Peter Foot

September 2007 - Posts

• How To: Use the AuthenticationDialog

  Networking In The Hand 2.0 offers a new dialog which allows you to prompt the user for networking credentials. The dialog is designed for the best appearance depending on your platform, for example the screenshots below show both Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC and Windows Mobile 6 Standard Landscape:-       If your application stores authentication details you can pre-populate the dialog. Optionally you can display a Save Settings checkbox on the form. The following code snippet shows how to display the dialog and return the credentials as an ICredentials object:- private ICredentials GetCredentials(string resourceName) {    InTheHand.Windows.Forms.AuthenticationDialog ad = new InTheHand.Windows.Forms.AuthenticationDialog();    ad.ResourceName = resourceName;    if(ad.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK)    {         return new NetworkCredential(ad.Username, ad.Password, ad.Domain);    }    else    {       return null;    } } Posted Sep 28 2007, 10:28 AM by Peter Foot Filed under: How To

• New Networking Component

  In The Hand Ltd today released Networking In The Hand, a developer library for the .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and 3.5 Beta. This library adds additional networking functionality not found in in the Compact Framework while matching the object model used in the full .NET framework to make it easy to share your code between platforms. Functionality includes:- InTheHand.Net.WebClient - Provides helper methods for working with information upload and download over HTTP and FTP transports, and any other WebRequest based implementations. InTheHand.Net.FtpWebRequest - Provides a complete desktop compatible implementation of the WebRequest pattern for FTP. InTheHand.Net.WebRequestMethods - Provides a reference of all the HTTP and FTP methods (GET/POST etc) InTheHand.Net.NetworkInformation.Ping - Perform a Ping and determine network availability and performance. InTheHand.Net.NetworkInformation.IPGlobalProperties - Retrieve a wide range of networking statistics to measure traffic and help identify faults. The library is licensed on a per-developer basis with no additional royalties required to distribute the runtime with your applications. Full details on the product can be found on the product details page - http://inthehand.com/content/Networking.aspx. A fully functionality Evaluation version is available to download - http://inthehand.com/files/folders/evals/entry4014.aspx. Posted Sep 21 2007, 11:45 AM by Peter Foot Filed under: NETCF

• Stephen Fry is Blogging

  Stephen Fry, intellectual and comic hero has not only started blogging, but started talking about mobile devices. Definitely worth a read. (from Dave Sussman) Posted Sep 21 2007, 09:49 AM by Peter Foot Filed under: Blogs

• Friday Fun: Untamed Workforce

  There are videos and photos doing the rounds from a new spoof information site for Windows Mobile which takes a light-hearted look at mobile working. Why not take a look?   Posted Sep 21 2007, 06:15 AM by Peter Foot Filed under: Oddities

• HTC S620 Windows Mobile 6 Upgrade Experience

  Late last week HTC quietly released the Windows Mobile 6 upgrade for the S620. A few eagle eyed bloggers posted about it. The first thing I found was that the upgrade process doesn't work with Windows Vista, when it reboots the device into bootloader mode the computer fails to connect. I had to run the upgrade from a Windows XP machine (where it worked flawlessy). Upon rebooting I had a fresh clean Windows Mobile 6 device. I noticed that HTC had left the default "Mobile Operator" screen during boot up, only after running its initial setup was this removed. Everything was working great, I was able to setup my exchange server in ActiveSync and get all my PIM data back onto the device. The lock dialog is slightly altered in this release, rather than tapping the right softkey to cancel you have to tap the right soft-key to open the menu and select the second option (option 1 is "Reset Password" but is disabled). The reason I often cancel this screen is because I just want to check the home screen for the time / next appointment. The time can optionally be displayed on the unlock screen but only for the key lock, I no longer use that because my exchange provider enforces a password. There are a few fancy UI features, the improvements to the calendar day screen are welcome along with the ability to edit task items. Essentially there are few differences to Windows Mobile 5.0 in the look and feel and layout of start menu and applications. One interesting change is that the alarm can now be set to operate only on weekdays, or every day. It's still not as flexible as other approaches, and the default sound applied to the alarm is rather alarming to say the least! With my initial success I then tried docking the device with my main Vista machine. On this machine I'm running the latest Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1. When I connected the S620 popped up a message telling me to upgrade to ActiveSync 4.5 or later on my PC. Fellow MVP Jaap van Ekris was able to point out a simple workaround. Just go to Start > Settings > Connections > USB to PC and uncheck "Enable advanced network functionality". It now partners correctly with my Vista machine. Posted Sep 03 2007, 08:14 AM by Peter Foot Filed under: Windows Mobile