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Pocket PC Developer Network / Sections /

eMbedded Visual Basic

Common information about eMbedded Visual Basic. Use this section if you haven't found necessary information in detailed sections.

Articles at Pocket PC Developer Network

  • Pie Chart in eVB
    September 26, 2002. This article helps you to display your data as a pie chart in eVB program. It gives a sample code that you can use and modify.

MSDN Technical Articles

  • Calling Secure Web Services
    Add security to your Web Service-based eMbedded Visual Basic applications for Pocket PC as I walk you through some sample code.
  • Two for the Road: ePhoto Album with eMbedded Visual Basic
    August 28, 2001. In lieu of this month's originally planned content, I have decided to present an eMbedded Visual Basic application called ePhoto Album. This application is a digital picture album that allows you to organize and display digital photographs on your Pocket PC.
  • Two for the Road: Organize Your Life with eMbedded Visual Basic
    March 26, 2002. I happen to think that planning for traveling is a lot like writing mobile applications in eMbedded Visual C++R. They both take a lot of work, require a whole lot of time, and are unforgiving of your mistakes. What I need in the way of travel preparation is something more like eMbedded Visual BasicR-quick and easy to do. It is with this thought in mind that I sat down and wrote this month's application-Pocket List.
  • Tap-n-Hold Pop-Up Menus in eMbedded Visual Basic
    July 25, 2001. You can create Pocket PC tap-and-hold pop-up menus using eMbedded Visual Basic and some Windows API calls.
  • Create Edit Menus in eMbedded Visual Basic
    July 25, 2001. You can create traditional edit menus using eMbedded Visual Basic and some Windows API calls.
  • Using Windows CE APIs from eMbedded Visual Basic
    May 8, 2001. The application programming interface(API) Viewer makes it easier to declare and utilize API calls in Microsoft Windows CE.
  • Program Your Own Contacts Application with eMbedded Visual Basic
    Apr. 17, 2001. Develop and extend the built-in Contacts application on your Pocket PC.
  • Speed Up Debugging in eMbedded Visual Basic
    Feb. 27, 2001. One of the first tricks developers using Microsoft eMbedded Visual BasicR learn is how to speed up the debugging process.
  • Using the MenuBar Control in Your Pocket PC Applications Created with eMbedded Visual Basic
    Nov. 30, 2000. Maximize screen real estate and give users a consistent experience.
  • A Simple VBCE Task Manager
    July 1999. In addition to several ancillary Microsoft WindowsR CE development techniques, the Visual BasicR Task Manager sample demonstrates three fundamental concepts: creation of a Windows CE Automation object in Visual C++R; use of the Windows CE Automation object from Visual Basic; and manipulation of system and task resources in Windows CE. (8 printed pages) Developers familiar with building applications for the Windows desktop or server platforms will find that building applications for Windows CE involves little additional training. Windows CE contains a subset of the Win32R API found on traditional Windows machines, giving developers a similar programming model and interface for constructing compelling mobile solutions for the next generation of computing devices.

MS Knowledge base

DEVBUZZ.COM

  • Drop down and drop out
    16 Jan 2002. Carl Davis gives some expert advice on a workaround for combo boxes with too many elements? You may be asking, "What is he getting at?" I mean applications where there are dozens of items that appear in a combo box. For example, have you ever have an application that includes a list of all 50 states? A combo box is literally a drag (or at least a scroll) to use. You need to scroll and scroll to find the right item. How many times have you accidentally tapped "off" the scroll bar only to have the wrong selection and need to start over?
  • Simulating Object Orientated Programming with eVB
    27 Feb 2002. This article by Chris May on simulating OOP using eVB is inspired! Now that we have talked a little about why OOP is a GOOD thing, we come to the real challenge. How can we program in an OO fashion, using a language that is not based on objects and at the same time has no collection objects to work with? Well thankfully, Odyssey Software has developed a set of utilities called OSI Utilities that provides eVB developers with a Collection object (as well as fixing the CreateObject memory leak). We will be implementing the OSI Utilities Collection in many places in our code.
  • Calling complex Windows API functions from eVB
    27 Jun 2002. There are a lot of questions in newsgroups that have a simple eVC solution, but don't have a straightforward solution in eVB. For example; How can I enumerate flash cards using eVB? How can I get a battery status using eVB? How can I get system information using eVB? The list of similar questions is never-ending. For eVC it is simple enough to supply the name of an appropriate API function. This however does not apply to eMbedded Visual Basic since these API calls target functions that use structures and pointers and there is no standard way in eVB to call such functions.
  • Simulating Dynamic Control Creation in eVB
    10 Jan 2002. In most applications, we can come up with a definitive set of controls and place them on a form to give the user all of the flexibility they could possibly need. There are, however, other situations in which we don't know how many controls need to be placed on a form until the program is actually running. This presents a problem for eVB developers (particularly because some of the most useful Pocket PC software involved user-defined lists of one sort or another). In this article, I will present a straight-forward solution to this problem.
  • An Open Source HTMLViewer control for eVB
    4 Jan 2002. Tim Wilson discusses his open source HTMLViewer control; "It seems that all too often designing an effective user interface for the Pocket PC turns out to be a daunting task. As a developer, I usually find myself between a rock, aesthetically pleasing the end user, and a hard place, making best use of the limited screen size. Finally, through necessity, a control was born. Dubbed the HTMLViewer, this control is essentially an ActiveX wrapper for basic HTML functionality..."
  • Drawing Fonts Directly on an eVB Form
    1 Jan 2002. Chris Tacke delves into the API's used to manipulate fonts on your Pocket PC from eVB; "A few weeks ago, in my daily browsing of newsgroups and developer lists, I came across an innocuous question posted by another developer looking for some help. "How do I display a Label vertically on my Form?" It's a reasonable question and the ability to display text in an orientation other than horizontal is nice in a lot of situations. The challenge was going to be getting eVB, with all of its inherent limitations, to play along.
  • DeveloperOne's OutALine - A text outliner for the Pocket PC
    26 Dec 2001. DeveloperOne's OutALine is quite simply a text outliner for the Pocket PC, enabling users to arrange text, or items, into a hierarchal structure. With a relatively simple and intuitive interface, OutALine's has equally simple but fitting preferences, with selectors for checkboxes, drag and drop editing and options for displaying the note-display bar and font size. Most useful of the preferences is the ability to set a different font color for up to eight outline levels, further reinforcing the structure of the hierarchal "tree" and the organization of one item relative to another.
  • Retrieving Device Data from the Desktop with SQLink
    20 Dec 2001. If you're looking for a unique solution for transferring data from a Windows CE device to the desktop then check out this solution from Chris Tacke; "About a year ago we started development on an enterprise application for a customer that had several Pocket PC devices that were used for data collection in the field. The idea was that an administrator could assign certain "jobs" to a user through a PC interface and push those jobs to the user's device. The user would then collect field data and when they were done at the end of the day, the data would be extracted from the devices and put into a central database."
  • Writing a 2 player Tic-Tac-Toe game in eVB for your Pocket PC
    17 Dec 2001. Pete Vickers shows us how to write a 2 player - 2 Pocket PC Tic-Tac-Toe game; "As any sharp-eyed reader may have noticed, I have a rather sad interest in TCP/IP and its use on the Pocket PC. When working with eVB, it is rather like being interested in constantly banging your head on the wall, but after a while, you forget about the pain, and just get on with it. I got a bee in my bonnet about writing a noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) game playable between 2 Pocket PC's using IRDA or ethernet and eVB. During the creation of the game, I used several of the articles on devBuzz..."
  • Using NTP to set the time on your Pocket PC
    9 Dec 2001. Pete Vickers shows us how to set the time on our Pocket PC using NTP; "I was talking to someone who needed the correct time on their Pocket PC for deliveries etc and needed to access a time server. There are many 'time servers' that can be accessed on the internet which will give you the correct time using NTP (Network Time Protocol). Quite difficult to do in VB6, never mind eVB, but undaunted, we will continue."
  • PocketASP, ASP on your Pocket PC
    5 Dec 2001. I just love ASP - deVBuzz is an out an out ASP + SQL Server site. Hence no secret about why I loved this PocketASP article from Vince Singleton of ModeZero - the company behind PocketASP. "Give a lazy man the hardest job and he'll find the easiest way of doing it. Now I'm not saying I'm lazy of course, but when I first started looking into developing applications on the Pocket PC platform there's plenty there that makes you think there could be some long nights ahead."
  • Making eMbedded Visual Basic Applications Portable Using Abstraction
    3 Dec 2001. deVBuzz contributing author Chris Tacke on portability; "It's something VB programmers haven't worried about, or probably even thought about since the times of the 486, Windows 3.x and VB 4. Sure, when VB 5 was released there were still some hold out customers that wanted 16 bit applications, but for the most part the notion of VB code needing to address portability went the way of the dinosaur when Windows 95 and 98 had fully taken over the PC market."
  • Creating POOM items using PIE Web pages
    29 Nov 2001. The ability to manipulating Pocket Outlook items such as Contacts, Appointments and Tasks from an eVB app is a very cool feature. Once the various items are added into the outlook database, your app could filter and display those items based on the user's preferences, or allow the user to quickly find a specific item. However, the process of creating a new outlook item is usually a manual process. The user typically selects "New" and then tediously enters the various text data of the item using the very small SIP keyboard or by writing on the screen. This is not only a time consuming task, but it is prone to errors.
  • Focus on Building the Console - Part 2 of 2
    25 Nov 2001. Brent Pinkley wraps up his two part series on MSMQ for the Pocket PC; "The purpose of the MSMQ Console application is to serve as both a full-fledged development project and as a practical administrative tool to manage messages and queues on the Pocket PC. It is an attempt to take many different techniques that have been discussed through previous articles and in the forums, and combine them in a way that facilitates learning how the design process works."
  • Signature capture with eVB
    20 Nov 2001. Simon Rackstraw "signs" off on signature capture and retrieval: "Sooner or later anyone involved in enterprise level development for the Pocket PC is going to be asked about digital signature capture. There's no denying that it's a powerful feature for applications that requires some form of authorisation - whether it's the customer's signature on an order form, or an engineer signing off a vehicle as being roadworthy."
  • Creating Pocket PC Games in eVB Using ASpriteCE
    11 Nov 2001. Some straight talking from Andy Beaulieu; "Let's face it: eVB has a bad rap when it comes to creating fast action games. eVC (and to some extent Assembly) have been the accepted languages for game development on the PocketPC. This is unfortunate, as the intuitive nature of eVB can make any type of application quick to develop and fun to create. The main reason for eVB being an unpopular choice for action games is its speed. Being that eVB is an interpreted language, it can be hundreds of times slower than eVC code at performing comparable operations. And to create that next best-selling PocketPC game, you can bet fast graphics will be a prerequisite for your tool of choice."
  • Designing an MSMQ Console Application - Part 1 of 2
    9 Nov 2001. Brent Pinkley walks us through laying the foundation for enabling MSMQ functionality in your Pocket PC applications; "Enterprise solutions are becoming more and more distributed. With the evolution of the Pocket PC as an integral part of many of these solutions, the necessity for managing intermittently connected processes is becoming critical. Even a traditional, networked environment can benefit from the techniques used to manage a network connection that may not always be present."
  • IDSSAPI Part 2 & 3 - A useful set of API wrappers for eVB developers
    5 Nov 2001. Robert Levy wraps up his review of IDSSAPI. It was my intention to make part 2 of this article series a list of instructions explaining how to install it on your development machine and deploy software that uses IDSSAPI to devices of various processors by modifying .INF and .CAB files. At least, that was the plan until I received an email from IDSS and found the following message on their web site: "In an effort to make redistribution of IDSSAPI easier for you, we've made modifications to the development install of the IDSSAPI libraries. Attached you will find a setup executable file that will install the DLLs to your hard drive, register the application with the CE Application Install Wizard as well as make registry entries to add full IDSSAPI support to the eVB App Packaging Wizard."
  • Looks Matter Too
    2 Nov 2001. A look at the struggles encountered in making an eVB application presentable for commercial distribution by simply getting it to launch from a unique and appropriate icon. Dwayne discusses the how-to articles that don't, and the one that does, as well as the automation tool "ICon Ship", created to save time and prevent costly errors in your distribution files.
  • Configuring Remote Data Access
    30 Oct 2001. In his debut column for deVBuzz Rick Winscot provides us with a detailed visual overview on how to configure Remote Data Access for SQL Server for CE. Remote Data Access on CE handhelds is implemented by a few dll's, a relay agent, IIS and SQL Server. Each piece has its own job, and putting them together can present an issue if you aren't familiar with how they work together.
  • Generating eVB forms from XML documents
    Aug 2001. In this article I will show you how to display an XML document using windows common controls and EVB.
  • ng eVB forms from XML documents - Part II
    Oct 2001. This article focuses on that sector where we will use the EVB and MSXML parser to send the XML document to the server and display the information that was sent from the server after the successful upload.
  • Some real world advice starting out with eVB
    Welcome to the world of Windows CE programming. You are about to step outside of the centrally-heated comfort of Visual Basic into the brisk fresh outdoors that is eMbedded Visual Basic (eVB). The object of this article is to help prepare the seasoned VB-er (and relative newcomer too, as it doesn't necessarily take years of experience to produce commercial-quality programs) for the transition to the PocketPC development environment.
  • eVB Magnification Lens for your Pocket PC using Windows CE API.
    This small program demonstrates using various API, (Application programming Interface), functions necessary to create a magnification lens for a windows based PDA. It proved to be quite interesting since some of the most common API calls were either not available or could not be used on a PDA. It was written as an experiment rather than for a commercial application.
  • Use Microsoft eVB (eMbedded Visual Basic) to implement a Currency Converter - Part II.
    This is the second part to add to my first tutorial (eVB Currency Converter) due to the increasing number of requests I've seen for a simple keypad. In this tutorial we will be adding a numeric keypad to make entering of the currency a little easier than using the conventional keyboard (as we are only interested in entering numbers).
  • Use Microsoft eVB (eMbedded Visual Basic) to implement a Currency Converter - Part I.
    This is an application l have designed under eVB that simply converts from one currency to another currency of your choice. My currency converter application gathers the required information from a text file and displays in the combo boxes.
  • eVB Tap 'n' hold Menu
    Hello, and welcome to Popup Menus in eVB 101! This is sure to be an exciting lesson, so sharpen your pencils, get comfortable, and ready to go. Oh by the way, if you need to contact me, I can be reached at okseriously.com.
  • First Application with eVB
    The goal of this tutorial is very simply to write and test your first Pocket PC application using eVB. This will: give you a taste of how easy it is to get started provide an overview of the eVB integrated design environment (IDE) test your recent installation of the eMbedded Visual Tools
  • Sockets project with eVB and VB6.
    Oct 2001. So once again, dusting off and donning the thinking cap I set to work. I decided to delve into the twilight zone of eVC, and write a wrapper for the sockets API callable from eVB. This article is the result of my labours, and contains the eVB and VB code to write a 'mickey-mouse' client server application WITHOUT the use of Winsock.ocx, or a safety net.
  • IDSSAPI Part 1 of 3 - A useful set of API wrappers for eVB developers
    Oct 2001. Any seasoned Visual Basic 6 programmer who has picked up a Pocket PC and spent any more than 15 minutes playing with embedded Visual Basic will be quite vocal in pointing out that eVB just doesn't want to do what you want to do. Innovative Decision Support Systems (IDSS) has come to our rescue with IDSSAAPPII, a library of functions guaranteed to solve the most common problems VB6 programmers find when transitioning to eVB.

Innovative Decision Support Systems

  • Shutting Down External Applications from eVB
    10/12/01. Shutting down an external application by simply sending WM_CLOSE to a window is unstable and dangerous. In this article Chris Tacke shows how to shut down an external app safely.
  • Implementing your own DoEvents in eVB
    9/18/01. Using DoEvents in any version of VB seems to always spark debate. Maybe that's why the eVB team didn't include it. Regardless, some people feel there are times when it's necessary, so here is an implementation for CE.
  • How to Limit a TextBox to Numeric Input in eVB
    Force a TextBox to accept only numeric input without validation code by using the API. This is much more efficient than a Select...Case in the KeyDown event handler

Libraries

  • vbceMessage
    ActiveX control. vbceMessage provides a way around this problem. vbceMessage allows your VBCE application to process windows messages. You simply pass the handle to the window whose messages you want to trap, and vbceMessage does the rest (Note: the window must be owned by your VBCE application - you cannot trap the desktop window, for instance). Your VBCE event handler routine will be notified whenever a message is sent. This event handler can process any windows message, and provides access to parameter information as well.
  • User Notification
    ActiveX control. User Notification ActiveX Control will allow a program to display a Windows CE User Notification dialog box (same dialog used for reminders).
  • IDSSAPI
    ActiveX control. eMbedded VB developers have been frustrated with their limited ability to easily call APIs since eVB first appeared. IDSSAPI (pronounced id-sappy) is here to help. We've wrapped a lot of the common functions as well as added in stuff that is undocumented.
  • vbceUtil v2
    ActiveX control. The VBCE Utility Control is an easy to use, yet powerful ActiveX control for VBCE developers using HPC, HPC/Pro, PPC, or Pocket PC devices. It provides many features not found within the VBCE programming language such as shelling to another application, storage statistics, Registry access, and more...
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