This Year's MEDC Pre-Conference Workshop

I again have the good fortune of writing and presenting the MEDC Windows Mobile Pre-Conference Workshop (precon) this year.

The MEDC precon is very different from the Tech-Ed precon I posted about yesterday. Whereas the Tech-Ed precon is heavily architecture-based, the MEDC precon is very hands-on with the focus on code and developer tools.

Here's the "1 page overview" of this years MEDC precon…

Application Development for Windows Mobile

This workshop is designed for developers who are new to Windows Mobile development or who have written some simple Windows Mobile applications and are now looking to improve their skills. The goal of this workshop is to make you familiar with the tools involved in Windows Mobile application development and to provide you with the skills and fundamental knowledge required to successfully build and deploy high-quality Windows Mobile applications. Although Visual Studio 2005 enables you to leverage your existing desktop application development skills, there are a number of skills and best practices specific to Windows Mobile application development. It is these special skills and best practices that are the focus of this workshop. This is a code intensive workshop including many interactive demonstrations.

During this full day workshop, you will experience all aspects of the Windows Mobile application lifecycle. We will begin with the basics of building, deploying, and debugging a Windows Mobile application using Visual Studio 2005. We will then explore the Windows Mobile managed classes to discover how to build your Windows Mobile application so that it fully capitalizes on the special capabilities of Windows Mobile devices. The Windows Mobile managed classes' features we cover include how to integrate camera usage into your application, how to create and send email messages from within your application, how to create an application that is able to automatically locate contact information for an incoming caller, and much more. We will also cover how to access some key Windows Mobile Native SDK features from within a .NET Compact Framework application including how to access location-based information from the GPS Intermediate driver and how to utilize the new Windows Mobile 6 Sound API to play sound files or customize a device’s ringtones.

As the day progresses, we will discuss the special considerations of mobile systems and best practices for addressing them. We will cover how to build your Windows Mobile application so that it works properly across the wide range of Windows Mobile device form factors and how to build your Windows Mobile application so that it provides your users with a high-quality and consistent experience even when network quality is poor or unavailable. When addressing the network quality issues, these discussions include detailed coverage of how to detect changes in network availability and best practices for dealing with these changes.

Throughout the day, special attention is given to the many tools available for testing your Windows Mobile applications. These tools include the basic tools provided with Visual Studio 2005 and the new tools included with the Windows Mobile 6 SDK including Remote Registry Editor, Remote Process Viewer, Device Emulator 2.0, the Cellular Emulator, and the FakeGPS utility. We’ll see how to use these new tools with both Windows Mobile 6 applications as well as applications targeting earlier Windows Mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile 5.0 or Pocket PC 2003SE.

Finally, we will cover data-related features including SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Web Services. We will provide best practices for creating efficient data-oriented applications including available tools for data management. Coverage includes a detailed discussion of the available data synchronization techniques and how to go about choosing the appropriate data synchronization solution for your application.

Checkout the MEDC 2007 website for more information. I look forward to seeing you there.