From the Editor

•	This capability, called finish-install actions, extends the notion of finish-install wizard pages that you might already be providing in your driver package for released versions of Windows.
•	If you install value-add applications for your device, you can use finish-install actions to run an application installation program (with its own user interface) as the final step of device installation on a system running Windows Vista.

•	This capability, called finish-install actions, extends the notion of finish-install wizard pages that you might already be providing in your driver package for released versions of Windows.
•	Finish-install actions cannot be used to apply any critical settings that must be present for the device to work, since the device is started before the finish-install actions run.

The XPS Filter Pipeline

Windows Vista introduces the XPS print path as part of a new print architecture that is designed to improve support for printers and document processing. An important part of these advancements is the modular, filter-based XPSDrv print driver that provides a more flexible print path than is possible with a print driver based on Windows graphics device interface (GDI).

A new XPS white paper on WHDC provides information for hardware and software vendors who publish printers or print drivers to help plan their strategy for migrating their existing code to the new print architecture. Developers who are writing new print drivers can use this paper to understand the details of the filter pipeline of an XPSDrv print driver.

The features and benefits of the XPS print path are described in XPS and Color Printing Enhancements in Windows Vista.

Auxiliary Display Preview on Channel 9

Next year some laptops and Tablet PCs will begin to incorporate a new feature that is supported under Windows Vista: auxiliary displays, which let you view certain information without having to open up the computer and wait for it to resume. Some of the auxiliary display devices will be integrated into laptops and Tablet PCs; others will appear on peripheral devices. Windows SideShow (available in Windows Vista Beta 1) is a new platform that developers can use to write gadgets that extend their applications to a range of display devices. Examples of potential SideShow-compatible devices include:

Download the Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines

Download a preliminary draft of the Microsoft Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines (or “UX Guide” for short). These guidelines describe what’s new in Windows Vista, design principles, and guidelines for controls, text, windows, and aesthetics.

Windows Vista and Windows Server Longhorn Favorites from PDC
Many driver writers and hardware engineers were hard at work and missed the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September. We picked a couple of the "best-of-the-best" topics of interest for hardware industry professionals:

Notes from Windows Development Teams on WHDC

We’ve been collecting tips, implementation guidelines, chalk-talks, and lectures by people from the Windows Division at Microsoft. Some specific "how to" details are provided here in advance of future versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK).

Michael Howard with a Look Inside the Security Development Life Cycle at Microsoft

The goals of the Security Development Life Cycle (SDL), now embraced by Microsoft, are twofold: to reduce the number of security-related design and coding defects, and to reduce the severity of any defects that remain. This follows our oft-cited motto, "Secure by Design, Secure by Default, Secure in Deployment and Communication" (also known as SD3+C). SDL focuses mainly on the first two elements of this motto. Secure by Design means getting the design and code secure from the outset, and Secure by Default is a recognition that you never will.

Michael Howard’s new article on MSDN looks at each major phase and outlines what you can do within your own organization to implement SDL. This article outlines how to apply the SDL to your own software development processes and explains how you can take some of the lessons that we have learned at Microsoft when implementing SDL. SDL adds security-specific checks and measures to any existing software development process.

Ben Armstrong on Kernel Debugging Windows XP inside a Virtual Machine

One thing that is incredibly easy to do with virtual machines is kernel debugging. You can do this by either connecting two virtual machines to the same named pipe (creating a virtual null-modem cable as it were) or by debugging a virtual machine directly over a named pipe from the host operating system. On Ben’s recent blog, he describes the steps for doing this. Because it’s a brand new blog entry, it hasn’t yet gotten as many views as his most popular article: Running Windows Vista Beta 1 under Virtual PC/Virtual Server.

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