Mobile Devices Developer Web Chat

Posted October 27, 2004

Chat Date: October 26, 2004

Please note: Portions of this transcript have been edited for clarity

Introduction

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Mobile Devices developer chat!

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Today we are answering your questions about development for Windows Mobile.

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Before we begin, I would like to begin by posting the chat rules and instructions for customers:

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
Now, I'll have our hosts for the chat today introduce themselves:

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
I'm Andrew Brown, and I'm the MVP Lead for Mobile Devices and the moderator for this chat.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Hi, I'm Craig Neable. I'm the technical evangelist for the device development technologies in Visual Studio.

stevenpr[MSFT] (Expert):
My name is Steven Pratschner. I'm a Program Manager on the .Net Compact Framework team.

markpre_ms (Expert):
My name is Mark Prentice and I’m a Program Manager for the .NET Compact Framework.

JamesPr_MSFT (Expert):
My name is James Pratt, I'm the Product Manager for the Windows Mobile Developer Platform. You can think of me as the person who works with the development team to figure out what we're doing and then communicates it to the world.

NishanJ [MSFT] (Expert):
Hi, my name's Nishan Jebanasam. I'm the Program Manager for Visual C++ for Devices in Visual Studio. I own both the design time experience for native device platforms as well as the native device runtimes.

EricEng [msft] (Expert):
Hi, my name is Eric Engineer. I am a Product Manager on the Mobile and Embedded Developer Platform team. I try to make sure that we have the right technical resources available to developers (whitepapers, etc).

Start of Chat

JamesPr_MSFT (Expert):
Q: I need help with EVB3 I can't test my software on my pocket pc 2003 only gives the option of testing on pocket pc 2002 can anyone help??
A: Thanks for the question Lee. As of Pocket PC 2003 Microsoft stopped shipping the eVB runtime in ROM. This is in response to feedback from the developer community that eVB wasn't a great environment for developing applications. We also stopped supporting the eVB technology in that release in favor of the more robust NET CF environment. We're encouraging all developers to migrate away from eVB because it won't be supported in the next version of the platform and we'll only be testing if the runtime installs, not whether apps will still work OK.

stevenpr[MSFT] (Expert):
Q: Any plans on adding support for remoting in the Compact Framework?
A: We have not added support for remoting in Whidbey (.Net CF 2.0). However, it remains a top customer request so it's on our list of features to look at for next time. Part of the challenge is deciding upon an implementation that is both lightweight and meets the needs of the most common scenarios.

JamesPr_MSFT (Expert):
Q: problem is that evb is free but it costs a lot from .net cf
A: We did a lot of surveying of the developer community and for the most part they told us that they would be willing to pay for tools if they were world class. There's no doubt in my mind that both VS .NET 2003 and VS 2005 are both world class development environments. As of VS 2005 we'll be in the lower cost (but not the lowest cost) SKUs which will make device development affordable to most developers. Additionally, there's a command line SDK available for .NET CF 1.0 which you can use to build NET CF apps for free.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
So if there are no other questions right off the top, let me begin by talking a little bit about what we're doing in Visual Studio 2005 with respect to devices.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
In general, we are continuing along with similar goals of the first version of the .NET Compact Framework that was included in Visual Studio .NET 2003. That is to say, to enhance developer productivity by giving developers a great environment in which to write code.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Furthermore, it's our goal to make sure that developers can leverage their knowledge of the .NET platform to write applications for devices.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Finally, we are doing a tremendous amount of work to make sure that developers writing native applications, or writing applications composed of both managed and native code to be as productive as possible.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We really want people who are comfortable with VB6, eVB or VB.NET to write great apps for the latest generation of cool devices.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
The first major area in which we're investing is in native code and interoperability between managed and native code.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We're bringing native code development into the Visual Studio shell, so that developers writing native code will use the same tools, emulators, project system, etc., as for all their other development.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We're also updating all of the runtime libraries for native code, including MFC and ATL to version 8.0.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We're also doing a lot of work on the managed code side to let developers call into native components that they're either reusing, or building from scratch using some of the native tools we're creating.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
First, we're enhancing P/Invoke to deal with many of the common cases that were not possible in the first version. For instance, we will permit you to marshal a structure of strings between managed and native code, which you couldn't do in the first version.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Second, we're including COM Interop in the product. This will allow you to go through the Visual Studio wizard to create a Runtime Callable Wrapper (RCW) for your COM object, and then call this COM object as if it were managed code, without having to worry about ref counting, etc.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Overall, you'll be able to do interesting things like: a) write a component in native code b) create a managed code project within that same Visual Studio solution that calls this component through COM Interop c) debug and test both of these from within the same tool.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
The second major thing we're doing is a lot of work around Data Access. We will be delivering the next version of SQL Server CE in Visual Studio 2005 - this next version will be called SQL Mobile 2005.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
SQL Mobile itself will have many feature enhancements - it's in fact built on a totally new database engine that permits multiple concurrent access. This applications will be able to read from the database and carry out a synchronization session at the same time.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
This is in contrast to the current version of SQL Server CE, which permits only a single connection at a time - an application must close this connection before synchronizing.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We're also including new classes that allow applications to get both the efficiency of reading and writing directly from and to the database, but also the convenience of displaying this in user interface using databinding. Together, this will make it possible to get easy binding of data to UI without having to maintain an entire copy of the data in memory.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
This new class is known as SqlCeResultSet.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Finally, with respect to data access, we're doing a lot of work to make the visual design experience easier. This will allow you, as a developer, to drag data objects onto forms, bind them to UI controls, and get previews of what the actual data will look like. It will also be easy to create simple master details views within Visual Studio using multiple controls.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
All of these things should make it significantly easier to develop data centric applications.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Another major area that we're focused on is the runtime itself.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
We are doing a lot of work to make sure that some of the new features in functionality available in version 2 of the full .NET Framework, such as Generics, Iterators and Parial Types will be available in the .NET Compact Framework.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
While we're at it, we're also totally rewriting the JIT compilers for the .NET Compact Framework, and we're unifying the two existing compilers that have been used to Just In Time compile code on different processors and platforms in the first version.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
The net of this is not only more consistent behavior of the runtime on all platforms, but more importantly, greatly improved performance.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
The final juicy tid-bit that I'll talk about today is the work we're doing to support game developers, namely providing managed classes to access the direct 3D functionality that will be exposed in the next version of the Windows Mobile platform on both Pocket PC and Smartphone.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
This will make it much easier to write high performance games, and other interesting content on devices.

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
So there you have a high level overview of some of the interesting things we're doing in Visual Studio 2005 with respect to devices. Please feel free to continue to ask questions on any of these things we've talked about today, or on other topics. We'll do our best to help you with answers.

JamesPr_MSFT (Expert):
Q: Please detail the steps to debug over ethernet for a device instead of Activesync.
A: First, you need to make an ActiveSync partnership with your device using the cradle. Once you've done that, pull your device out of the cradle and plug your device into the network (wired or wireless), go to Activesync on the device and sync from there. Once you have the network ActiveSync connection up, it should be plain sailing

NishanJ [MSFT] (Expert):
Q: I also haven't been able to debug over ethernet since switching to 2003. No troubles prior. Is there a doc somewhere explaining the changes?
A: When you say "since switching to 2003" do you mean that you were able to debug over ethernet using eVC and then when you switched to VS 2003 you couldn't?

CraigNeable_msft (Expert):
Q: hi, is Visual Studio .NET 2005 Contains new Mobile controls?
A: The ASP.NET Mobile Web Controls are getting a huge overhaul in Visual Studio 2005. In past, they have been a different set of controls with their own namespace. However, in this version of Visual Studio 2005, all of the Web controls will be mobile enabled, meaning that in order to construct a mobile website, you will use exactly the same set of controls, and the same namespace as you will for any other website.

markpre_ms (Expert):
Q: I understand the basic flat UI look for the early PDAs. But, with color being the standard, is anything being done in regards to upgrading the UI appearance? Such as more of a 3D feel...
A: Devices have made improvements with screen resolution and graphics accelerators. The OS and NETCF have made progress on providing updated 2D experience. The next version of the OS and NETCF will include support for 3D so expect an enriched 3D applications.

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
This concludes our Mobile Devices developer chat for today. Thanks for coming, everyone!

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
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Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
https://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/windows-embedded.aspx

Andrew Brown [MSFT] (Moderator):
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