 Dallas, June 3, 2003 – There is no doubt about it anymore. Mobile computing is really taking off. In the press material I received today was a big binder titled “.NET Framework in the real world”. It contains real stories from real companies building real applications. In a collection of 63 business cases, around one third covered .NET Compact Framework solutions. This means we are working with technology that quickly is adapted and is about to become really popular. Ori Amiga, Lead Program Manager of Microsoft’s Mobile Devices Product Group made that clear as well. As an introduction of his presentation covering tools, tips, tricks & best practices for PocketPC and Smartphone he looked back at the 1st Mobile DevCon that was held in New Orleans earlier this year. According to Amiga there were 1000 attendees at that conference and the big majority of them were developers. At TechEd there are an estimated 9000 attendees of which only 20% are software developers. This is a clear indication how popular device application development is right now. Amiga showed some really cool tools that will make application development for devices and especially application debugging a much better experience. The first much asked for feature that he demonstrated is the possibility to use ActiveSync in combination with the PocketPC emulator. Something else that device developers really will appreciate and that is available today is Remote Display Control for Windows CE. With this downloadable utility it is possible to get an exact copy of the device screen on the desktop. Especially during testing of PocketPC applications on the actual device this is very useful. The tool not only shows the device screen but allows data entry as well, so testing is not necessary using the stylus and a soft keyboard, but it is possible to make use of the development machine and its keyboard. This will definitely increase productivity while testing applications. Amiga also announced a number of command line tools, and RapDbg, a tool to display debug strings in PocketPC applications in a console. With this tool, smart device developers will get identical debugging experiences as desktop developers. Amiga also gave a demonstration of a new stress test tool, Hopper. This tool can be used to perform monkey tests. It really can stress applications or entire devices. Because the tool can operate at high speeds, it can simulate very long testing periods. Most of these tools will operate for all versions of PocketPC and they will be available soon. DotNETForDevices will of course inform you when the different tools become available.
Jim Wilson gave a presentation on the .NET Compact Framework. According to him the .NET CF gives the possibility to any programmer to develop applications for mobile devices. Very important is the fact that the .NET CF in combination with managed applications will be absolutely processor independent, meaning that only one single version of the application needs to be maintained. The .NET CF follows the model of .NET exactly, compiling source files to Intermediate Language. Managed applications will run on any PocketPC and on devices powered by Windows CE.NET 4.1 or better. Wilson stated that the average development time can be reduced as much as 5 times when developing managed applications in comparison to unmanaged or native applications. There are memory constraints, since a standard PocketPC only has 32 Mbyte of RAM of which 16 Mb are available to applications. Therefore, garbage collection of the .NET CF is much more aggressive than GC on the desktop. Wilson said that .NET CF applications will run at about 80 percent of the speed of eVC applications, but that they will run 5 times faster than eVB applications. The language constructs (both for C# and VB.NET) are identical to the desktop. The difference is in the framework classes, they are drilled down for the .NET Compact Framework. The average PocketPC has a processing power comparable with a Pentium 100 MHz, or only 1/20 of a typical desktop machine, so some tradeoffs were necessary. Even though the .NET Compact Framework is much smaller than the full .NET framework (1.5 MByte vs. 32 MByte), the .NET CF is 100% .NET. According to Wilson developers should not care too much about using C# or VB.NET. Individuals are most useful if they know both languages and honestly, the differences are not that big. Microsoft has an entire website dedicated to smart device development. Another great reference for more information is Open NETCF. |
