Larry Perry

One of the more enjoyable projects a developer can create is a Windows Screen Saver. While this type of project is not generally mainstream, it provides a break from the normal day-to-day routines. Visual Studio 2005 endeavors to provide an easier method for the creation of screen savers by providing a special project category called a Starter Kit. By selecting a Screen Saver Starter Kit, a solution is created that includes the code needed to publish a screen saver of your own. To better understand how this benefits a developer, let's quickly review an article published in the May 2003 issue of .NET Developer's Journal entitled "Informative Screen Savers" (Vol: 1, iss: 5). Visual Studio 2003 did not include the Starter Kit type of project, so a developer who wished to create a screen saver needed to write a considerable amount of code. The developer would start with ... (more)

Informative Screen Savers

Have you ever needed to know the status of a user's computer, only to discover that the user had stepped away from his/her desk and locked the computer? Sometimes tracking down a user is difficult, and with today's tight schedules, we do not always have time to wait. Using the System.Management namespace and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, we can help eliminate the long waits by creating a screen saver that will display the information we are seeking. Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) has been around since the later versions of Microsoft Windows 95. Since WMI runs as a serv... (more)