There are simply no excuses, except for being a bit busy with teaching Windows Mobile classes and speaking at conferences, why this weekly column has not been updated frequently. I will try and start to improve this today. There are enough things to talk about to fill a number of columns. This week I want to spend some time talking about the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit. I realize it sounds double, making up excuses why I didn't write columns over the last few months and at the same time complaining about a lack of documentation, but I feel I need to write this column anyway.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK contains all the tools you need to write applications that make use of new functionality that is available for Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. This product has recently been released by Microsoft to allow you to develop your own Widgets (being defined by Jorge Peraza as single-purpose applications that can display data obtained from the Internet). The DTK also ships with header files, a library and sample code to make use of the Gesture APIs that are used to handle touch gesture input on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. The sample code is currently not documented, although rumor is that articles will be available on MSDN on how to use the Gesture APIs. As part of the Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK, a number of emulator images are available as well. Even though it does not make much sense, playing with Gesture APIs in combination with the Device Emulator, it is a great chance for everybody to get an idea of what Windows Mobile 6.5 devices will have to offer when they become available. The Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK is not a complete Software Development Kit, meaning you need to install the Windows Mobile 6 SDK prior to installing the Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK. This automatically means that there is a high level of compatibility between Windows Mobile 6 and Windows Mobile 6.5 devices, definitely for application developers. Only if you want to make use of the new specific features of Windows Mobile 6.5 like Gesture APIs and Widgets, you have to install the Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK. I really appreciate that Microsoft made this download available for all of us, Windows Mobile developers. However, it would have been great if documentation would get a bit higher priority as well. After all, if you want to get started developing your own applications making use of the new Gesture APIs it seems that you need to develop your application in native code and you only have three sample applications available with limited comments in source code. This means you have to invest some significant time to learn how to use the Gesture APIs. Another thing I am wondering right now is why there is no support for managed developers. At a first glance, it seems that the Gesture APIs are provided through a static library, meaning a managed developer can’t P/Invoke to make use of the Gesture APIs unless you provided your own wrapper around this library. I might (and I honestly hope) that I am wrong with this conclusion, because it would make me feel like a second class citizen, being a managed developer. So again, I am glad we get new tools to make use of the latest features of Windows Mobile 6.5 devices very early; however, to really be productive and make use of new APIs, it would have been great to have the documentation ready by the time the DTK shipped as well. Hopefully this will happen with future versions and hopefully the story for managed and native developers will be equally cool with future Windows Mobile tools.