Database Users

WM5 applications

How to write a WM5 application?
I installed all necessary things, but i cannot find reference on develop those things in MS...
Any simple tutorial i can learn from web?

Have you installed the sdk? Many example apps + code on SMS.
V

what is SMS?

Sorry I misread. You said MS - you mean Microsoft?
Same applies. Search this forum - you're not the first person to ask this question and several people have given thoughts.
Get the sdk and read and read!
V

i have searched the forum but get nothing.
i installed all necessary software, sdk.
the only thing i want to know is the function library...
pls help.

Define 'all necessary software' please.
What IDE you are using (VS 2005, eVC)?
The search function on this site is lousy, so I recommend you search through google with the site:www.xda-developers directive.
The (very) short version of it is:
For VS 2005 - create a smart device project
For eVC - Create any project with Pocket PC / Pocket PC 2003 SDK
All necessary libraries will be added automatically by the wizard.

there really is no simple answer to your question
only more questions
do you wanna do it in .net ?
if so do you wanna do it in c# or vb (dog forbid! ) or c++
do you wanna do it in microMFC ?
do you wanna do it in pure win32
developing for pocketpc's are 99% the same as developing for a normal pc

How does one create a Today Plug-in?

I have a program called Weather Watcher Mobile. It's a great program that I would love to see a Today Plugin incorporated. I have seen some developers on these forums who have made Today screen plug-ins. How would one create a Today Plugin for an established program? Thanks.

Here is an excellent article that helped me wright my plugin:
http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/sampchap/5461a.aspx#100
The problem is from what I can see on the developers site (is this the one you are talking about http://www.singerscreations.com/RSS/Posts/339.asp)
he programs in .NET
There is no way to create a plugin using .NET languages, only using C / C++.
In any case I believe it would be best if you referred this developer directly to the forum so he can ask the specific questions he has himself.

levenum said:
There is no way to create a plugin using .NET languages, only using C / C++.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sure? http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms839442.aspx

Ok, my mistake, I should have said There is no way to create a plugin using only .NET languages."
I forgot I read about something similar briefly - using a .NET dll and a C++ dll together.

Thanks. I'll direct him to this thread.

Is it possible to write a today plugin, the text on which can be controlled through command line or any other way ?

Plugins do not except command line - they are dll not exe files, but there are plenty of other ways to control plugin text.
For example I am going to release a plugin soon that takes a string from registry, displays it and checks for changes couple of times per second.

levenum said:
Plugins do not except command line - they are dll not exe files, but there are plenty of other ways to control plugin text.
For example I am going to release a plugin soon that takes a string from registry, displays it and checks for changes couple of times per second.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When...when...when....????
I am planing a very nice plugin but it is really difficult to make one. All examples on the net are for evc++, I did not find a single sample for Visual Studio 2005.
If u are making something like this, it will really save a lot of my time.

Soon I hope, but it will be evc++ as well. I hate VS 2005, its fat, slow and costs a lot.
But if you are using c++ (there are samples on MSDN for c#) it doesn't matter what compiler the project is for, just use the source files.
See the links in previous posts for detailed explanations.

Coders new to WM5 "help" (advice)

Hi,
I have a fair background in various coding languages, and there are a couple of programs I want to try and build.
However, while I can usually pick up and understand a language quite easily the problem I usually find is a lack of knowledge of the objects available to make life easier and the functions which are available.
So far, I've sat around and got a setup which I think should allow me to write and compile WM5 applications and today plugins, but I have suddenly found I am missing that "thing" that made writing in other languages easier - effectively a "Cheat Sheet".
What I would appreciate from the other coders with experience in writing software for WM5 is a list of what windows or books you have open for reference when coding. Is it just MSDN, is there a specific page that you have bookmarked or do you just google for it every time?
Any further advice (like good compilers I might have missed) will also be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I'd like to hear from others too about this..
So far, My buddies for development help have been:
1. Search in MSDN
2. Search in Google
3. Ask on xda-developers
4. Search in MSDN forums and usenet groups for pocket pc developers
5. A book (that i dont refer to too often) whose name goes smthing like "Programming for Microsoft Windows CE .net" by Douglas Boling (Its not for .net development, it covers native development mostly. Windows CE .Net refers to a version of CE)
6. I also have another book that i have not even opened till now. It is solely for .net development (which is not my forte). Its by Wrox Publishers. If I remember the name correctly, it goes smthing like "Professional Microsoft Smartphone Programming"

There is an exellent documentation on .NET & Native Code on MSDN.
Then there are samples as well, again on MSDN.
For a today plugin, there is a very good sample by levenum which u can easily find in this section of the forum.
For me its always been google & this forum, no boooooks !!!

or
www.codeguru.com
in most cases programming for pocketpc's is like programming for pc's

Thanks for the replies guys. I see what you mean, MSDN is rather good. I was beginning to think it was just WM6, but I eventually found the section on WM5 (which I am planning on coding for given my phone is WM5). Their Wiki also had some good info on it too. Don't know whether these will be my coding buddies yet though....
shantzg001 said:
I'd like to hear from others too about this..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm glad someone else is interested. TBH I am surprised there is not a sticky at the top of the forum with this information in or a link to the Wiki for further details, but I could only find details of Development Tools on the wiki.
shaileshashar said:
For a today plugin, there is a very good sample by levenum which u can easily find in this section of the forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for this pointer. I found two (here and here) which look promising. Don't know if there are any I missed....

Just a small tip when searching in MSDN... add ce in the search pharse. For e.g., "ce WM_TIMER" will give you the CE related sessions at the top.

I like www.pocketpcdn.com - articles and code examples for Pocket PC and Smartphones arranged by categories.
Also www.codeproject.com has been helpfull at times.

Beginner's pointers?

Hi chaps,
I've just got myself an O2 XDA Orbit - great device, and now I'm looking for developing for it - just simple things at first, like a Blackjack game, or a simple Today feature with the sun and moon times on it; this sort of thing.
I've got Visual Studio .NET 2003, but I see that in order to program the latest devices, you need VS 2005 (?). So, I've downloaded Embedded Visual Studio C++ v4 with all the SDK's and I'm hoping to develop for an earlier version of Windows Mobile, and hope that it works.
So while I've got all that, I'm now stuck as to where to start! Can anyone point me to a good book, or something online which will help me through a simple CE application? How you do get the Today screen working, for example? I realise that this might be asking a lot, but a couple of pointers would be great - if you could!
Many thanks,
MrP.

I'm just starting out myself with windows mobile programming. You can find a lot of info from msdn. Here is an example Hello app.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms912017.aspx
You can find a lot of good stuff at the code project site also.
http://www.codeproject.com/ce/
eVC has wizards that will get you going. One thing I found out about using eVC is that you won't be able to debug your programs on a WM5/6 device since the SDK's are not compatible with them. It can be a bit of a challenge to fix bugs without a debugger. I can't get the debugger to work with the emulator either for some reason.
A question for other eVC developers out there. Is it possible to use the emulator to debug programs or do you all have an old PPC2003 device that you use to do your debugging? Or have you all moved on to VS2005?

I've bought visual studio 2005 standard and it is great - it fully supports WM5/6 (with sdk) and runtime debugging - for .exe it works well but I have problems with .dll - I can't debug dll files - does anyone know how to make it?

Pleas look up threads started by vijay555.
He wrote a comprehensive article on the tools and possibilities to begin developing for these devices.
Just as a quick side note:
There is no need what so ever to pay M$ money for VS 2005 if you want to develop in C / C++.
Apps written in eVC++ 4 will work perfectly with WM 5 and 6 and if you need any missing API (not many of those) you have 2 choices:
1) Manually unpack the SDK and link to it.
2) Use implicit linking (that LoadLibrary and GetProcAdress).

levenum said:
Pleas look up threads started by vijay555.
He wrote a comprehensive article on the tools and possibilities to begin developing for these devices.
Just as a quick side note:
There is no need what so ever to pay M$ money for VS 2005 if you want to develop in C / C++.
Apps written in eVC++ 4 will work perfectly with WM 5 and 6 and if you need any missing API (not many of those) you have 2 choices:
1) Manually unpack the SDK and link to it.
2) Use implicit linking (that LoadLibrary and GetProcAdress).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry about the delay in replying...
Many thanks for the pointers.. Just a matter of starting now!

Creating a today plugin

Hello everybody. I am a programmer experienced in various languages. I want to create a very simple today-plugin, a launcher. It should be touch-responsive, to gestures to be more accurate. Target platform is Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro. I don't want to use wrappers and user-made frameworks and stuff for this, I want to write a professional app. .NET Framework is okay but I don't want to use technologies that are not made by Microsoft. Period. Okay now what I need to know is how do I do this? First I need to know which apps to get. I suppose I will need Visual Studio? Which Version? I'm downloading "Windows Mobile 6 SDK Refresh Kit" at this time. How do I proceed? Is there any sample code? I'm not looking for a huge file. I would like a quick success. Maybe I'll go into some more detail: Basically I want a fully transparent plugin, 480 x 480 px. Users should be able to move their finger from the center in 8 directions and the plugin will then launch the program associated with that direction. That's it. I hope you can help me with this. By the way, I have used the search function and I have found some threads and followed most links I encountered but it's not up to date or not what I want, so frogive me for posting another thread.

hi,
First of all, you can't use .NET Compact Framework for Today Plugin development. It has to be C++ native code AFAIK because it's a .dll - you can't have managed code DLLs.
You need Visual Studio with Smart Device Project support. I'm using VS 2008 Professional, because that's the only version that has it. Standard, Express etc doesn't have that.
You'll need that WM 6 SDK you're already downloading.
Visual Studio has a very nice Device Emulator if you don't have a device to use, but you need to download device emulator images with windows mobile 6. It's somewhere on MSDN in separate package.
I don't have any experience in today plugin development, but I'm sure you'll find a lot of resources and articles about it on:
- http://msdn.microsoft.com
- http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/smartdevicedevelopment
- http://codeproject.com

You could start off by reading the sticky!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=445396

ather90 said:
You could start off by reading the sticky!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=445396
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I DID see this thread, but I don't want to search download install and configure 20 apps out of which I only need 2 for my purpose. Thanks to grzegorzaksamit for the information. I will organize VS 2008 then. Any other help regarding the actual development is highly appreciated!

Firefall! said:
I DID see this thread, but I don't want to search download install and configure 20 apps out of which I only need 2 for my purpose. Thanks to grzegorzaksamit for the information. I will organize VS 2008 then. Any other help regarding the actual development is highly appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There is an example in either the WM5 or WM6 SDK.