be there, but I am thinking more from a coding and basic UI standpoint - reusing the same code on both systems.)
- Keeron
