Microsoft® Mobile Development Handbook

This book is for new and existing mobile application developers who already have some experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, either desktop or compact version. If you are new to .NET, first read "Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step By Step" by John Sharp or "Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step By Step" by Michael Halvorson. Those books can teach you the programming basics, and you will then be prepared to use this book to learn mobile application development. This book can help you develop mobile applications using .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and will introduce you to some of the new features that are in .NET Compact Framework version 3.5, which will be released with the next release of Visual Studio, currently code-named "Orcas."

Along the way, the book highlights features that are new to .NET Compact Framework 2.0 so that the developer who has experience building applications using the version 1.0 product can identify new features that are helpful. However, the main purpose of this book is to give you the essential information you need to design and build applications that work on a constrained device such as a Pocket PC or Smartphone, or on embedded hardware. It instructs you as to how to build and debug applications, how to design GUIs that work on small devices, and how to deploy applications. It also delves into problems that are unique to mobile device applications, such as how to design and build applications that work well with unreliable, slow network connections, which is the usual state of affairs with phone-enabled mobile devices. This book is a handbook for the mobile developer that explains how to tackle the common problems that mobile application developers encounter. The book is divided into three parts:

Part 1, Mobile Application Development Essentials, contains six chapters that everyone should read because they take you through topics that all mobile application developers must understand.

Chapter 1, ".NET Compact Framework--a Platform on the Move," is an introduction to the .NET Compact Framework and explains the tools you need to build applications for smart devices.

Chapter 2, "Building a Microsoft Windows Forms GUI," explains how to build effective Windows Forms applications on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones.

Chapter 3, "Using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Other Data Stores," looks at data persistence on devices in SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition databases and how you can build a graphical user interface that binds to data.

Chapter 4, "Catching Errors, Testing, and Debugging," shows you how to test and debug your applications on real devices and emulators, and how to trap and handle errors at run time.

Chapter 5, "Understanding and Optimizing .NET Compact Framework Performance," is about creating applications that perform well, something that requires a little more care to achieve on a smart device with limited RAM and storage than it does in a desktop application.

Chapter 6, "Completing the Application: Packaging and Deployment," looks at packaging and deployment and how Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy to build installation packages so that you can install your application on your target devices.

Part 2, Solutions for Challenges in Mobile Application Development, contains 10 chapters that examine areas that present particular challenges to applications running on a smart device.

Chapter 10, "Security Programming for Mobile Applications," is about security programming, an essential topic for any software developer, but of particular interest to mobile application developers who are responsible for keeping valuable data secure on a mobile device that can be lost or stolen, and must send data over public communications networks such as the Internet.

Chapter 11, "Threading," looks at how to do multithreaded programming in the .NET Compact Framework.

Chapter 12, "Graphics Programming" shows how to present UI that looks more polished and professional than one that is built using only the standard Microsoft Windows Forms controls from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox.

Chapter 13, "Direct3D Mobile", discusses how 3-D graphics can be implemented on a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered device using Direct3D. It starts simply with 2D graphics and then gradually moves into 3D graphics.

Chapter 14, "Interoperating with the Platform," explains how to call native APIs that are available in the underlying Windows CE operating system to perform tasks that are not possible using the .NET Compact Framework APIs alone.

Chapter 15, "Building Custom Controls", looks at developing custom Windows Forms controls that you can use in .NET Compact Framework applications.

Chapter 16, "Internationalization", explains how to create applications that are easily localizable to different cultures and languages.

Chapter 17, "Developing with Windows Mobile", looks at the Windows Mobile 5.0 managed APIs, a set of APIs that are unique to mobile devices and that expose system information and allow programmatic access to data stores such as Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile contacts, calendars, and tasks lists.

Part 3, New Developments, consists of a single chapter that provides an early look at the next version of Visual Studio and the next version of the .NET Compact Framework, version 3.5. The latest version adds new features for querying data collections, messaging, testing, and many other innovations and enhancements.

Every now and then you run across a programming book that is exceptional; one that is far richer and more useful than the multitude of other resources out there. I recently had this experience while researching Microsoft .NET Compact Framework. While Microsoft has a wealth of documentation on .NET Compact Framework it's sometimes difficult to figure out what documentation is up to date and where to find coverage on a particular subject.

Having many questions left unanswered by Microsoft's Web site, I finally turned to this edition of the "Microsoft Mobile Development Handbook" (Microsoft Press 2007) by Andy Wigley, Daniel Moth, and Peter Foot.

In a nutshell the book is one of the best programming books I've read in a long time. In fact, I give it my highest recommendation. .NET Compact Framework is a nice piece of work and this book will help you appreciate all of its capabilities and how all the parts fit together.

If you are thinking of developing mobile applications and are considering .NET Compact Framework, I recommend you buy a copy of this book.

You can't get very far in Windows Mobile development without learning of the names Andy Wigley, Peter Foot and The Moth. They are three brilliant developers and all have been in the game long enough to know it inside and out.

When I bought this book, I had high expectations. Not only did they deliver, they took it up a few notches. If there's an area of WinMobile development that they left out, I sure haven't been able to find it. From UI effects to data access (and a stellar discussion on Sql Server CE), everything is covered and covered well. These guys all spend a ton of time answering questions in public newsgroups and it's very evident that they used this experience as a reference point in writing this book.

The fact they threw in a good bit about Orcas was just icing on the cake. This book is superb from start to finish and a must have for any mobile developer

This is a book where the knowledge, experience and the art and science of the mobile development that has been collected by the "dream team" of authors comes together to create a truly the best book on Windows Mobile development. The book covers everything from the way to design the UI that is optimized for devices to the tips to optimize performance; from the data synchronization to a deep dive into PInvoke and COM interop; from data persistence to network connection and state management. The book answers many questions that many first time (or even experienced) developers encounter when starting development for mobile devices. The samples that are used in the book, are very clean cut and to the point. And they could be easily re-used for your own projects.

This book covers many aspects of windows mobile development, not only important and fundamental concepts, but also practical techniques and tricks. There are useful demo codes for download from MS Press website, too.

Any one who wants to learn writing Windows Mobile based applications, should dig deeply into this book, and will find many valuable knowledge and skills.
If you are already a mobile developer, I suggest you to use this book as a reference whenever you need to know more detail about a mobile developing topic.

This book helps a lot to me when I prepare some material for my .NET Compact Framework and Windows Mobile developing courses/presentations.

Excellent work from Andy, Daniel, and Peter!!