Well my latest Microsoft project has hit the download site and it's definitely been the fastest yet! It's also a slightly different direction then the normal fare. Usually my work is intended for demonstration. Some code, a script, and sometimes hands-on-lab sessions. This time it was 95% code, along with a ReadMe file. Along with another guy, I co-wrote a mobile starter kit application for mobile development, specifically targeting Windows XP Tablet Edition called the Mobile Ink To-Do Starter Kit.
The premise is a todo-style list where you use the tablet pen to write your items, then you can save them locally. It also saves to a web service. It takes advantage of complex ink features such as write, erase, scratch-out, highlight, and select (the other guy did that stuff!), and background stuff like network and power awareness, and local/remote serialization (my stuff). It's a bit simplistic, but it's a starter kit -- that's the point! It works immediately, plus there's plenty of room for enhancements. Code is available in C# or VB (my job porting).
The power awareness is able to detect if the tablet is on AC or batter power and the current battery charge percentage. It can also detect if it is online or offline and overall link speed. Persisting the data is simple XML serialization, either locally or on the web service side. These are all great technologies to learn and can be applied in a lot of projects. For this application, the power and network status drives whether saves are made locally, remotely, or at all. Of course specific events (such as closing the app) can force a save to take place.
Another neat aspect of this project was creating the VSI (Visual Studio Installer) file. This feature of Visual Studio lets you double-click to install items (in this case projects) in the list of items that Visual Studio can create. After installing this VSI, if you go to the New Project dialog for C# or VB, under Starter Kits, you'll see the Mobile Ink To-Do List project type.
Visual Studio lets you create single item or single project templates, but compositing them together into a four-project extravaganza was challenging! There were the C# and VB versions, then each version consisted of two projects (the application itself and the web service). The combination of .vstemplate and .vscontent files needed some hand tweaking but turned out well. I'll blog about how that works in my next entry.
The project was fun, and I even got to rub shoulders with Dr. Neil Roodyn. He's an authority on mobile dev and tech. I got to meet him face-to-face at the PDC, then again on a conference call. Definitely a sharp guy! If you have a tablet notebook this starter kit is most applicable, but even with no ink capabilities, you can run it as long as you download the Tablet SDK. Take a look at:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7904c28d-6766-4e82-ada0-59332694c866
posted @ Friday, November 04, 2005 12:15 AM