Archive for the ‘Windows Mobile’ Category
Get Ready; Windows Marketplace for Mobile Offers Millions of Potential New Customers
July 14th, 2009 | 
Author: My name is Todd Brix and I am the Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management at Microsoft. I am on site at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans to talk about Windows Marketplace for Mobile and the terrific opportunity it represents for developers and partners. Given the enthusiasm we’ve seen around Windows Marketplace since we announced it earlier this year, I’m excited to have this opportunity to provide an update and hopefully address some of the feedback we’ve received.In terms of milestones, I’m pleased to report that Windows Marketplace is on schedule to open for submissions in 29 supported countries* on July 27th. We’re already working with a wide range of leading developers for both business and consumer applications and will soon be able to make available a new wave of applications that will be ready for download when Windows Marketplace launches with Windows Mobile 6.5 in the fall. To make things a little more interesting, later this month we’ll also be announcing the details of a developer contest that will kick off at launch.
We’re working hard to create a new experience for mobile users and developers alike; where users can easily discover and confidently purchase and download applications for work, life or play and developers feel good about the submission process and are able to reach a new market for their mobile applications. In fact, we’re announcing today that by the end of 2009 Windows Marketplace will also be available to Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 devices. This means that developers will have an opportunity to reach more than 30 million Windows Mobile devices. To help those millions of business users find what they’re looking for, we’re also unveiling the Windows Marketplace Business Center; a category in Windows Marketplace that will contain mobile business applications across several common industries and line of business functions from leading companies that include Avanade UK, Formotus, Ilium Software, Pyxis Mobile and WebIS. Business Center is another way for our partners to differentiate themselves and showcase their business applications, while making it easier for users to locate and purchase the latest mobile business tools.
(sample view of Windows Marketplace Business Center, subject to change.)
To recap the Windows Marketplace for Mobile announcements at Worldwide Partner Conference:
Application Submission Opens on July 27th: Windows Marketplace will open for application submissions from 29 supported countries July 27.
Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Support: Windows Marketplace will be available for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 by the end of 2009 (in addition to Windows Mobile 6.5 at launch in the fall).
Business Center: Windows Marketplace will feature a “Business Center” category for business applications.
Developer Contest: Microsoft will be disclosing the details of a Windows Marketplace developer contest on July 27.
I’ll be on site at the Worldwide Partner Conference today talking to partners and presenting our Windows Marketplace strategy and even offering a brief demonstration on the main stage on Wednesday morning. Throughout the event, I’ll be gathering feedback and doing my best to drive registration and application submissions for July 27th. My team and I are eager to get your feedback and will do our best to address your comments and questions in the days and weeks ahead.
You can also view my video post here on Channel 9.
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Posted in Windows Mobile | 
Tags: amp, application, brazil, business, business applications, developers, line of business, Management, microsoft, Mobile, mobile application, mobile applications, mobile device, mobile devices, mobile platform, mobile users, pda, Software, t mobile, Windows, Windows Mobile, world | 
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Windows Mobile MSDN Blog Archives
As of today the Windows Mobile Blog has officially joined The Windows Blog. Not only have our bloggers made the transition, but much of the high impact content has been brought forward for your convenience.
Windows Mobile RampUp Track Is Now Available On MSDN | MSDN
Carry Your Office in Your Pocket #1 | MSDN
Twisted Pixels #4 – A Button-Mashers Guide To Input | MSDN
Windows Mobile Facebook Application Update | MSDN
Just Say No To GAPI – What You Need To Know About AllKeys And Input Management | MSDN
Resolving Common Crashes Seen in Windows Mobile Watson Data | MSDN
Twisted Pixels #3 – Memory Mysteries | MSDN
Samsung’s Web Site for Windows Mobile Developers | MSDN
Twisted Pixels #2 – Doing Graphics! | MSDN
Twisted Pixels #1 – A Mobile Game Development Diary | MSDN
developer.windowsmobile.com | MSDN
Windows® Marketplace for Mobile Developer Strategy Announced! | MSDN
DreamSpark for Students | MSDN
Introducing Windows® Marketplace for Mobile… | MSDN
Mobile Manager for Netflix | MSDN
Developing Location Aware Applications for Windows Mobile | MSDN
New Version of Live Search Mobile | MSDN
Survey of Web Browsers for Windows Mobile | MSDN
Windows Mobile Development Forum | MSDN
Press, Click, Select, or Choose?!? | MSDN
Posted in Windows Mobile |
Tags: amp, application, ash, blog, bloggers, blogs, car, developers, facebook, game, Management, microsoft, Mobile, mobile developer, mobile developers, mobile development, pda, samsung, web browser, Windows, Windows Mobile |
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SDK, DTK, DRK: WTF?!
Earlier this week we released the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Toolkit (DTK). This release has raised a few questions relative to the other Windows Mobile software development tools and resources. I’d like to take a moment to describe what the SDK, DTK, and DRK are, and just as importantly what they are not.
Figure: Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Resource Kit
SDK: Software Development Kit
We have not released a new SDK for Windows Mobile 6.5. The Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK or Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK are required for Windows Mobile 6.5 application development.
DTK: Developer Toolkit
The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Toolkit (DTK) is not an SDK! The DTK contains emulators, gesture APIs, and samples useful for developing Windows Mobile 6.5 applications. You will still need to install Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 and the Windows Mobile 6 SDK prior to running the toolkit installer.
DRK: Developer Resource Kit
The Windows Mobile Developer Resource Kit (DRK) is an offline DVD copy of the most useful and relevant Windows Mobile application development tools and resources. Traditionally the DRK does not contain any exclusive content, in that nearly everything on the DRK is available for download online. This time we are pleased to publish the Windows Mobile 6.5 DRK with several sample chapters of Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook from Microsoft Press (Wigley, Moth, and Foot).
We hand out free copies of the DRK at several conferences and developer events throughout the year. Beginning in July 2009, you may also order the Windows Mobile 6.5 DRK online at this Microsoft Web site. The previously listed Windows Mobile 6 Developer Resource Kit will be replaced.
WTF: Where To Follow?
Follow us on Twitter @wmdev to get the inside scoop and up to date information for development on Windows Mobile!
Lastly, you can find the latest development resources at http://developer.windowsmobile.com.
Posted in Windows Mobile |
Tags: application, Free, information, microsoft, Mobile, online, Software, Windows, Windows Mobile |
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Getting started with widgets on Windows Mobile 6.5
Now that the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Toolkit is out, it is time to start writing widgets!!!
Necessary equipment:
1) The Windows Mobile 6.5 emulator images
2) The web development environment of choice
3) WMDC or Windows Mobile Device Center (on Vista or Windows 7) or ActiveSync 4.5
With that you should be ready to go to get started, the first step is to start the emulator and cradle the device. The emulators can be started from the start menu under the “Windows Mobile 6 SDK -> Stand Alone Emulator Images -> <Language>”. The device emulator manager can be started using explorer to navigate to the following folder “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Device Emulator\1.0” and selecting dvcemumanager.exe.
Once they are both started, open WMDC or ActiveSync and select connection options and, on the “Connect one of the following” combo box select “DMA” and click “OK”.
Now, on the “Device Emulator Manager” select “Refresh” and then find the emulator on the list, should be the GUID under others and right click -> cradle to connect it to the PC.
UPDATE: Thanks to Peter Nowaks for pointing this out, The emulator can be listed under the "Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK" category, depending if you have the Windows Mobile 6 SDK installed or not… Just look for the "play" icon 
.
Once that is done, select “Connect without setting up my device” and you should be ready to go, to test, open internet explorer on the 6.5 emulator and navigate to any site, if all is set up correctly it will navigate to it using our brand new browser.
And now…. the fun part begins!
To write a widget we need to follow three easy steps.
1) Develop your widget code
For this you can use the web development tool of your choice, but as an example we can start with something super simple, as follows (copy it into a widget.htm document)
<html>
<head>
<title>Cool Widget!</title>
</head>
<body>
I’m a cool windows mobile 6.5 widget
</body>
</html>
2) Package your widget
Now we have our extremely functional widget code, now we need to create a manifest file (so the framework knows what to do with it) following the w3C widget standard for packaging and configuration (On 6.5 we support the December 22 2008 draft), but to make things easy, here is a small manifest, copy it into a config.xml file in the same folder as your widget.htm
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<widget version="1.0"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets"
id="">
<name>My first widget</name>
<content src="widget.htm" type="text/html" />
<access network="true" />
<icon src="icon.png"/>
<description>This is my first widget,
it won’t make a lot of money on the
marketplace but at least is cute!</description>
</widget>
Don’t forget to also add an icon called icon.png on the same folder.
At this point, you should have three files (config.xml, icon.png and widget.htm), now we need to package them, on explorer, select the files, right click and send to a compressed folder (it is important to select the files and not the folder that contains them because we want config.xml to be in the root of the zip container). Now just rename the newly created zip file to “widget.wgt” and you are done with this step.
3) Deploy and run
On “Computer” you should see the cradled device emulator as “PocketPC device”
Use it to navigate to “My Documents” on the device and copy the widget file created in step 2 there. Now, on the emulator, open file explorer using the start menu and, listed there you should see your widget file, click on it.
This should start the installation process, once that is done you will see your very first widget on screen!!!
To continue playing with this widget (make it better, etc) you can find the uncompressed files on the “Program Files\Widgets\User\<WidgetID> folder" on the device.
The widget ID is generated at install time and it is an always increasing integer (therefore, the most recently installed widget will have the greatest number). You can replace, add, remove files here for testing at will; the only thing you need for a your widget to pick the changes up is to exit it and start it again, it will have an entry on the start menu.
I will be sharing more information about the widget API, how to extend the widget framework capabilities, debugging tips, best practices, etc in future posts but I wanted to help everyone to get started.
For now, you can also take a quick look at my TechDays session where I describe the API set and some of the capabilities of the framework. To access it you’ll need to log into the Microsoft Tech Days site and search for MBL302 Windows Mobile Web and Widgets: Leveraging web technologies to build experiences for Windows Mobile.
Stay tuned, have fun and don’t forget to share your thoughts… Also, before I forget, you can upload your cool widget creations to the Marketplace , visit http://developer.windowsmobile.com for more information.
Jorge Peraza
Posted in Windows Mobile |
Tags: blog, blogs, Computer, Environment, experiences, information, Internet, microsoft, Mobile, mobile device, money, Network, pda, Tips, Web Development, Windows, Windows Mobile |
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Windows Mobile RampUp track is now available on MSDN
Are you interested in learning about Windows Mobile Application Development from the ground up and looking for some easy-to-use content that helps you get started? We have good news for you. We have just launched the MSDN RampUp track for Windows Mobile Application Development on MSDN.
Last week, we had the opportunity to talk with Johanna White, Senior Product Manager with the RampUp program. Johanna has been responsible for launching the Windows Mobile track, along with several other tracks, the latest of which are Move from ASP to ASP.NET, Web Development with ASP.NET, and Move from PHP to ASP.NET, all of which just launched this week .
Now you’re probably wondering, what does RampUp stand for? RampUp is a free online learning program that helps developers to acquire skills in specific technologies and development areas, such as Windows Mobile Development, SharePoint Development and many others. RampUp is completely free. It provides easy-to-access content, in a guided path that defines the important lessons and the order in which you learn them.
RampUp content is offered in a variety of forms that allow you to choose the best way to learn; we have articles, codecasts, slidecasts and v-labs. All the content has been authored by well-known experts in the field, such as well-known book and article authors and MVPs.
To access the Windows Mobile track for RampUp, click here. The Windows Mobile RampUp track consists of 7 modules, each of which takes you one step further to master Windows Mobile Application Development. These modules range from a basic introduction to Windows Mobile Application Development and a lesson on how to use the tools to Advanced Windows Mobile Forms Development. You will learn about Device Emulators, such as the specific features of Device Emulator 2.0 and Device Emulator 3.0, and we will show you how to control individual Device Emulators from inside Visual Studio 2008.
The RampUp track for Windows Mobile will also provide you with an introduction to SQL Server CE. You will learn about the specific security consideration you will have to make when developing applications for Windows Mobile. In the final module, you will receive an overview of Windows Mobile Web development. You will learn how to identify on which device your application will run and what devices will support AJAX. After completing each module, you will have gained a solid foundation that will help you get started with to developing more advanced applications for the Windows Mobile platform.
And as an added bonus, you will even receive a graduation award after completing the track.
Make sure to check it out for yourself!
Posted in Windows Mobile |
Tags: application, blog, blogs, developers, Free, microsoft, Mobile, online, Web Development, Windows, Windows Mobile |
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