VS.NET 2002/2003

Understanding CLR's Special Threads

Gaurav Khanna — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:48:00 GMT

There are multiple special threads which the CLR maintains and executes. Yun Jin talks about them in his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/yunjin/archive/2005/07/05/435726.aspx.

Must read for those who want to understand CLR better!

CalendarSP Update

Gaurav Khanna — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 04:17:00 GMT

With TechED 2005 India over, I have got sometime to work on the feedback I have got on the various components I have made available at http://www.wintoolzone.com/. Amongst them was to fix the tab order of CalendarSP - the date picker for SmartPhone 2003 and SmartPhone 5.0 platform. Download the updated control from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx

Shared Source Bluetooth Library

Gaurav Khanna — Fri, 27 May 2005 02:47:00 GMT

Check out the shared source Bluetooth class library - Windows Embedded Source Tools for Bluetooth

Screen Shot: Date Picker for SmartPhone 2003...

Gaurav Khanna — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 07:48:00 GMT

This is how the managed Date Picker, CalendarSP, looks like (click here for download details):

Managed Date Picker control for SmartPhone 2003 Platform

Gaurav Khanna — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 07:07:00 GMT

The .NET Compact Framework lacks a Date Picker control for the SmartPhone development platform. I have written CalendarSP that overcomes this limitation of the .NET CF and is targetted for the SmartPhone 2003 platform.

Its free to use and comes with complete documentation.

Download it from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx

CERapi - Determine connected device type...

Gaurav Khanna — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 17:12:00 GMT

I have added support in CERapi to determine the type of device (PocketPC, SmartPhone, etc) connected to via ActiveSync. The CESystemInformation class has a DeviceType property that will return a CEDeviceType enumeration value which indicates the type of device. The snippet below exemplifies this:

CESystemInformation si = rapi.SystemInformation;

// Device Type
Console.WriteLine("You are connected with a {0}",si.DeviceType.ToString());

And below is the output for my Typhoon:

Download the updated CERapi from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx

TIP: Whom are you connected with via ActiveSync?

Gaurav Khanna — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 07:16:00 GMT

There's no programmatic way to determine if the Windows CE device connected via ActiveSync to the desktop is a PocketPC or a SmartPhone. If you wish to determine the same, open HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows CE Services registry key and lookup the value of DeviceType value. Its a REG_SZ and contains the type of device you are connected with.

Publishing breaking changes..

Gaurav Khanna — Sat, 02 Apr 2005 07:16:00 GMT

Whenever you publish a new version of an assembly that has some breaking changes relative to its predecessor version, its an exercise in itself to publish the breaking changes. BradA points to LibCheck, an application used internally for doing the same. Check it here.

CERapi - Using CEFolder and CEFile

Gaurav Khanna — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:08:00 GMT

CERapi allows you to work with the file system of the Windows CE device and the snippet below shows how easy it is to do the same:

// Working with device folders
CEFolder rootFolder = new CEFolder(\\storage\\My Documents);
Console.WriteLine("Path: {0}",rootFolder.Path);
Console.WriteLine("Total Files: {0}",rootFolder.TotalFileCount);
Console.WriteLine("Total SubFolders: {0}",rootFolder.TotalSubFolderCount);

// Copy File from desktop
Console.WriteLine("Move C:\\CASDEMO.TXT to device: {0}",rootFolder.MoveFileFromDesktop("c:\\CASDEMO.TXT").ToString());
string[] arrFolders = rootFolder.SubFolders;
foreach(string strFolder in arrFolders)
Console.WriteLine("SubFolder: {0} ",strFolder);

Console.WriteLine("");

string[] arrFiles = rootFolder.Files;
foreach(string strFile in arrFiles)
Console.WriteLine("File: {0} ",strFile);

Console.WriteLine("");

Console.WriteLine("Parent Folder: {0}", rootFolder.ParentFolder);
Console.WriteLine("Archive: {0}",rootFolder.IsArchive.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("Created on: {0}",rootFolder.CreationTime.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("LastAccessed on: {0}",rootFolder.LastAccessTime.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("LastWritten on: {0}",rootFolder.LastWriteTime.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("Size: {0}",rootFolder.Size.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("OID on: {0}",rootFolder.OID.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("CreateFolder: {0}",rootFolder.CreateFolder("SubFolder").ToString());
Console.WriteLine("DeleteFolder: {0}",rootFolder.DeleteFolder("SubFolder").ToString());

Download CERapi from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx

CEFolder and CEFile - Working with the Windows CE device file system using CERapi

Gaurav Khanna — Fri, 01 Apr 2005 18:06:00 GMT

CERapi, the managed implementation for Windows CE Remote API (RAPI) has been updated to work with the file system of the Windows CE device. The CEFile and CEFolder classes have been introduced that make navigating the device easy. You can:

Get list of files in specified folder
Create/Delete folders
Create/Delete/Move files
Get folder/file attributes
File's folder and its name - property
Create shortcut to files
Find files as per custom search filter
Set file attributes
Set filetime
Launch files from the device
Copy/Move files from desktop to device
Copy/Move files from device to desktop
Copy/Move files within device

Download the latest CERapi assembly with complete documentation from http://www.wintoolzone.com/showpage.aspx?url=dotnet.aspx