Designing custom home screens for Smartphone devices

Yesterday one of our developers stopped by my office and asked me how to write a custom home screen and colour scheme for Smartphone. Time to dig up the old links :)

If you've ever wondered how to do it there are a couple of good references you can use. The first is the whitepaper on MSDN that explains how to build one. Appendix A and B are a direct cut-and-paste from the original functional specification I wrote and outline all the different plugins, parameters, and colours you can use. Another good reference is the documentation that appeared in the Smartphone 2003 SDK.

If you prefer a more presentation-style way of learning there are two webcasts you can watch. They're the same presentation, just given at two different times. In them I am joined by Kevin, the developer that wrote the home screen, and Matt, who tested it.

Finally, don't forget to check out how things change when you're designing for a Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition Smartphone.

[Author: Neil Enns]