hi,
I have a program and it has lots of settings saved in memory, when I exis the program I need to save settings in a config file.
My program has CString(s), CArray(s) and other basic int and DWORD varibles, so how can I save such complex settings?
Mohammad
as xml maybe
If you're using MFC you could always attach a CArchive to a file and serialize
Perhaps you need to either create a log file - for debugging purposes or save your settings to the registry. If its the former then, check this one http://www.codeproject.com/ce/GenericLogFunctionality.asp it should be helpful. If its the latter, then you just search codeproject and you'll find lot of tutorials on the registry. Also, you can use CEDB which is a flat table data base that can store many data type structures including files and images, use it if you need to.
It may seem like you're lost now, but you can take an overview about the cons and pros of each technique so as to choose the best one for you.
For my config file I use plain english bounded by my own tags. I use a character sequence as a seperator for lists. I convert numerical values into text that can be human readable. There are some benefits to being able to read and edit it manually if the need arizes. I also made a class purely for writing and reading from my config file. Now when I to use a config file I can just drop that class into my project.
XML sounds good and similar but it would require a greater knowledge of xml.
Registry is easier and faster to do/execute but for data that can potentially grow too much it is probably best to keep it out of registry.
Is CArray serializable? do we just simply use CArray::Serialize and it will dump all included objects into a file?
thanks
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.aspx
this site may be helpfull while you wait for somebody to answer your question
If you can it would be easier to use CObArray and ensure that the array members are subclassed from CObject with the DECLARE_SERIAL / IMPLEMENT_SERIAL macros. You could also add a new << operator to the CArchive class and write the serialization routine but that would kinda defeat the object I guess.
I solved the issue using serialization, for CArray structures I used the following method:
File<<MyArray.GetSize();//store how many objects
for(all my objects in the CArray)
serialize them one by one
I did the same when loading and it works flawlessly.
Thanks all for your help
Not sure if I have worded this properly as I'm at the edge of my knowledge but I wish to call a function that I am assuming is in a DLL which is contained in ROM. I know the name of the DLL but how can I get a list of functions available from it when I cannot copy it onto my PC?
Many Thanks
Hi Tailor.
First, what function exactly are you looking for? There may be some documentation on it somewhere.
To browse a ROM dll you need to get a ROM dump. The simplest way for your purpose, provided you have a WM5 device is to search for TESTWM5.exe by mamiac on this forum. It will dump all files to your SD. They won't be workable for coding purposes, but still good enough to use dependency walker to get exported functions from DLLs.
Unfortunately that still won't tell you the parameters the function expects. only its name.
Hi Levenum and thanks for your reply.
Its a Sony Sat Nav Windows CE 4.2 device so unforunately theres not much chance of a ROM dump or documentation. Then unit is sold as a finished product and not intended for further developement.
I have installed TomTom instead of the poor app already installed and was trying to get access to the hardware buttons and Light sensor on the unit and then intended to use the TomTom SDK to recreate their functions.
The keys don't not trigger a key press event but their are DLL's called something like powerbutton.dll and navbutton.dll and so it's a fair guess that they could be used to trigger these events.
Obviously without knowing their exported functions I'm not going to get much further.
Any further thoughts ?
Many Thanks
How exactly are you trying to catch the key events?
For what you describe, you don't just need to know function names, you need to know with what parameters to call them so this is definitely not the way to go.
If you are coding with C++ search for info on SetWindowsHook. I am not sure of its implementation on CE, but this might be what you need.
I'm using VB.Net 2005
I'll have a look at SetWindowsHook, Thanks.
Any ideas for the light sensor, there's a test app that Sony have left on the device, it gives a reading from 0 to 100?
How are they likely to be reading this value?
There are a lot of clock area today screen apps out there, from the simple such as PDClock, through mid-level stuff like HTC home, up to the fully customizable rlToday.
Few of these seem to be a good all-round solution though, except maybe rlToday, but I am having issues with the rlToday / Sys-to-Reg / Mortscript combo, both in terms of features (ie no support for "on" or "off" images), stability, and ease-of install (S2R seems a bugger to set up right, especially for the less technically inclined user), and the whole rlToday / S2R / Mortscript combo is hardly a turnkey one-install solution.
So to that end, I decided to try my hand at crafting a solution more appropriate to my needs.
Now, until this point I have never coded for C++ or windows mobile. I am not even a professional coder, far from it, but I do have a knack for designing good solutions, so I thought I would start teaching myself native C++ and see what I could come up with. Ultimately, my goal is to release as open source, I am hoping to maybe start a sourceforge project at some point...
I am making this post because I am now starting to get past the proof-of-concept stage and am coming up with some working code. I am tackling the various hurdles one by one and learning as I go, but it is starting to look promising.
This thread is to serve two purposes:
1) Gather my thoughts on how things are going to work so potential users can chime in on possible tweaks or changes to the features and how they should work.
2) Serve as a rallying call for any (preferably more experienced) coders who wish to get involved. I will post up any problems that I am having surmounting various issues, please feel free to help out on those. If an experienced coder liked the project that much and wanted to take the lead, I have no issues with that, as long as it remained open source.
So, with that out the way, here is what I am thinking so far:
Overall idea is pretty similar to rlToday - a script (ie a .INI or .XML file) which lists Widgets is processed and the result is drawn on the screen.
For example, here is an example INI file for a background (say transparent) PNG with a clock overlaid in the middle of the PNG, that has different layouts / images for portrait and landscape mode on a qVGA device.
Code:
;ini profile for qVGA (240 width and 320 width)
;PORTRAIT
[PortBG]
width=240
widget=image
clickable=0;
image="bgport.png"
x=0
y=0
[PortClock]
width=240
widget=text
subwidget=clock
clickable=1
clicktype=exe
clickstring="<exe to launch calendar>"
dateformat = "dddd MMMM d"
x=120
y=25
origin="cc"
;LANDSCAPE
[LandBG]
width=320
widget=image
clickable=0
image="bgland.png"
x=0
y=0
[LandClock]
width=320
widget=text
subwidget=clock
clickable=1
clicktype=exe
clickstring="<exe to launch calendar>"
dateformat = "dddd MMMM d"
x=160
y=25
origin="cc"
The [Name] of each section actually does nothing, but it will be useful in debugging / error messages ("Image for [PortBG] not found!").
Widget = choses which kind of widget it is (eg Image, Text)
subwidget = choses the subtype of widget (eg clock is a subtype of text)
The Width= entry is an idea I came up with to handle multiple screen orientations and resolutions within one profile. Basically, as this is not intended to be a full-screen app, the only relevant dimension is the screen width. Each widget therefore has an associated width. When the screen is rendered, it will check what the current width is and only render widgets that match that width. Furthermore, if a script has entries for resolutions not supported by your device, these will be ignored. Profiles are likely to be a directory with one .INI file and assorted images. Images can be in subdirectories, say grouped by width (ie a "240" dir and a "320" dir for qVGA) - that way you could release a skin as one zipped dir that supported all devices and resolutions, and you would not need to upload the "480" and "640" dirs to a qVGA device, thus saving storage space.
Each widget also has x/y coords, which usually refer to the top left, but the origin entry can change that (eg cc would be centre horizontally and vertically)
Each widget will also be able to be specified as clickable, with options as to what to do when it is clicked.
With this system it should be possible to create most things, however, here is what I am currently NOT planning on doing:
I am not aiming at offering tabbed pages of widgets, or an easy way to change widgets without writing a new script. This is aimed at a companion to something like UltimateLaunch for handling the top of the screen - a Clock, SMS / Missed Calls / VM messages, BT / WiFi status and toggles etc.
I am currently using VS2005 and the WM5 SDK, but the app is still so simple that this could probably be changed. I would like to support as much as possible, but am not overly worried about providing backwards compatibility beyond WM5. I am using Native Win32 - I want to avoid as much bloat as I can.
Planned features:
Per-pixel Alpha PNGs - IMPLIMENTED
Widgets parsed from INI - IMPLIMENTED
Parse only items from INI that match screen caps - IMPLIMENTED
Display only items that match current screen width - IMPLIMENTED (Effectively switch profile on screen orientation change)
Options screen to set current profile
Widgets
======
Text Type: - IMPLIMENTED
Source: String in INI - IMPLIMENTED
Source: String in Registry
Source: Date from format string - IMPLIMENTED
Image type: - IMPLIMENTED
Plain image - IMPLIMENTED
Status Image - Registry value
Toggles - BlueTooth / WiFi / Phone etc
Other features
===========
Multiple screen resolutions supported per INI - IMPLIMENTED
Detect Power but no Activesync - Allow enabling of BlueTooth for automatic pairing with in-car BT handsfree.
Current questions and stumbling blocks:
Having issues finding a lightweight way of displaying per-pixel alpha PNGs. Current thinking is that AlphaBlend is perfectly capable of doing the blending, it is just SHLoadImageFile that is stripping the alpha info.
See threads here and here
Not sure how I am going to handle toggling of BT / WiFi. Could use VJ's tool, but I would rather do it in my code. Any pointers on how to do it and maintain maximum WM5 / WM6 compatibility would be appreciated - VJ's tool will not toggle WiFi on my Kaiser anyway...
Could do with decent chop and chomp routines (split by char and remove leading / trailing whitespace) - does anyone know an easy way to do this in native code?
Need to work out how to find the size of a text string in pixels *before* it gets drawn to the screen with ExtTextOut
Need to impliment a date format string to text string converter that can handle date and time objects in the same string
Currently I use a bit of code to look at the string and pass it to either GetDateFormat or GetTimeFormat, but not split the string and pass relevant bits to relevant routine, then reassemble.
Need to make whole thing a today item, but delaying doing this as it seems that debugging will be harder? I also guess this would be quite easy, so I am planning on leaving this until near the end. Any advice on this subject would be appreciated.
I am interested in this. I don't know C++, but I have experience coding with other computer languages. I'll definitely be following this thread and watching for updates.
iContact source contains some pretty lightweight INI library. It isn't written by me, and it's called SimpleIni. Everything is contained in one .h file and it's very easy to use.
good luck,
larna
larna said:
iContact source contains some pretty lightweight INI library. It isn't written by me, and it's called SimpleIni. Everything is contained in one .h file and it's very easy to use.
good luck,
larna
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice one, thanks
I got simpleini in and working - you were right larna, it was really easy and pain-free. Thanks!
Update:
I have a working prototype.
All basic functionality coded - text and image widget types, orientation switching, ini parsing...
Currently still not a today item, and there is loads to do in terms of error checking and freeing up memory etc, but it parses INI files OK
Once I have done some tidying up, I will release some source and maybe a demo EXE.
Hey!!
I'm already developing an application which load and extends rlToday Themes!
sources will be released soon!
The app is XIAMultitheme:
Done:
- fully working rltoday themes on a HWND
- done today plugin
- loading external dll
- all widgets are external dll
To do:
- avoid image loading via ImageFactory due to memory leak on wm6x
- port to CxImage to load PNG
- use AAROT to free rotate images (analog clock)
- today plugin does not load the engine yet
http://www.xiaprojects.com/?section=All&project=XIAMultiTheme
what do you think? mail me on priv (stefano) on xiaprojects.com
stefanux said:
Hey!!
I'm already developing an application which load and extends rlToday Themes!
sources will be released soon!
The app is XIAMultitheme:
Done:
- fully working rltoday themes on a HWND
- done today plugin
- loading external dll
- all widgets are external dll
To do:
- avoid image loading via ImageFactory due to memory leak on wm6x
- port to CxImage to load PNG
- use AAROT to free rotate images (analog clock)
- today plugin does not load the engine yet
http://www.xiaprojects.com/?section=All&project=XIAMultiTheme
what do you think? mail me on priv (stefano) on xiaprojects.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi stefano
i see nothing on your web site , nor screenshots nothing in download binaries
Why ???
evilc said:
Update:
I have a working prototype.
All basic functionality coded - text and image widget types, orientation switching, ini parsing...
Currently still not a today item, and there is loads to do in terms of error checking and freeing up memory etc, but it parses INI files OK
Once I have done some tidying up, I will release some source and maybe a demo EXE.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
can you upload here the demo program ?
Sounds pretty neat!
I don't understand some of the terminology you use, but I think you may be talking about a feature I had an idea for:
profiles (XML files) can be associated with a today plugin such that you can make a profile appear in the today plugins list for each skin (XML file) you have installed - thus making each XML profile behave like it was a today plugin in it's own right.
Is that what you are talking about?
brunoisa10 said:
can you upload here the demo program ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Demo uploaded to first post. Unzip it to \Storage Card\shared on your device and run.
BE AWARE, there is very little error checking when parsing the INI.
If you omit a horizres line for any widget, for example, the program will crash.
Well I checked out XIAMultiTheme and it looks promising.
I was not aware that there was a memory leak bug in IImagefactory, I wasn't planning on using it in the final version anyway, so no biggie.
If XIAMultiTheme is capable of doing what I had envisaged for openClock, I will probably stop development, as you obviously know what you are doing much more than I do
However, a couple of points:
1) Size.
XIAMultiTheme seems to be a lot bigger and requires .NET - This seems to mainly be to do with the CxImage library - just PNG support seems to add more size than my entire app is! I am flabberghasted that supporting per-pixel Alpha PNGs takes this much, an alphablend routine can be done in a K or two, hundreds seems overkill. Apart from the requirement for rotation (for analogue clocks) I do not see why a full image lib is needed. Just a load and alpha blit.
2) Orientation awareness.
As in I don't see any in XIAMultiTheme. I am really happy with the way I have handled this in openClock - each item in the INI (XML in your case) has a "horizres" value associated with it. At render time, current screen width is compared to each item's horizres and if it matches, the item is drawn, if it doesn't then it isn't shown.
This provides a nice way to combine portrait, landscape and multi-res capabilities into one theme. And as long as you allow relative paths in the theme(eg 320\320bg.png, 240\240bg.png, common\common.png) then you can have a theme which supports all resolutions and orientations, and allow the user to store what they want on their PPC (eg if their device is qVGA, they know they do not need to put the 640 and 480 dirs on their PPC for a given theme, as they won't be used)
3) Stateful buttons.
Items like a voicemail button / wifi button etc should probably have two images associated with them - one for "no messages", one for "have messages". I was planning on putting something in openClock along the lines of specifying a reg key, an operator and an image.
eg:
regkey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\...
on=thisimage.png, gt, 0
off=thatimage.png
To set to thisimage if the key is of value greater than (gt) 0 or thatimage.png if not.
Good luck!
evilc said:
just PNG support seems to add more size than my entire app is!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep. Same goes for MortButtons... (and MortPlayer, but there, the player itself is bigger in relation...)
I am flabberghasted that supporting per-pixel Alpha PNGs takes this much, an alphablend routine can be done in a K or two, hundreds seems overkill.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The alphablend routine is in the Draw method, and even in source code not much more than 1kB.
The trouble is to load the PNG without losing the alpha information. With Windows' API, you can't do it - there's only the crippled SHLoadImage. So you need the entire code to decode PNGs, i.e. libpng, which in return requires zlib - over 200kB only to load PNG! The remaining kBs are spend to load/decode JPEG (quite some kBs, too), GIF (if enabled), BMP, ... and some basic image processing (resample, rotate, ...).
btw, you might want to check MortImg.dll and MortImage.lib, which is a (quite) simple wrapper. If only one image library is used, at least some memory on the device is saved (and if MortButtons or MortPlayer since b72 is used, also main memory).
Check out http://mort.svnrepository.com/svn/mort/MortTools/trunk with any SVN client (e.g. Tortoise), use "guest" for login and password.
evilc said:
Well I checked out XIAMultiTheme and it looks promising.
I was not aware that there was a memory leak bug in IImagefactory, I wasn't planning on using it in the final version anyway, so no biggie.
If XIAMultiTheme is capable of doing what I had envisaged for openClock, I will probably stop development, as you obviously know what you are doing much more than I do
However, a couple of points:
1) Size.
XIAMultiTheme seems to be a lot bigger and requires .NET - This seems to mainly be to do with the CxImage library - just PNG support seems to add more size than my entire app is! I am flabberghasted that supporting per-pixel Alpha PNGs takes this much, an alphablend routine can be done in a K or two, hundreds seems overkill. Apart from the requirement for rotation (for analogue clocks) I do not see why a full image lib is needed. Just a load and alpha blit.
2) Orientation awareness.
As in I don't see any in XIAMultiTheme. I am really happy with the way I have handled this in openClock - each item in the INI (XML in your case) has a "horizres" value associated with it. At render time, current screen width is compared to each item's horizres and if it matches, the item is drawn, if it doesn't then it isn't shown.
This provides a nice way to combine portrait, landscape and multi-res capabilities into one theme. And as long as you allow relative paths in the theme(eg 320\320bg.png, 240\240bg.png, common\common.png) then you can have a theme which supports all resolutions and orientations, and allow the user to store what they want on their PPC (eg if their device is qVGA, they know they do not need to put the 640 and 480 dirs on their PPC for a given theme, as they won't be used)
3) Stateful buttons.
Items like a voicemail button / wifi button etc should probably have two images associated with them - one for "no messages", one for "have messages". I was planning on putting something in openClock along the lines of specifying a reg key, an operator and an image.
eg:
regkey=HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\...
on=thisimage.png, gt, 0
off=thatimage.png
To set to thisimage if the key is of value greater than (gt) 0 or thatimage.png if not.
Good luck!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks you for your good words
1) beta version will be lighter ... (need to known what image loader use)
2) will be done on Page component (tab themes are already working)
3) will be done on sensor dll with "regex" (maybe)
XIAMultiTheme is in alpha development...
I would like to "merge" code with you or may be DLL collaboration.
XIAMultiTheme does NOT need .NET it's low level GDI "C" source
When XIAMultiTheme go on Beta status the dll will be around 10kb
Configurator is .net
Thanks you
Thanks for that mort!
However, if my entire app is (currently) 61K and it supports per-pixel alpha PNGs (Via the apparently bugged IImagefactory), then surely it is more than possible in less than 100K.
It seems like libpng must be grotesquely bloated for our needs. In an ideal world, someone would re-code SHLoadImage to not lose the alpha channel for PNGs. Maybe a workaround would be to convert the PNG into a 32bit per-pixel BMP with alpha before it is passed to SHLoadImage, as SHLoadImage deals with alpha BMPs just fine and AlphaBlend works just fine with AC_SRC_ALPHA data.
stefanux said:
thanks you for your good words
1) beta version will be lighter ... (need to known what image loader use)
2) will be done on Page component (tab themes are already working)
3) will be done on sensor dll with "regex" (maybe)
XIAMultiTheme is in alpha development...
I would like to "merge" code with you or may be DLL collaboration.
XIAMultiTheme does NOT need .NET it's low level GDI "C" source
When XIAMultiTheme go on Beta status the dll will be around 10kb
Configurator is .net
Thanks you
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi stef,
I am more than happy to help out on your project with design ideas, testing and proofreading of english translations.
I have plenty of ideas on what the ultimate today screen widget app should feature, I just had to set my sights lower due to my (lack of) coding abilities.
Do you have a forum or something on your site? I don't see one.
I am slightly concerned about point (3) and your regex example. I would maybe try and keep it simpler, XML is already a little complicated for non-technical users to understand, throwing regexs into the mix may be the straw that broke the camel's back. That's why I went with INI files - simpler to use for lusers
evilc said:
Thanks for that mort!
... it supports per-pixel alpha PNGs (Via the apparently bugged IImagefactory), ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Please try to do this test:
load 20 png's with imgfact. and start drawing all of them like a simple animation for 10 fps... image[]->Draw() after 5 minutes my application will blow up my pda (wm61) I thinks it's a "COM" bug because it happend only calling "Draw"
stefanux said:
Please try to do this test:
load 20 png's with imgfact. and start drawing all of them like a simple animation for 10 fps...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you kidding??? 10FPS? I have a kaiser!
Seriously though, if we can get a code snippet that proves this, surely we can get MS to issue a patch?
Hi.
I was playing a little bit using VS2008 and Windows Mobile 6 SDK to create my own mobile application in C#.
But what really is annoying is the missing ability of creating 'nice' UIs.
For example G-Alarm (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=422362) looks much nicer then a 'simple app'.
How are those apps be done?
Or is it raw graphic programming?
Any tips appreciated.
Please get me on the road. ;-)
Regards,
AtzeX
You can use images to create nice UI's. You can make nice images with photoshop or paint.net
Sure, but that would mean, that the UI is static.
What about some dynamic, like buttons and the effects when hovering over them etc.?
Is this all done by combining different images?
Is there somewhere a sample-application demonstrating that technics?
Or is there any toolbox what they use?
AtzeX said:
Sure, but that would mean, that the UI is static.
What about some dynamic, like buttons and the effects when hovering over them etc.?
Is this all done by combining different images?
Is there somewhere a sample-application demonstrating that technics?
Or is there any toolbox what they use?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
H-overs are usually just 2 pictures .
...not to forget the pressed state.
So, do I really have to become a graphic artist thatfore?
No other way/tricks/(common)libraries?
In what I've done, use a picturebox rather than a button, and then change the image on the mousedown/mouseup events.
If you like the button styles of a particular thing (e.g. the Diamond/Opal/whatevers volume control), I'd extract the image, resize it and you're good to go.
Obviously ask the relevant owners permission first!
Attached is the Jade volume control button (I have it in transparent, but it's a large file... I'll upload it somewhere else if wanted) which may be of use as a simple On/Off button.
l3v5y said:
In what I've done, use a picturebox rather than a button, and then change the image on the mousedown/mouseup events.
If you like the button styles of a particular thing (e.g. the Diamond/Opal/whatevers volume control), I'd extract the image, resize it and you're good to go.
Obviously ask the relevant owners permission first!
Attached is the Jade volume control button (I have it in transparent, but it's a large file... I'll upload it somewhere else if wanted) which may be of use as a simple On/Off button.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so they aren´t released yet ?!? OMG, xda is hacking out every piece of software but no complete diamond gfx-pack ?
would be really great, I´d like to modify them and use them for some own projects.
Thanks l3v5y!
But unfortunately I will have no time left in the next weeks, because I will be away.
But I will try and respond when I'm back.
Regards,
AtzeX
Is it possible to make pictures/pictureboxes transparent???
I want to embed png files containing transparency information
I tried so long but couldn`t find out....
thx
ya, welcome to the .net mobile world lol. I've been trying to come up with some nicer guis on my own for a few weeks now, with little luck due to poor documentation/examples and understanding of the gdi drawing capabilities.
if possible, please keep us (me) updated on what you find or code. there's just so little open source or documentation in the .net mobile world (it seems to me at least) for creating any controls (other than odl's) that try to move themselves away from the standard look and feel of the textboxes, comboboxes, etc.
I was wondering if the xFlib libraries could be used to create apps... http://www.xflib.net/
Then why would I want to use XFlib ???
XFlib has been designed following a few principles : completely free library, very simple to use, and with good enough performance to allow you to do your games without too much technical knowledge…
It all started when we, at the XFTeam, decided to do some PocketPC development. There were already tons of solutions out there, like using .Net, but pretty much everything was Windows-based, which was a problem for the Linux users That's where CEGCC came in to help : it provided us with a great free cross-platform compiler for ARM PocketPC !
We have been strongly influenced by GBA/NDS development, so the library was also designed with strong analogies to the old school 2D consoles : manage your sprites, bitmap layers, tiled backgrounds, text, etc…
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice site for creating buttons:
http://cooltext.com/Buttons
Transparency and Custom controls
Transparency is a pain in the but with .net. The only way I was able to get it to work was by making unsafe system calls by add using "System.Runtime.InteropServices;"
and call Alphablend from the coredll.dll file.
[DllImport("coredll.dll")]
extern public static Int32 AlphaBlend(IntPtr hdcDest,
Int32 xDest,
Int32 yDest,
Int32 cxDest,
Int32 cyDest,
IntPtr hdcSrc,
Int32 xSrc,
Int32 ySrc,
Int32 cxSrc,
Int32 cySrc,
BlendFunction blendFunction);
Not only is it a pain but it seemed to slow down my animations significantly.
or using the native .NET GDI you can do this the following way:
this method olny makes an exact color transparent but you can't set transparency values.
System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageAttributes attr = new System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageAttributes();
// "this sets your transparent color, the color you want to disappear"
attr.SetColorKey(Color.White, Color.White);
e.DrawImage(bmp, dstRect, 0, 0, bmp.Width, bmp.Height, GraphicsUnit.Pixel, attr);
the code above is an incomplete segment that would display a bitmap named bmp with the exact color white gone.
I can post an example in C# if people want it. But basically for a unique look, I don't use any windows controls. I make a buffered picture the size of the display and bitblit the images off screen and switch them in like in a video game rendering. I draw how each control should look and then monitor mouse location and click locations to determine what control is being interacted with and what images to switch them out with.
I release a custom UI replacement program called FlipSlide here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=385036 there is source code available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/flipslide/ for this that uses these techniques.
hope that helps somebody.
AtzeX said:
Hi.
I was playing a little bit using VS2008 and Windows Mobile 6 SDK to create my own mobile application in C#.
But what really is annoying is the missing ability of creating 'nice' UIs.
For example G-Alarm (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=422362) looks much nicer then a 'simple app'.
How are those apps be done?
Or is it raw graphic programming?
Any tips appreciated.
Please get me on the road. ;-)
Regards,
AtzeX
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You can read this article: Building Graphically Advanced Applications with the .NET Compact Framework 3.5
thx for your help chetstriker
i will download the sourcecode and try to figure it out...