Developing for Windows Mobile

Posted October 6, 2004

Chat Date: September 28, 2004

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

Introduction

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the Developing for Windows Mobile chat!

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Please note that we cannot comment on unannounced products, and in some cases may not be able to discuss specific aspects of announced products. This chat is primarily to discuss questions or issues with our current products.

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Now, I'll have our hosts for the chat today introduce themselves:

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

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
I'm James Pratt, I'm a Product Manager in the Windows Mobile group and I look after developer tools and SDKs

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
I'm Eric Engineer, I'm a Product Manager in the Windows Mobile groups and I look after developer technical content

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Go ahead and begin posting questions in the bottom window, and we'll get the chat underway.

Start of Chat

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: I am developing a multi language app (EVC3, PocketPC target). I cannot get the .rc files to accept unicode/double byte. How can I implement a multilanguage double byte version of my program when my Dev environment doesn''t support double byte?
A: Since all Windows Mobile platforms support ONLY unicode the resources you create are actually already Unicode/Double Byte.

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: Smartphone: Where is peghelp.exe gone? No more help system?
A: There's not a built in help system in Smartphone like there is in POcket PC. If you want to show help the easiest way is to use HTML documents and the HTML Control.

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: I am developing a multi language app (EVC3, PocketPC target). I cannot get the .rc files to accept unicode/double byte. How can I implement a multilanguage double byte version of my program when my Dev environment doesn''t support double byte?
A: eVC3 doesn't support unicode in resources very well. Doh! This was fixed in eVC 4. The observant among you will notice that eVC 4 does not support building for SP2002 and PPC 2002

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
A: there is an unsupported workaround for this:

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
A: https://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/ms838200.aspx

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
A: In the section Using eVC 4 to Build for Windows CE 3.0

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: I am currently calling iexplore.exe with my help.htm as a parameter - is that good enough?
A: It's a fine solution. Another thing you can try is to create a dialog with the HTML Control on it and open it in there, the advantage being that it keeps the user in your app.

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: is there any expert in reporting services in this chat room?? thank you
A: Unfortunately not.

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Any additional questions for our hosts today on Developing for Mobile Devices?

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: What is the prefered compilation language for Windows Mobile?
A: Depends on what you're trying to achieve. If you need very tight integration with the device and very high performance then use eMbedded Visual C++

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
A: However, for many scenarios targetting the .NET Compact Framework through Visual Basic .NET or C# should suffice

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Q: Where can I find documentation about doing NDIS queries on my pocket PC?
A: The current version of Windows Mobile doesn't have high level functions for querying hotspots

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
A: the development platform on the next version of Windows Mobile will generate notifications about exactly those kind of things.

Moderator: Andrew (Microsoft)
Okay, we'll be ending the chat now. Thanks for coming, everyone!

Host: ericeng (Microsoft)
Thanks everyone for your time today. Drop by again for next months chat.

For further information on this topic please visit the following:

Newsgroups: Mobile and embedded application development topics

Mobile and Embedded Transcripts: Read the archive

Website: Visit the Mobile & Embedded Developer Center

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