Guided Hands-on Webcast: Windows Mobile Virtual Instructor Led Lab

Jim,

For the last several days I've tried in vain to get my copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard and the Windows Mobile 5.0 SDK to be properly configured to do Smartphone development. I have followed the proper order of installation of VS2005 followed by the WM5.0 SDK and took your suggestion to try the 'repair' feature in the Add/Remove programs, to no avail.

Today I went back into the Virtual Lab environment and compared my system with the Lab's. (That was a very useful, if unintended benefit of the on-line Lab environment, by the way.) All the files appear to be in their proper locations and my options settings for VS2005 match the Lab's. One difference is I'm using the Standard Edition, not the Team edition of VS2005. When I start a new SmartPhone Device Application (or a PPC Application, doesn't matter) project, just after I name it, the Lab version creates the necessary property files, references, Form1.cs and Program.cs files along with a nice visual representation of the smartphone form onto which controls can be dragged. On my system, the files are created, but I don't get the form, only the mainMenu1 icon. No skins are visible.

Examining the properties of Form1.cs what I find is that my version of Form1 (System.Windows.Forms.Form) contains many more properties than the Lab's version does. But the Lab version has a property called "FormFactor" which is set to a Windows Mobile Smartphone value. I don't have that property. Furthermore, the Lab version has a property called "Skin" which is set to True. I don't have that property either. The only other difference I find is that my Toolbox contains many more choices, whereas the Lab version has a more limited set.

Has VS2005 somehow confused the normal Windows forms development environment with the mobile environment? How do I rectify this problem?

Regards,

David
Arlington Heights, IL

Enjoyed webcast, thanks!
During this webcast you mentioned that you had used a 3rd partys s/w to manage Bluetooth. Can you tell me what your experience was and what 3rd party s/w you used?

The managed Bluetooth library I was referring to is a shared source libary developed by Microsoft engineers. I've only used it on one real project but my experience was very positive - it did a great job of encapsulating many of the grungy details of Bluetooth and let us work at a much higher level as compared to the low-level API.

The library includes both .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework versions. You can download the library from http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/usewinemb/ce/sharedsrccode/west/default.aspx

Also if you're interested, we used the library while participating in one of the Microsoft Coderoom contests: http://www.theserverside.net/tt/articles/showarticle.tss?id=TheCodeRoom_EP02 :-)

Please let me know how the managed library works out for you - I'd like to hear your experience whether good or bad [hopefully good :-) ]

Jim