User Interface

Articles at Pocket PC Developer Network

• QA: How can I close my application by clicking the smart minimize (X) button?
  August 19, 2003. When I press the smart minimize (X) button the application is minimized instead of beeing closed. How can I handle smart minimize button click in my application to close it?
• Smart Minimize button on Pocket PC 2002
  May 08, 2002. Pocket PC 2002 introduces a new feature - Smart Minimize button. This article describes working with this button - its behavior, button removing and handling.
• QA: How to disable red dots in the list control?
  February 12, 2004. I have a list control in my application. This listbox does not need a context menu, and therefore I don't want running red dots to appear while the user holds the stylus on the control.
• QA: How do I embed a Pocket Word document in my application?
  January 30, 2004. How can I view or edit a Pocket Word document in my application?
• QA: How do I right-align a button on a toolbar?
  January 21, 2004. Toolbar buttons are always inserted from the left to the right. How can I insert buttons that are right aligned?
• QA: How to create a spin control like in Microsoft programs?
  November 26, 2003. In standard Pocket PC applications spin control has special Pocket PC look and feel. How can I create the same looking spin control?
• QA: How do I add a title to a view?
  October 29, 2003. I want to add a title to a CView. How do I do this without changing my view code?
• QA: How do I create a combo box with check marks?
  October 07, 2003. I want to create a combo box with check marks on its items. How do I do it?
• QA: Where is the DC FloodFill method?
  September 24, 2003. Where is the DC FloodFill method?
• QA: How do I scroll the contents of a dialog?
  September 22, 2003. I have a dialog that does not fit on the screen. How can I scroll its contents?
• QA: How can I change the background color of a Tree Control?
  September 04, 2003. How can I change the background color of a Tree Control?
• QA: How can I change the background color of the header of a List Control?
  August 27, 2003. How can I change the background color of the header of a List Control?
• QA: How can I use a property sheet to implement a Wizard?
  August 11, 2003. How can I use a property sheet to implement a wizard-like dialog?
• QA: Why a property page with a date time picker cannot be created?
  July 28, 2003. My property sheet does not display correctly when I add a date time picker control to one of the pages. Why? How can I solve this?
• QA: How can I create a wizard style dialog?
  July 25, 2003. I was very frustated as I tried to use the property sheet dialog (CPropertySheet) in wizard style and found out that this style is not supported under the Pocket PC implementation of the MFC. So, how can I create my own wizard style dialog?
• QA: Why empty edit box with no border doesn't show caret?
  July 22, 2003. I am using an edit box with no border. I noticed that it doesn't show caret when no text is entered to it. This also happens with comboboxes. Why does this happen? How can I fix this?
• QA: How can I create a property sheet with menubar and minimize button?
  July 17, 2003. I am using a property sheet (CPropertySheet) in my dialog based MFC application. How can I create a property sheet with accessible menubar and minimize button?
• QA: How to check a toolbar button from ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handler?
  July 14, 2003. I am using CCmdUI::SetCheck method in my ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handler. It works fine for menus but fails for buttons. How can I fix this?
• QA: How can I create a "flat" tab control?
  June 24, 2003. I created a tab control. I want it to look flat like tab controls in Settings applets and other standard apps. How can I do this?
• QA: How to enable update command UI mechanism in dialogs?
  June 19, 2003. I am writing an MFC-based application. I added a menu and/or a toolbar to one of my dialogs. I also wrote ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handlers for it. But they are never called. How can I fix this?
• QA: Why ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handlers get called again and again?
  June 19, 2003. I added some ON_UPDATE_COMMAND_UI handlers in order to update buttons on my menubar. I noticed that my handlers are called again and again all the time even if I do nothing with my program. This happens on 2002 devices but not on 2000 devices. Why is this happening and how can I fix this?
• QA: Where are the MoveTo and LineTo methods?
  June 09, 2003. The MoveTo and LineTo HDC methods are not supported. How can I implement them?
• QA: How do I get the command bar menu handle?
  June 04, 2003. I want to get the handle of command bar menu so that I can change it. Where is it?
• All about context menu
  September 18, 2002. Context menu is a very important element of Pocket PC user interface but unfortunatelly this feature is not described enough in helps. This articles explains using context menu in eVC++ applications and gives step-by-step instructions.
• Developing full screen applications using STFullScreen library
  July 01, 2001. Although Pocket PC provides a special SHFullScreen function there are many untrevial aspects of using it. In this article I describe an easy way of creating full screen applications for Pocket PC using STFullScreen library and a wizard.
• Using SHFullScreen for writing full screen applications
  June 29, 2001. One of the most frequently asked questions in Pocket PC developer newsgroups is how to create a full screen application. Although the answer is simple "use SHFullScreen function" it is not actually a real answer because there are several aspects that a developer should keep in mind when working with SHFullScreen function.
• QA: How can I create a tree control with checkboxes?
  May 16, 2002. I am using a tree control in my eVC application. I want to display checkboxes for the tree items. I have selected checkbox option in the properties dialog but when I added nodes to the tree it is not displaying checkboxes. How can I fix it?
• QA: How to disable "red dots" in a list view or tree view?
  April 16, 2003. I'm using a list view or a tree view in my app. When the user tap-and-holds stylus on the control the red dot animation is shown. I don't need a context menu in my application so I want to disable these red dots. How can I do this?
• QA: How can I implement the second toolbar like the one in Pocket Word?
  April 02, 2003. I want to make two command bars in my application like it is implemented in Pocket Word. The second one should slide up automatically when SIP is shown. How can I do it?
• QA: How can I get file extension icon?
  March 19, 2003. I want to write my own Open File dialog. How can I get file icon?
• QA: Why does not CPropertySheet work with transcriber?
  January 04, 2003. I use CPropertySheet class to display some property sheets in my application. I noticed that every time I try to use transcriber when a property sheet is open it just closes. How can I fix this?
• QA: How can I insert an icon to the Pocket PC task bar?
  November 05, 2002. I want my icon to appear in the task bar (the blue bar on the top of the screen). How can I do it?
• QA: How to add a lot of items to the ListView control?
  May 30, 2002. I have to add many items to a list view in my program. But the process is VERY slow. How can I speed things up?
• QA: How to emulate DT_END_ELLIPSIS flag of DrawText function?
  May 27, 2002. On desktop platforms DrawText function supports DT_END_ELLIPSIS flag which allows to truncate the string and add ellipsis ("...") to the end of it if it doesn't fit in the specified rect. But this flag is not implemented on Pocket PC. How can I emulate it?
• QA: How to implement "graceful shutdown" in application with modal dialog boxes?
  May 22, 2002. My application uses a number of modal dialog boxes to interact with the user. But I've noticed that when a dialog box is opened I can't shutdown the application "gracefully" using Settings->System->Memory window. How can I fix this?
• QA: How to create a colored button?
  April 24, 2002. I would like to have the buttons in my MFC application have the custom color. How could I do that?
• QA: How to create a flat combo box?
  March 25, 2002. How to create a flat combo box (same as in Pocket Word above the file list and used for selecting sorting order)?
• QA: How can I create a dialog title like in Control Panel property pages?
  March 06, 2002. In standard Pocket PC applications they have a special header in dialogs with blue bold title. How can I insert this header in my dialog (property page)?
• QA: How to make dialogs not full screen?
  February 25, 2002. When I create a dialog using MFC it is shown stretched to the whole screen. How can I create a not full screen dialog like in Windows 95?
• QA: How to add dropdown buttons in the CCeCommandBar?
  February 06, 2002. I have created a menu bar using the MFC class CCeCommandBar. Now, I would like to insert a button that uses the TBSTYLE_DROPDOWN style. How can I do it and then receive the TBN_DROPDOWN notification message sent by the toolbar control when the user clicks the button?
• QA: How to use property sheets in full screen mode?
  October 18, 2001. How can I make full-screened property sheets in an application for the Pocket PC by using MFC?
• QA: How can I insert menu in a dialog?
  October 01, 2001. In VC I can edit dialog's menu in a resource editor. I cannot find menu editing in eVC dialog resource editor. How can I use menu in dialogs?
• QA: Why doesn't my CButton work right?
  September 21, 2001. When I click I cannot press my button. If I press on the button then move stylus out of the button and then back then the button is pressed. What is wrong?
• QA: How can I create controls with multiline text?
  September 14, 2001. I want to create an edit control with multiline text (or label control, or button control, etc). What should I do for that?
• QA: How can I use a command bar in a dialog?
  September 06, 2001. I write a dialog based application. How can I use a command bar in it? I need a menu and a toolbar.
• QA: How to implement offscreen buffer?
  July 07, 2001. I need to output function graphic. When I draw the graphic using GDI function I see flicker. I want to create an offscreen buffer to prevent this flicker. How can I do that?
• QA: How to remove New button from command bar?
  June 29, 2001. How to remove "New" button from the command bar? When I create a new applicationusing "Single Document with Doc List" template I have "New" button in the command bar. But I don't need it because my application is only a viewer and doesn't allow editing.
• QA: How to make static controls transparent?
  April 28, 2003. I have a dialog with some static controls on it. The dialog displays a bitmap on the background. I want to make my static controls transparent. How can I do it? I tried to handle WM_CTLCOLOR message but this doesn't work. What did I do wrong?

MSDN Technical Articles

• Two for the Road: Skinning Your Application
  December 11, 2001. Skins, changeable interfaces for applications, are becoming increasingly popular. The idea here is rather than limit the users of an application to a single interface appearance, skins allow your user to select an interface that is appealing to them, therefore making them happier and more satisfied with your software. In this article, I'm going to demonstrate a simple method in which you can inject skins into your eMbedded Visual Basic applications.
• Set the State of Check Boxes in a ListView Control
  December 11, 2001. Using an undocumented macro, add the capability to set the state of ListView item check boxes.
• Find Items in ListView, ListBox, and ComboBox Controls
  August 28, 2001. Learn how to search for items in ListView, ListBox, or ComboBox controls using Microsoft eMbedded Visual Basic.
• Capture Windows Messages Using the MessageCE Control
  August 14, 2001. Learn how you can capture Windows messages in your applications using eMbedded Visual Basic and the MessageCE control from IntelProg.
• Developing a "Skin-Enabled" Application
  August 8, 2001. Let your users choose their own look and feel for your application by supporting skins.
• Adding Tap and Hold to Your C++ Pocket PC Application
  July 2, 2001. Learn how to add Tap and Hold context menus to your C++ application for Pocket PC devices.
• Accepting Keyboard Input in C++ Applications
  June 27, 2001. Learn how to add keyboard support to your C++ Pocket PC applications.
• Adding Images to the eMbedded Visual Basic Imagelist Control
  June 19, 2001. Learn how to add images to an Imagelist control and how to reference the images.
• Adding Online Help to Your C++ Application for the Pocket PC
  June 6, 2001. Online help maximizes your users' experience and minimizes your support work.
• Using Standard Toolbar Bitmaps in the Menu Bar
  June 5, 2001. Learn how to create a menu bar and add bitmaps to the menu bar for your Pocket PC-targeted application.
• Put a Chart in eMbedded Visual Basic
  May 30, 2001. Enhance your eMbedded Visual Basic applications with line and bar charts.
• Using the ProgressBar Control
  May 23, 2001. The vbceProgressBar control can reassure users during long waits.
• Using Fonts in a C++ Application
  May 15, 2001. By creatively using fonts in your application for the Pocket PC, you can provide a much more robust user experience, increase readability, and provide a more polished look.
• Using the List View Control in an MFC C++ Application
  May 1, 2001. The list view control provides C++ developers with a free, multicolumn list window that can be used to display a wide variety of information, implemented through the MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes) ClistCtrl class.
• Using a Date/Time Picker Control
  Apr. 20, 2001. Learn how the vbceDateTimePicker control simplifies date and time entry.
• Designing Your Application's User Interface
  Feb. 27, 2001. Basic user interface design for application developers targeting the Pocket PC.
• Assign an Icon to an eMbedded Visual Basic Application
  Jul. 19, 2000. Create a Small Application Launcher.
• Designing a Custom UI Shell for Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 Embedded Systems
  June 1999. This article describes the shell support components included in Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 and explains how to develop a customized shell. (8 printed pages)
• Developing International Applications for Microsoft Windows CE 3.0-based Devices
  June 2000. This article describes the techniques that Microsoft uses and the tools that the Windows CE operating system provides to produce international software. (20 printed pages)
• Using Rich Ink Technology in Microsoft Windows CE 3.0
  June 2000. Rich Ink technology allows a user to write and draw on a touch-sensitive screen. This technology is supported by the Microsoft WindowsR CE RichInk edit control. This paper describes how to add a RichInk control to an application and provides an example. The paper also provides the API reference for the RichInk control, including functions, messages, structures, and data types. An Appendix describes the process of converting RichInk PWI (Pocket Word Ink) files to RTF or text formats. (10 printed pages)
• Using the EasyInk control
  July 24, 2001. You can create Pocket PC signature capture applications using Microsoft eMbedded Visual Basic and the EasyInk control from Odyssey Software.

MS Knowledge base

• SAMPLE: How to Store a Signature in a 1-BPP Bitmap
  4/22/2003. The Sigcap.exe sample file demonstrates how to use GDI functions to store and load a 1-BPP (Bits-Per-Pixel) bitmap. This is especially useful when you want to store a handwritten signature as a bitmap so that it can be viewed by other programs that have already been implemented to display bitmaps.
• HOWTO: Add Full Row Select Functionality to a ListView Control
  4/18/2003. The default behavior of the ListView control, when in Report View, is the ability to select only the item on the far left of the list. If you try to select any of the sub-items, nothing happens. Only the first item is available to be selected. You can avoid this limitation by adding a ListView extended style, LVS_EX_FULLROWSELECT, to the current ListView style. With this extended style you can select any sub-item and the entire row will be selected.
• PRB: CE TabStrip Images Might Not Be Redrawn Properly
  9/4/2002. If you change the image on the selected tab of a TabStrip control, the image is not updated until you change tabs. If you remove all the images, the tabstrip does not reflect the removal of the images.
• BUG: Grid Control Does Not Change Focus Until the Second Focus Event
  10/15/2002. In an eVB/VBCE project, when you change the focus from the Grid control to any of the following controls, the focus might not change until you click the other control twice: CommandButton, ListView, PictureBox, TabStrip, TreeView.
• BUG: AfterLabelEdit Event Fires After Canceling an Edit
  10/15/2002. When using either the Microsoft CE ListView or CE TreeView control in either a Windows CE Toolkit for Visual Basic or eMbedded Visual Basic project, the AfterLabelEdit event fires after canceling a label edit. This behavior is not consistent with Visual Basic. This event should fire only if the label has actually been changed in some fashion.
• BUG: Nested Dialog Boxes Leak Memory
  11/7/2001. When you dismiss a dialog box that was created as a child of another dialog box, some memory from the child dialog box will not be freed until the parent dialog box is dismissed.
• BUG: File System Control: Open File Can Be Moved or Copied Without Error
  10/15/2002. In an eMbedded Visual Basic application, an error 55 "File already open" is not raised when an open file is copied or moved through the use of the FileCopy or MoveFile methods of the file system control.
• BUG: CE CommonDialog: ShowOpen Displays Only My Document Files
  10/30/2002. The Open common dialog box displays files from the My Documents folder and its sub-folders regardless of how the FileName or InitDir properties of the CommonDialog control are set.
• BUG: ScrollBar Slider Does Not Stop at the Cursor
  10/15/2002. When holding down the stylus of a Windows CE device (or the left-mouse button in emulation) to move the scroll bar slider, the slider does not stop at the cursor. It keeps going until it reaches the end of the scroll bar.
• BUG: ComboBox Scroll Event Might Not Fire
  10/15/2002. Under certain circumstances (outlined below), the Scroll Event of a ComboBox may not fire.
• BUG: Intrinsic Controls: Shortcut Keys Do Not Work as Expected
  9/4/2002. Adding numeric shortcut keys to your controls appears to have no effect.
• PRB: MFC Property Sheets Close When Using Transcriber for Pocket PC
  9/7/2001. When you are using Microsoft Transcriber on a Pocket PC, a Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC)-implemented property sheet dialog box disappears abruptly when you lift the stylus from the touch screen.
• HOWTO: Implement an Independent Floating Modeless Dialog Box in MFC for Pocket PC
  8/20/2001. When you implement a modeless dialog box for Pocket PC in Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), MFC may resize the dialog box and hook some default processing to it. Sometimes it is desirable to have a fixed size for the dialog box and enable the user to move it around, such as a floating toolbox.
• Q180756 - PRB: Alignment Property of TextBox Always Aligns to the Left
  10/29/2000. When you set the Alignment property of a TextBox, it has no affect on the justification of the text placed inside a TextBox. The text always appears justified on the left. This happens on the Windows CE Handheld Device and within the emulat
• Q187962 - HOWTO: Add Images to the CE ImageList Control
  10/24/2000. The Microsoft CE ImageList Control allows a Visual Basic developer to store images in an ImageList and to give other controls, such as the TreeView, ListView and TabStrip controls, a way to refer to that collection of images.
• Q260109 - PRB: Adding Unsupported CommandBar to a Pocket PC Form Causes No Error
  3/22/2001. The Microsoft CE CommandBar 3.0 control is not supported in the Pocket PC platform. You can note this by its absence in the
• Q265451 - HOWTO: Run an eMbedded Visual Basic Application Full Screen on a Pocket PC Device
  1/19/2001. This article illustrates how to programmatically manipulate the various screen objects on a Pocket PC device by using the SHFullScreen API function from an eMbedded Visual Basic (eVB) application. It is popular for applications that target Windows CE to use as much of the screen of the smaller Palm-sized devices as possible. The new user interface (UI) of the Pocket PC platform requires additional work for an application to use the full screen area.
• Q265778 - BUG: Shortcut Keys Do Not Work as Expected
  2/17/2001. Numeric shortcut keys for controls appear to have no effect when running an application.
• Q266244 - HOWTO: Create Full-Screen Applications for the PocketPC
  5/9/2001. The documentation clearly describes how to use the SHFullScreen API in a non-Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC) Win32 application to create full-screen windows on the PocketPC. However, the documentation does not describe the same procedure for MFC-based applications. This article describes how to make full-screened applications for the PocketPC by using either the Win32 API or MFC.

Questions and Answers at www.cegadgets.com

• I populate my combobox using the resource editor, yet when I run my application under CE all I see is garbage. What can I do?
  27-Mar-01.
• How can I implement a list view with a checkbox next to each item?
  27-Mar-01.
• How can I disable the OK button on my Windows CE dialogs?
  27-Mar-01.
• Which common dialogs are supported under Windows CE?
  27-Mar-01.
• If I don't implement an exit menu item, is there anything I can do to make closing the application easier?
  27-Mar-01.

CodeProject

• Transparent Controls with custom image backgrounds on PocketPC
  Aug 16, 2003. Transparent Controls with custom image backgrounds on PocketPC
• A font chooser dialog for the Pocket PC
  Aug 17, 2003. Implementing a font chooser dialog with preview and ClearType support
• Customizing the DocList
  08 June 2003. The DocList is what you see when you launch Pocket Word or Pocket Excel or the other standard PocketPC apps. It shows a list of files, and the user can choose which folder to view via the drop-down in the top left. It's the PocketPC's answer to FileOpen. This article shows how to customize the folder list.
• CCeListCtrlEx for Pocket PC 2002
  15 May 2003. A ownerdraw list control to emulate a single select list box with a little icon at the beginning of each line.
• Having full screen without accessing the SHFullScreen API
  27 Oct 2002. This article show you how to make a full screen PocketPC application by removing the taskbar, menubar, SIP button as well as reposition the input panel by your own code.
• A quick way of implementing a Pocket Outlook-type letter strip
  13 Jan 2003. This article presents a very quick implementation of the "Letter Strip" control found in Pocket Outlook. It is a very simple control that allows the user to select or find the information on a list by clicking in one of the nine letter areas. The behaviour that Pocket Outlook implements is to find all the records that start with the given letter. To choose another letter in the same group, the user clicks the same area, and the control loops in a circular fashion through all three letters
• Multiple Toolbars in the PocketPC 2002
  17 Mar 2003. This article presents a solution on how to implement multiple toolbars in a PocketPC 2002 application. The idea came from an exchange in the Embedded / Mobile message board where this functionality was sought, especially the Pocket Word-like management of the toolbar.
• Colour Picker Control for Windows CE
  31 Jan 2003. This is a port of Chris Maunder's Office 97 style Colour Picker control [^] to Windows CE (PocketPC 2002). The code was adapted using the preprocessor macro _WIN32_WCE to enable transparent compilation in both eVC++ 3.0 and VC++ 6.0.
• Arabic Support for Windows CE
  20 Jan 2003. When Microsoft Windows CE first came to life and the number of the PDA's based on it increased rapidly, the software market was opend widely for a new type of applications and we all wanted to write new applications or to port our application already written for Win32 to Windows CE. Unfortunely, for the arabic market, there is no Arabic language support in WinCE 2.11 and WinCE 3.0 After a long time some third parties introduced some solutions and each claimed "We have the first and best Arabic Language Support for Windows CE (or PocketPC)". They offered their solutions for a big amount of what is called "money". Too big for a poor freelance programmer to handle. And after one of the companies offering the solution asked me $5000 for their solution (don't tell them I told you it was bad), I started to write the first and best Arabic Language support for Windows CE myself. It was about 14 months ago. And here is what I did
• A File Open Dialog for the PocketPC 2002
  27 Mar 2003. On the PocketPC, the File Open dialog is not very versatile. In fact, you are limited to a small number of directories, which may be too limiting for your own purposes. I started to think about a possible solution for this problem after reading a post in the Mobile / Embedded forum, where a reader complains about the limitations of CFileDialog. This article describes the simple solution I devised. Mind you, it is simple, very simple.
• A Selection Bar for the PocketPC 2002
  13 Mar 2003. This article describes one implementation of the selection bar which is present in Microsoft's applications for the PocketPC 2002. After looking very thoroughly through the PPC 2002 SDK, I found no API that would implement this functionality, so I decided to implement it myself.
• A Non Full-Screen Dialog Class for Windows CE
  Showing a non full screen dialog under pocket pc is actually pretty easy. All you have to do is set the m_bFullScreen member of the CDialog class to FALSE in your dialog's constructor. It's after making a dialog non full screen that the problem begins. When you invoke any one of the SIP components, i.e. Keyboard, Transcriber, Block Recognizer etc. a dialog created in the above process will loose all its posture and will go full screen! To stop this erratic behavior, all you need to do is handle two windows messages, WM_ACTIVATE and WM_SETTINGCHANGE, and just call their default implementation in CWnd.
• Window Wrapper for WinCE Win32 "Hello World" app
  28 Jun 2002. I created a dialog based app to run on Windows wih MFC. The heart of this program was a few classes that didn't depend on MFC and I took care to make them easily portable, because I knew I wanted to try it on CE. I started Embedded Visual C 3.0 and looked for an App Wizard to help me create a Win 32 based dialog app. Since there was none to be found, I created a new project using the Win32 App Wizard. Just like the Win32 App Wizard in Visual Studio, there wasn't a class in sight.
• Window Wrapper for WinCE Win32 dialog app
  12 Jul 2002. This article continues to chronicle my quest to get a Dialog Based WinCE application that I can use objects with. This article uses the sample from my earlier project, a Win32 "Hello World" app with a wrapper object, as the starting point.
• Real Time 2D Graph for CE
  14 Nov 2001. A 2D graph for CE. To Run this application you must have installed eMbedded Visual C++ 3.0
• Using Windows CE CommandBands in an MFC based Application
  Updated 2 Feb 2000. An introduction to using CommandBars in CE
• Adding Icons to the System Tray
  21 Sep 2000. A class for adding icons to the system tray. This class is a light wrapper around the windows system tray stuff. It adds an icon to the system tray with the specified ToolTip text and callback notification value, which is sent back to the Parent window.

CodeGuru

• PocketPC-Adding a Permanent Menu Entry to the New Button Menu
  December 10, 2002. For a PocketPC application that I was writing recently, one of my tasks was to add a custom menu entry to the PocketPC New Button Menu. Because I've seen that the topic gets asked enough times on Pocket PC programming forums, I thought I'd write something to this end. Of course, you can always look through the documentation to New Menu items that comes along with the PocketPC SDK for reference. Through this brief tutorial I will show you the steps involved to do this. The sample project adds such menu items and handles respective menu clicks.

DEVBUZZ.COM

• Using eVB to access the richink control (via ecncrichink.dll)
  19 Mar 2002. Too many people asked Mike Dejanovic the same question on the WEB! "Is it possible to do RICH text editing inside a Pocket PC as it is done in the desktop environment?" Since he couldn't find any solution that was similar to the RichEdit, he engineered his own method to access the existing CE ink capabilities. Yes, there are some examples of using the HtmlView libraries that wrap the HtmlView control and allow you to create an HTML based dialog with use of HTML code to display colors, pictures and so on. I can't say much about that solution since I have not test it yet. My goal was to allow eVB easy access to richink.dll
• Performance Grid
  20 Oct 2002. This article was inspired by a recent project, Pocket RDA. Pocket RDA provides remote data access from the Pocket PC to any ADO compliant database. The results were returned into a grid control, and could be saved or copied to the clipboard. In 'program' testing, things looked great (don't they always!!), the 30 or so customer records returned quickly. (As we all know, most 'programmer testing' is carried out with the same 10 records.) I was a bit more concerned with the performance of 100 plus records, but decided it was probably network load (software guys blame the hardware - hardware guys blame the software!). Then when I got into 'real' testing with 2000 records plus, it crawled to a standstill.
• RESCO's new powerful Grid and ListView controls
  2 Jan 2003. Every developer starting off with eVB wants to develop the perfect mobile application incorporating many user-friendly and powerful visual controls with an attractive and colorful interface and sophisticated features. In addition, everyone would like to do it in just "one hour" by clicking a property window and interfacing with the control using the minimum amount of code - the same way they used to do in the desktop VB environment.
• Review of Odyssey Software's free DataViewer control for eVB
  3 Feb 2003. The DataViewer is very fast and much better than a regular ListView, Grid, or ComboBox. Especially the ComboBox because you can display multiple columns with column headings in the simulated combo (scrolling both vertically & horizontally), yet you can choose what column to return to the TextBox (used to hold the selection) when the user selects a record from the list. The main principal behind the DataViewer is that you are not loading up the control with a copy of your data, which the control then displays. Instead...
• Adding images to the eVB Imagelist control
  This week I would like to share how to add images to an Imagelist control and then show you how to reference the images in this control. The Imagelist control is quite different from its standard Visual Basic counterpart, so it is useful to know where to start.
• Simulating control arrays in eVB
  One of many features left out of eVB is the ability to create control arrays... or so say experienced programmers on message boards and newsgroups all over the net - because trial-and-error (with the concurrence of MSDN, of course) have dictated such. Well, I'm here to dissent...
• Alternative eVB DatePicker control.
  Last week we ran our first tutorial on the eVB Datepicker, mentioning that this is a relatively simple app made complicated by the fact that eVB does not support control arrays. This week Mike Luger generously provides the source code to his evb Datepicker. Unique to this datepicker implementation is the ability to dynamically resize the calendar control. To this end Mike has added a horizontal scroll bar demonstrating this capability. The code is well documented and it will be easy to integrate into your application.
• eVB Treeview control and ImageList control.
  Adding nodes to a TreeView Control that make use of images in the Imagelist control...
• Need a quick eVB DatePicker control?
  This is a relatively simple app made complicated by the fact that eVB does not support control arrays. This evb Datepicker demonstrates one way to work around this. The calendar is contained within a frame to make it easy to Show and Hide with the frame's (fraDP) Visible property. The month and year arrows are basic plus / minus functions. The ok button makes the calendar invisible.
• Use eVB to create a scrollable forms on your Pocket PC.
  The PocketPC device, as other handheld devices, has very limited screen real estate for displaying information and forms. Microsoft has overcome this issue with many of their forms by implementing scrollable forms. For example, they use this technique with the contact manager entry form. This article describes a simple technique you can use to create your own scrollable forms.
• Custom eVB Message Box.
  Ever wish you could control how the standard MsgBox looks and where its position on the screen? Well this tutorial will offer you a simple way to create your own substitution for the boring MsgBox where your imagination is the limit. Very little code is required too. We will call it MyMsgBox control (real original!). It is simply implemented as a Subroutine you call just like MsgBox.
• Use eVB to create display and edit forms for your Pocket PC.
  The Pocket PC is an ideal platform for carrying information around that you need to review often and occasionally edit. This leaves a developer with a dilemma - do I optimize the display for entry or for displaying information. Microsoft solved this problem for the contacts function by having two screens. Unfortunately, the screens are completely ...
• Use eVB to create a Menubar on your Pocket PC.
  The MenuBar control is used within eVB to add menus to your application. In this tutorial I will cover the creation and use of text menus.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Pocket-G

• Off-screen technique
  Before, we learn about OFF SCREEN tecnique. Let see what is on screen? Why it not seem to works with game application? Well, another basic problem, how can we draw text, picture or animation to the Window's client area?

Innovative Decision Support Systems

• 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
• Disabling the TaskBar in eVB
  9/22/01. Frequently it is necessary to prohibit users from accessing other applications or settings on a device. One way to accomplish this is to hide the TaskBar after your application is running. In this code snippet Trevor Harris demonstrates just how easy that is.
• Using the ListView in eVB
  9/21/01. The ListView control's documentation is sparse and limited and the control itself is somewhat confusing. Add to that the fact that a lot of functionality is outright missing in eVB. In this tutorial, Chris Tacke walks you through the basic and not-so-basic features of the ListView control

Libraries

• Progress Bar Control
  ActiveX control. A progress bar is a control that indicates the progress of a lengthy operation by displaying a colored bar inside a horizontal rectangle.
• Popup Menu Control
  ActiveX control. Popup menus display frequently used commands after pressing the stylus on an object for a certain amount of time. They can be context sensitive to the location of the pointer. Using pop-up menus in your application requires building the menu itself and connecting it to application code.
• Month Calendar Control
  ActiveX control. This control shows a child window that displays a monthly calendar. The month calendar control provides the user with a simple calendar interface, from which the user can select a date.
• DateTime Control
  ActiveX control. The Date and Time Picker (DTP) control provides a simple and intuitive interface through which an application can exchange information with a user. For example, with a DTP control you can ask the user to enter a date and then retrieve the user's selection.
• AutoListCtrl
  C++ library. Extends the standard CListCtrl class, adding automatic column sizing, column sorting (with data types), very easy to use.
• STFullScreen
  C++ library. This library includes functions for creating full screen applications, abstract classes to derive your full screen views and dialogs from and wizard for creating full screen Pocket PC applications.
• WTL
  C++ library. Windows Template Library is one more object oriented windows library (like MFC, ATL, etc). It has not MFC legacy and that is why is more elegant but it is not widely used and supported and you will not find a lot of documentation about that. The WTL is an extension to the ATL, developed by the same ATL team.
• WTL extensions for Windows CE specific controls
  C++ library. Adds wrappers for Windows CE 3.0 inking classes to WTL.
• vbceTaskBar
  ActiveX control. vbceTaskBar allows you to disable and enable the task bar. You can use vbceTaskBar to prevent users from accessing the Start Menu, making your application the only one that can be run on the device.
• vbceDateTimePicker
  ActiveX control. The vbceDateTimePicker is an easy to use, yet powerful ActiveX control for VBCE/eVB developers. It provides a very easy to use interface for selecting dates from a calendar.
• EasyInk
  ActiveX control. Free control very suitable for signature capture (and other types of freehand drawings) called EasyInk. This is a Microsoft ActiveXR control available for the Pocket PC platform as well as the PC. The point of having the same control available on both platforms is that you can transfer digital image data (signatures) between the two. A practical example would be to capture the signature on a Pocket PC and then send the data (wirelessly) to a server, where the signature gets added to a report using the same control. The data that you can retrieve from the control is in bitmap format, as this is more often smaller for freehand drawing (like signatures) than the vector format.
• Resco ListView
  ActiveX control. It is a professional ActiveX control designed for a mobile platforms. It provides all powerful features that you know from a desktop version. In addition to standard views (Icons, SmallIcons, List and Report) you can use it as an advanced grid control to process your data in a clear tabular form.
• DTP Pocket PC 2002
  ActiveX control. Include a Pop Up Date Time Picker in your eVB project.