Windows Live Photo Gallery Publishing Plug-in Sample

To supplement this documentation, a fully functional publishing plug-in sample called "Sample Flickr Plug-in" is available for download. This sample demonstrates end-to-end publishing plug-in functionality, illustrates plug-in best practices, and provides a set of reusable code that can be adapted to a variety of plug-in projects. The sample is implemented in C#, and is provided as a complete Visual Studio 2008 project.

Cc967071.note(en-us,WIN.10).gifImportant:
The graphics included in this sample are provided as examples only, and may not be re-used or redistributed.

The Sample Flickr Plug-in uses the Flickr API but is not endorsed or certified by Flickr.

To install and build the sample, you will need the following:

  • A computer running Windows XP or later.
  • Visual Studio 2008 or Visual C# 2008. Any edition will work, including Visual C# 2008 Express Edition, which is available for download free of charge.
  • Windows Installer XML (WIX) Toolkit version 3.0. WIX is an open-source project that available for download free of charge. For more information about WIX, see the WIX project page on SourceForce.
  • .NET Framework version 2.0 or later. To download, go to .NET Framework Downloads.
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery 2008 or later. To download, go to Windows Live Photo Gallery.
  • A Flickr API key-secret pair. The sample makes use of the Flickr API set, which requires a key for access. For more information, see Flickr Services API Keys.

To download the publishing plug-in sample, visit the Publishing Plug-in page.

To upgrade the sample, first uninstall any previous version.

To uninstall, open the Control Panel and use the Add or Remove Programs on Windows XP, or Programs and Features on Windows Vista.

This section provides solutions for common problems experienced with the plug-in sample.

Common Questions

Where are the sample's forms and dialogs?

The sample plug-in is a Windows Forms application that provides a wizard-like work flow. Windows Forms does not natively provide a wizard presentation, so the sample plug-in implements a custom wizard flow.

The sample's custom wizard flow is implemented by designing and arranging a series of controls so they may be easily presented as wizard panels.

To use Visual Studio to view these controls as they are presented to the user:

  1. Open the form in Form Designer view.
  2. Select the form's first wizard panel by choosing it from the form's control list in the Properties pane.
  3. Use the Send to Back button in the layout toolbar reveal the next panel.

Why can't I view the forms in the form designer?

The sample makes use of custom controls; custom controls are not viewable in the form designer until after Visual Studio has built them at least once.

Common Issues

Build Error: "The system cannot find the path specified." (candle.exe or light.exe)

The WIX toolkit is used to build the plug-in sample source into an installation package. The sample assumes that WIX is installed at its default location, $(ProgramFiles)\Windows Installer XML v3\. If WIX has been installed at a different location, project build events must be updated to specify the WIX installation location.

To update the build events:

  1. Open the sample project and select Project | SampleFlickrPlugin Properties.
  2. In the SampleFlickrPlugin project properties tab, select the Build Events property page.
  3. In the Post-build event command line box, update the command line to specify the correct locations of candle.exe and light.exe.

Build Error: "Access is denied." (light.exe)

On Windows Vista, a project build may fail with the message:

light.exe : error LGHT0001: Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED))

To solve this problem, launch Visual Studio in Run as administrator mode.

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