Down the road: Brown's Bay Beach, North Shore, Auckland

Room with a view - Long Bay, North Shore,Auckland

CF : Updating the application on the device

Two very useful links:

Creating Self-Updating Applications With the .NET Compact Framework

http://msdn.microsoft.com/smartclient/understanding/netcf/deploy/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/autoupdater.asp


Deployment Patterns for Microsoft .NET Compact Framework

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnnetcomp/html/DeploymentPatterns.asp

Enjoy!

(Compact Framework)

CF : Links for Packaging and Deploying .NET Compact Framework-based applications

There are some really useful links here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/onoj/archive/2004/12/04/275074.aspx

Good one!

Enjoy!

(Compact Framework)

VS : Visual Studio command line

It's often very useful to run the VS tools outside of Visual Studio.

To do this, run the Visual Studio Command Line which sets up the command prompt with the correct PATH environment.

Navigate via:

Start -> Programs -> Visual Studio .Net 2003 -> Visual Studio .Net Tools -> Visual Studio .NET 2003 Command Prompt

e.g. you could use this to run

dumpbin /exports mydll.dll

which will display the exported function names.

Enjoy!

SOAP : Tracing SOAP Web Services using extensions

Ever wanted to log the actual content of the SOAP messages arising out of Web Services on your device.

You can do this with SOAP Trace Extensions.

See here:

Fun with SOAP Extensions - http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnaspnet/html/asp03222001.asp

Enjoy!

CF : Problem with CF SP2 with Form navigation

My particular problem was with Windows CE.

This behavior can be seen using the CE emulator running under Visual Studio 2003.

InitializeComponent() and the onLoad event both have the

this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;

construct set.

Using the RTM version of the CF (1.0.2268.0) navigating between the two forms using the buttons causes the two forms to be always maximized.

Installing SP2 (1.0.3316.0) on the emulator and then running the same application causes the forms to be minimized on the taskbar while navigating between them and they have to be manually maximized.

The full example I wrote to illustrate this can be found here:

Problem with CF SP2 with Form navigation

After posting to the group, emails to Microsoft, formally logging the bug with Microsoft I got nowhere.

Then Alex Feiman suggested a workaround to this.

The code was:

currentForm.Hide ();
...
nextForm.Show ();

As Alex explained: "The reason the forms get minimized is because at some point you do not have a visible form and the runtime thinks you want the app hidden".

Reversing the order:

nextForm.Show ();
...
currentForm.Hide ();

stops the next form from minimising under SP2. It was never an issue with RTM.

Each form has always had the

this.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;

attribute set.

Enjoy!

(Compact Framework)