Windows 7 Multitouch Support

With the introduction of multi-touch input and manipulation processing support, WPF 4 provides a great way to light up your client applications in Windows 7. Multiple finger input are exposed through existing and new input events in WPF 4, while new manipulation and inertia events are now available for developers to use. New features include:

Multi-touch Manipulation, Inertia (Pan, Zoom, Rotate) events on UIElement

Raw multi-touch events (Up, Move, Down) on UIElement, UIElement3D and ContentElement

Multiple capture supporting multiple active controls

ScrollViewer enhancement to support multi-touch panning

Touch device extensibility

Future Surface SDK compatibility

Windows 7 Shell Integration

WPF 4 also exposes several new and key Windows 7 Shell features to WPF developers. These Shell features enable a richer, integrated user experience. The new taskbar is less cluttered and can convey more information at a glance. The Aero thumbnails support user commands. Jump lists provide access to contextual startup tasks and files available to the application.

Figure 9

WPF 4 integrates Windows 7 Jump List functionality, including:

•Tasks

•Items

•Recent and Frequent Lists integration

•Custom Categories

Windows 7 Taskbar integration, including:

•Progress bar

•Overlay Icon

•Thumbnail buttons with commanding support

•Description Text DWM Thumbnail clipping

In Windows 7, the taskbar has been redesigned to be less cluttered and to help users perform tasks with fewer clicks. WPF 4 provides integration with the Windows 7 taskbar in XAML, allowing applications to surface useful information to the user from the application's taskbar icon using icon overlays, progress bar, thumbnail toolbars, thumbnail description text, and thumbnail clipping.

There is also a new TaskbarItemInfo class in WPF 4 that is exposed as a dependency property.  It encompasses all the new taskbar features introduced in Windows 7.

Figure 10

Icon Overlays

Icon overlays allow an application to communicate certain notifications and status to the user through its taskbar button by display of small overlays which appear at the lower-right corner of the button.

Progress Bars

A taskbar button can be used to display simple progress information to the user without that user having to switch to the application window itself. Progress bars can be used to track file copies, downloads, installations, media burning, or any other operation that will take a period of time.

Thumbnail Toolbars

Thumbnail Toolbars provide access to the key commands for an application without the user having to restore or activate the window. This feature enables application authors to embed an active toolbar control in a window's thumbnail preview. The application can show, enable, disable, or hide buttons from the thumbnail toolbar as required by its current state:

Figure 11