book advice for Win Mobile

[davros51]

I am about to start creating a rather involved application for a Windows Mobile 5.0 pocket pc using the .NET compact framework, specifically VB .NET. I am relatively new to .NET and have never programmed for mobile computers. The application will be gathering data, possibly including photos, and transferring that information to a pc in a car or van. I would really appreciate any advice on better books to learn compact VB .NET. Thanks!!

[Shaggy Hiker]

You might search this forum for that. I think I posted a couple of books a few months ago (and I can't remember which authors they were now), but they may not help.

Oddly, I haven't found any really good general CF books. The ones I actually keep on hand have to do with SQL CE programming, and I keep them because I keep forgetting the SQL syntax.

Basically, the CF is the same as .NET, except that a bunch of things are missing. Therefore, I generally use a couple of .NET books, and the MSDN documentation to tell me what features are not available. You, too, might find that books specific to the CF are not all that useful.

However, there is one exception to that that I am aware of. Loading forms is so painfully slow that you need to have some strategy to deal with them. Unlike normal .NET programming, you don't want to be loading and unloading forms at will, the user will know when it is happening, because they will be left waiting around for the form to load.

There are two ways that I know of to get around this, and one of them came from a book on the CF (the other came from here, possibly from Strider). The technique I use is to have a single form with several panels sized to the size of the display. All controls go on the panels, and the panels are swapped into and out of the view area as needed. This looks like forms, but it happens instantaneously as far as the user is concerned. You'd have to search for the other technique, I think it has to do with loading all the forms at once, and showing as needed, but I may not have it right.

[davros51]

Thanks for the reply! I find it interesting that no one has published a good book yet on the Windows Mobile 5.0 api. Whenever a new version of Windows comes out you can rely on there being dozens of books covering the new release. With the move to smaller and smaller hardware requirements for data gathering it would seem to me that someone would see the need for a book detailing the Win Mobile 5.0 api. Looks like I am going to have to feel my way through this.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

[FastEddie]

This is not a book but as I find myself in a similar situation I did a search and ran across this site, which seems to be chuck full of 5.0 Mobile CE (API) information.

Pocket PC Developer Network

I hope you find something useful there.