PDA Programming

[Tesla1886]

I have a job that requires that I do a lot of traveling on a daily basis. I have been looking for a program that I can track my mileage on a daily, monthly and yearly basis for tax purposes. I also would like to have my list of the trips that I have made include description, date, mileage traveled and cost of trip.

I would also like the program to be able track my fuel usage. IE Miles per Gallon, Cost per mile etc.

However I have not been able to even a decent program I like to do one or the other let alone both. So I decided that I would create my own.

However, although I have written several programs in VB 6, I have not written any in VB .NET and certainly not for the PDA. I have no idea were to start or how to proceed.

Any body have any suggetions on how I can proceed.

I know that VB .NET is a significantly different then VB 6, how much different is it? Are the most used commands the same like if then, else goto etc the same or has everything changed?

[Siddharth Rout]

Never done mobile programming in my life....

But I guess this link might help you...

http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/Articl...bSectionID=111

[Shaggy Hiker]

I was totally in VB6 until I had to write for a PDA, at which point I quickly became enamored of .NET, and would never willingly go back.

The keywords, and basic concepts are similar enough between .NET and VB6 that you won't find it so different. However, there are many issues regarding mobile programming. For one thing, you really don't want to use more than one form if you can avoid it because forms are slow to load. You might load them all at once, but why? A better solution would be to use panels with all the controls on them, and keep swapping panels into and out of the view, rather than loading and unloading forms. Search this forum for some examples and discussion of that. I posted some examples a while back.

The other issue with mobiles is that you can't get many controls on the screen at any one time, so you need to lay out the panels in some logical sequence. I have one panel that has a label, a textbox, and a ten key number pad (with a decimal point). I use that panel whenever I want to enter a number. The label is changed to the specific field I am entering, and even fat fingers can hit number keys that big. I also have a << and >> button so that the user enters the first field, then the next field, etc., until they have entered all the fields for the particular data item (like all the fields you might enter for a single trip, or a single fill up, or whatever data event you might have).

Another feature of mobile programming with .NET is that the database, which you can hardly avoid, is SQLServerCE. It's pretty nice, but I find it easier to set up simple databases in code. Also, depending on your exact system, there might be a real advantage to locating the database on some kind of removable storage, such as an SD card. On my system, if the battery runs down, anything in RAM is lost. Other systems have a secondary battery that maintains memory when the main battery runs down, but not mine. It's annoying to have to reload programs whenever I forget to charge the battery, but it would be far more annoying to lose data.

That's a start.