Richard Arthur

Microsoft Windows provides a process called the System Event Notification Service. This service raises events relative to interactive logon, network, and power changes. Using this service an application can be notified when network connectivity changes, when available power decreases, or when a person logs on, locks his or screen, or his or her screensaver starts. This service notifies COM+ of these events, which appropriates them to any subscribing application. In this article, we will focus on the logon events. However, the principles discussed in this article extend to catchi... (more)

Developing for Outlook with the .NET Framework

Microsoft Outlook has an object model that's useful for automating any of the objects that it manages. Items like calendar entries, e-mails and tasks are well designed, but sometimes they don't provide all the functionality that we'd like. For instance, Outlook doesn't provide an easy way to assign a different e-mail background for each of your contacts. Thankfully, Outlook exposes its o... (more)

Microsoft .NET Feature Story - Powerful Forms Interaction

Microsoft Windows provides great power in manipulating the forms in your application, however, the .NET Framework masks a lot of what can be done to your forms for consistency and ease of use. You have probably seen applications that control their size and positions with greater fluidity than you can get with normal .NET Forms, such as maintaining an aspect ratio while resizing, or dockin... (more)