Announcing www.winfxhearts.com!

  • Article

To correspond with my PDC talk about making an application "light up" on Windows Vista, I've created www.winfxhearts.com.  This site has a ClickOnce link that enables you can play a version of my new & improved Internet Hearts game.  Here's a "before & after" look:

   

This is still the good ol' Win32 application, but with a dramatically different user experience thanks to WPF and ClickOnce.  In the screenshot above, the reddish part of the new UI uses WPF (Avalon), but the chat window, menus, etc. are still Win32.  And of course the game logic is still the same.  There's no need to rewrite it!

Again, I promise to blog more details after the PDC (and not just about Avalon & ClickOnce, but Indigo, Windows Vista, plus the experiences of upgrading to VC8 & using /CLR).  In the meantime, go ahead and try the game, or look for the Channel 9 video about WinFX Hearts & WPF (scheduled to appear on Monday).

You can play this version on Windows Vista Beta 1, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003, as long as WinFX Beta 1 is installed (and a post-Beta 2 version of the .NET Framework is not installed).  If you're going to PDC05, you can play the game on machines in the "Windows Vista Test Drive" Commnet area through Tuesday (9/13).

Sure, it's not as popular a game as Solitaire or Spider Solitaire, but hopefully the opportunity to play humans is an incentive.  Before entering a game, you get to choose a name and a picture (either a standard one or any image on the web!):

   

The game doesn't begin until four players have joined, so you might have to wait awhile to play (or convince some friends to join at the same time)!

Post any questions/issues/comments here.  Enjoy!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2005
    That's awesome Adam! Very cool stuff.
  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2005
    Wow, really nice Adam.
  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2005
Adam Nathan is providing it in Announcing www.winfxhearts.com!<br><br>...

  • Anonymous
    September 08, 2005
    Come and play WinFX Hearts! I am waiting for three more players to be able to start a game ;)

    WinFX Hearts is the old Internet Hearts application with a new look....

  • Anonymous
    September 13, 2005
    Looks cool and I can't wait to see the Avalon code.

    I wonder though... Letting people pick their own pictures is an idea that probably won't survive... The games won't even let me chat except for preselected phrases, are you really going ot expose some kids to lewd pictures from random people on the 'Net?


  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2005
    I saw your channel 9 thing and it was interesting, but i came here expecting to find some source code.

    As a developer you must know that we all learn fastest by seeing other peoples code. So why not just cut loose and show it, even if its just the interop bits.

    Often a few lines of code can really make things click for a programmer, but having the whole project before and after would be even better.

    I really wish your company would get this, poking holes in a black wall of documentation is so much more difficult than just seing a concrete example. After all, whats the point of all this blogging and evangelism if your just going to keep your target audience at arms length.

    Let go of the fear, release the source.

  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2005
    Sadly I keep getting this error:

    http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7568/untitled7sc.png

    Dont get it. It downloaded and installed fine and I meet system requriments. :(

    Any help?,

    Will

  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2005
    Emerson, you'll be happy to know that we are indeed sharing the complete before & after source code. Look for it at winfxhearts.com very soon. I hope to at least post the "before" code tomorrow.

    Will, unfortunately the screen shot doesn't give me enough info. Feel free to contact me directly and we can dig into it further.

  • Anonymous
    January 20, 2006
    Still waiting for the migration guide VS6 to VS8... Any news about that?

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2006
    Patrick, the latest content specific to VC migration is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/previous/migrating/default.aspx.  Let me know if you're looking for something else!

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2006
    Any chance you are planning to port this to WinFX Feb CTP or the upcoming Beta 2?

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2006
    Recently Tim shared some code for extending Windows Vista Aero &quot;Glass&quot; inside a Windows Forms window.&amp;nbsp;...

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    June 12, 2006
    PingBack from http://www.msblog.org/?p=771

  • Anonymous
    June 19, 2006
    Searching from google about WPF, I found a cool blogger. His name is Adam Nathan, He is good in Win32API...

  • Anonymous
    March 20, 2007
    Recently Tim shared some code for extending Windows Vista Aero "Glass" inside a Windows Forms window

  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2007
    Adam Nathan is giving a talk at the PDC on Thursday about making an application

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