/dev/mobile

A big thank you for all those that turned out for my presentation at the Christchurch branch of the New Zealand .NET User Group. There was quite a large turnout, and I hope that you all found some value in my presentation.

This was my first presentation of any form, and it was a very useful learning experience. I have defiantly learnt some things which will help improve future presentations I may present. I would be interested in hearing any feedback you may have on my presentation (good or bad), both in content and the way it was presented.

For those that could not make it (I know there were a few), I have uploaded the powerpoint presentation to www.slideshare.net. During the presentation I mentioned that I would provide a list of related website references for the various topics and products discussed, these have been attached to the bottom of this posting.

If anyone would like to discuss Windows Mobile development topics (native or managed), please feel free to get in contact with me. For development problems I would suggest trying the MSDN Forums website, as there are a number of active participants found there (including myself).

The Device Landscape

• .NET Micro Framework
• .NET Compact Framework
• .NET Framework

Development Environments

• ASP.NET Mobile Controls

.NET CF – Platform Support

• XBOX 360
• .NET Compact Framework for Symbian OS (version 1.0 only at this time)
• Porting the .NET Compact Framework to Symbian
• The now defunct company AppForge used to sell a product called CrossFire which enabled “cross compiling” a subset of .NET Compact Framework apps to run on multiple platforms. See Oracle’s website for further details

Screen Differences

• Introducing the OFone video
• How to: Handle Orientation and Resolution Changes
• Orientation Aware Controls – A version of these controls which allow you to layout multiple dialogs within the Visual Studio Forms Designer are available as part of the Mobile Client Software Factory (see below for link). A commerical version with improved functionality is available from http://www.orientationaware.net/

Image Capture
Remember that these classes can be used in both .NET CF 1.0 and .NET CF 2.0 applications. They are however only present on Windows Mobile 5.0 or higher devices.

• CameraCaptureDialog
• SelectPictureDialog

Network Communications
Disconnected Service Agent – a way to “cache” web service method calls when disconnected from the network and to automatically execute them when the connection comes back. See Smart Client Software Factory links below for the full documentation, or see the following post on MSDN forums for a brief overview.

Data Access

• SQL Server Compact Edition
• SQL Server Compact Edition Books Online
• SQLite – this is quite neat, you can even implement managed user defined functions callable from SQL queries
• Managing SQL Server Compact Edition Databases with SQL Server Management Studio

Development Tools

• Remote Tools – see also Mike Hall’s blog entry
• RAPIConfig
• Device Security Manager – (will be intergrated into Visual Studio Orcas)
• Cellular Phone Emulator

Getting Started

• Windows Mobile Webcasts
• Windows Mobile Hands on labs – see also the MSDN Mobility Series
• Preparation Guide for Exam 70-540
• Mobile Line Of Business Accelerator Kit
• Mobile Software Client Factory
• Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook

Diving Deeper

• Windows Mobile 5.0 Code Samples – be aware that as with all sample code, there may be bugs… for instance Peter Foot’s “Fixing the Windows Mobile 5.0 GPS Sample Code” blog entry
• Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Evaluation
• OpenNETCF Smart Device Framework

Where to get help

• MSDN Forums (smart device subsection)
• Windows Mobile Team Blog
• Compact Framework Team Blog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.