.Net Compact Framework Development...Performance...

Hello everyone.

I inherited a project from someone, and it happens to be a Pocket PC targed application written using the .Net Compact Framework.

First thing I noticed is that this person built it with only one form. He build many panels on the form, and does a balancing act between them based off of what is clicked.

I asked why he did that, and he said for performance reasons. He said that it is huge performance hit to have multiple forms in a .Net compact framework application. I laughed and said this is a load of crap, and that all he is doing is creating one form with all the resources being loaded all at once.

Surely tell me I am right on this one. I have no experience with Pocket PC development, but this seems like he went to the extreme. I understand using a tab control and what not, but this went to far if you ask me.

What do all you say about this?

Very little CE dev going on huh?...

i'm hopefully going to be doing a bit soon. I'm suprised there aren't people on here doing development work with the compact framework.

Perhaps if it takes off there could be a seperate forum under the .net grouping?

Well.. he may have a point.

A Form is a super-bloated container control with many extended properties and methods.

And yes, a Panel is a lighter-weight container control.

So there may be some validity to the argument if he was trying to save memory on a MDI application, where they may have been 5+ windows open at one time. How he would simulate that using panels is beyond me.

I think a normal programmer would have a Sub Main, which would unload a form when its not being used, and load another form when its needed... and the GC would take care of things in course. Additionally, creating 15 panels and all the controls inside at once is resource abuse, compared to 3 forms with their controls, loaded only when their needed. Unless he only instantiates the panels when needed, and properly sets them to nothing when he's done with them. Then, he probably was in the right.

So, while he has some basis in his argument, it ignores the fact that he simply designed the architecture the wrong way, and he probably went too far by using just one form, and realized little if any efficiency.

I've played about with smartphone development which I think uses a version of windows ce. Can't see I've ever noticed any difference whatsoever loading new forms - okay they'll be a slight performance hit compared to using panels as you'd get on a standard vb.net windows app, but nothing major to worry about.

Re-code it to work with multiple forms!