Text Boxes
On Windows Mobile-based devices, a text box control provides users with basic text input and editing support. Windows Mobile-based devices support single-line and multi-line text boxes. Text boxes are sometimes referred to as "edit boxes."
Consider the following guidelines when you include text box controls in an application:
- Whenever an editable control has focus, the currently selected SIP should be displayed.
- In cases where a specific data format is needed, you should provide users with an example of how you want them to enter the data, and constrain the control so that only correctly formatted data can be entered.
State Attributes
The following illustration shows the appearance of the text box control in its different states for both Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC and Smartphone devices.
Pocket PC
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Smartphone
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Label Attributes
Keep text box labels brief to conserve space.
For Windows Mobile–based Pocket PC devices, use 9pt Tahoma and sentence capitalization.
For Windows Mobile–based Smartphone devices, use 11pt Segoe regular and sentence capitalization.
Development Considerations
Consider the following development conditions when you include text box controls in an application:
- The text box control covers both single and multi-line instances of the control.
- In general, text edit buffers are limited to 255 bytes. Otherwise, the buffer is dynamically allocated and therefore limited to the space left on the device. Examples of text edit buffers to limit are e-mail address, street address, phone number, and the Inbox subject line. Dynamic text edit buffers include the e-mail field and notes fields.
- Each text box control needs a default mode: numeric, ABC, or sticky. A sticky field remembers the last mode that it was in.
- For Windows Mobile–based Smartphone devices, when set to TRUE, the text box control can detect and create hyperlinks pointing to telephone numbers, Web pages, and e-mail addresses.
See Also
User Interface Control Guidelines | Text Headers
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