At our last meeting we talked about the decision making process of choosing the correct Windows Mobile device and new naming conventions for Windows Mobile 6 and the differences between Classic, Standard and Professional. If you get confused one of our members came up with a simple mnemonic for remembering the differences P->Professional=Pocket PC Phone, S->Standard=Smartphone, C->Classic=Is just simply that, a Classic Pocket PC. I know its helped me remember which was which. There is a great breakdown of the differences of WM5 and WM6 that we disscussed at the meeting with images here and the PDF is posted up by Jason Langridge here
Now to get you hands on using and testing an Windows Mobile 6 device is a bit hard now a days since there are no devices shipping with it yet. To see the new features of Windows Mobile 6 you can use the Windows Mobile 6 Flash demo to get a handle of the new features, UI and how it works. If you want to test your applications you will have download the Windows Mobile 6 Software Development Kits and if you are developing for both the Smartphone, I mean Standard and Professional (includes Classic) there are two separate SDKs to download. Here is the breakdown of the emulators included in the SDKS:
- Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK
- Windows Mobile 6 Standard (176x220 pixels - 96 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Standard Landscape QVGA (240x320 pixels - 131 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Standard QVGA (320x240 pixels - 131 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK
- Windows Mobile 6 Classic (240x320 pixels - 96 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional (240x320 pixels - 96 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional Square (240x240 pixels - 96 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional Square QVGA (320x320 pixels - 128 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional Square VGA (480x480 pixels - 192 dpi)
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional VGA (480x640 pixels - 192 dpi)
In order to install the Emulators unlike in the past, this is not a stand alone install and requires Visual Studio 2005 even though some blogs said it was, you will also need to install the following:
- Device Emulator 2.0 Beta
- Compact Framework 2.0 SP1
- Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK (Standard, Professional or both)
So make sure you have Visual Studio 2005 with SP1, the programs will even prompt you if don't have it and will help you along. Note this will not work with Visual Studio Express. Hopefully a newer emulator will exist that is standalone, but I wouldn't count on it coming soon. I am hoping something will be available after MEDC. Also if you are installing it to a Vista machine you may encounter the following: 'Getting Installation Issue --> Could Not Access Network Location Common7\IDE\ProjectTemplates.' Frank Zandona has a solution by re-registering the VBScript.dll:
regsvr32 %SystemRoot%\system32\vbscript.dll
With the SDK there are some very cool tools included here are some of them: CabSignTool signs a .cab file and all its executable content; Cellular Emulator v1- emulates voice and data connections; Device Emulator v2 - new and improved SDK emulator, FakeGPS & GPS Settings-allows you emulate a GPS from a text file of NEMA data, Hopper- for stress testing; Local Server Framework- allows development of test application servers that run locally over localhost on the device;
Also for more information on developing applications for Windows Mobile 6 be sure to read this fabulous whitepaper: What's New for Developers in Windows Mobile 6 and check out the Windows Mobile Developers Wiki.